Someone's URSA Experience 2022

This week I needed to further how the classroom should be run and how each section of the class should be taught and specifically what and how I can change the content to help neurodivergent students succeed in this STEAM-oriented class that I have been working on. Last Friday, I was lucky enough to go to an elementary school here in Corvallis and observe how classrooms are run today and how these kids respond to STEAM activities and notice what I could change in this system to make it better for all of the students. I was also lucky to get 4 amazing books from Dr. Temple Grandin, an extremely successful animal scientist and a person with autism. I started reading her book, ‘Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets for Helping Kids on the Spectrum’. Her books resonated with me in a way that I haven’t had before, and her words were very inspirational to me for this week and for the rest of my time working on this project.

Let’s start with the classroom setup. The goal here is to make a comfortable and warm environment where students can learn without added stressors. A corner or separate closet if possible should be sectioned off as a relaxation area where all students can go a take a break from studying or can go to destress and relax when necessary. This is more of an area for neurodivergent students, so the area should be lit gently and have comfortable seating and toys/gadgets of all sorts for kids to pick up and just play with. This area is not made for students to go play in, however, and is made for students who need breaks. Some good examples of toys to have in the relaxing area are fidget cubes, squishmallows or soft stuffed animals, poppers, and squishy things. These will help students destress and calm down so they can succeed in a safe and comfortable way.

We briefly went over teaching in last week’s post, but let’s get further into the way content is taught. As previously stated, all class materials should be as accessible as possible. This means that any presentations or lessons should have a printed and typed transcript of the lesson. The lessons should be relatively short, lasting less than 30 minutes with extra time in the end for questions and concerns. The lessons also should be taught with as many visuals for examples as possible. Everything should be backed up with examples and whenever possible, the lesson or chapter should end with applications in the real world or career paths that are related to the topic. I found that during the presentation I helped give at the local elementary school here in Corvallis, relating the topic and the content to something tangible, something more than just the product or equation got the kids more interested and let their curiosity wander. After showing them the applications of the drones that we were talking about, they wanted to know about more careers and more things that we could do with the drones. They became utterly fascinated by it. I also found that the kids really enjoyed the example we brought to show them the motion of the forces of drones and the centripetal forces that keep the drone stable while it is in flight. All of the kids wanted to go and I noticed more than a few of them trying to get a second go at the example. While I was there I also noticed that a particular table was the most interested in what we were saying and showing. They seemed to me like they were all neurodivergent in one way or another, and that got me really excited because they were by far the most vocal and focused group out of the entire class. That told me that examples and tangible learning were very useful tools when teaching neurodivergent students. The workshop also showed me that music was also very useful. My mentor played a song on his ukulele and also played some parody songs from YouTube and this got everyone very excited, they seemed like they wanted to hear more songs and I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked their teacher after we left to play more of his songs. I can recall to my own education that music and interactive teaching made the topic, whichever one we were focusing on, much more enjoyable and most of that information that I learned through music or interactively I still remember. This tells me that this class that I am building should have more interactive lessons than anything else. This means songs, videos, tangible examples and more should be used every single day in class.

All in all, this class should feel comforting and fun. We know that play in learning is extremely useful, and we know that feeling comfortable and safe is also conducive to a perfect learning environment. Teaching kids in simple, fun and tangible ways will be better for the children and easier to teach, where there is more room for error and more room for fun for everyone involved. This will be easy for neurodivergent students to understand and get involved more, and it will help the other students have more fun in class and because of this, they will retain the information for longer.

More to come soon,

-Chloe