I covered lots of ways that visuals support young children in understanding the rules and routines of a classroom environment in the first several posts about visuals. These are all really important; however, visuals also have the power to create more engaging curriculum and make it more accessible for students with identified delays and disabilities. This post will explore some of the most common ways and provide you with resources to begin building your own toolkit.
Circle Time, Play Time, and Books
In thinking about circle time, there are two things to consider, engagement and access. I will start with engagement but first I want to define it for anyone who isn't familiar with the term. Engagement is a measurement of children's interest and participation in an activity. Do they stay and have fun or do they run to the other side of the room? The answer to this question tells us whether they are engaged in the activity or not.
As teachers in the preschool classroom, we have a lot of influence over whether children stay and engage or whether they flee and this influence is in how we design our activities, centers, and large group activities. One strategy to increase engagement is through the use of visuals.
I am sure that most early childhood educators are familiar with flannel board stories. They aren't new or exciting; however, flannel board stories, puppets, (paper stick puppets or real one) and story boards like the one below (click the link to print your one) increase engagement by allowing children to participate in the activity. And increasing engagement in the activity increases opportunities to learn the content and build language and literacy skills.
** Building your inventory of visuals and incorporating them into your circle time practice is a first step towards making your circle time more engaging for your students. It is important to note that, just like adults, young children can find some topics boring, so it is important to know what your students are interested in as this also increases engagement in the classroom
The next thing to consider is access to play and centers in the preschool environment. And my intent with these posts is to keep the information general and applicable to most kids (and easy and doable for teachers) so know that this is an accessibility "light" list. If you need more options, it is always best to consult with the child's SLP or early childhood special education teacher.
Adaptive books: An adapted books is a books that has been modified to make reading accessible to individuals with disabilities. Adapted books can be helpful for children with communication, visual impairments and cognitive challenges, including those who use AAC. Adapted books can be low tech (visuals only) or high tech (with switches or ipad apps). For this blog post, I will be sharing the low tech option.
Low tech adapted books are an easy way to give young children access to books in the preschool classroom. Click on the link above to learn how to make one. And click here for some free printables to get you started in making your own collection. If you want a larger collection of adapted books for your classroom but don't have the time to make them, Teachers Pay Teachers is a great resource for finding both free and paid adapted books.
Play visuals: The last kind of visual that I will cover in this post. Play visuals can do a a variety of things to support young children but at the top of the list is:
Provide ideas (for all kids)
Support communication for both getting needs and ideas across and resolving conflict
Play ideas: These should be general and just provide ideas for children to use if they want to. An example of this is these play dough cards. They are related to a child interest (construction/trucks) and also offer additional ideas for things to do and make with play dough.
Visuals can also introduce concepts like feelings within the context of preferred play activities like with these play dough feelings faces boards.
Play communication: <- Click the link to see an example of simple play communication visuals. These themed play visuals allow young children the opportunity to communicate messages within their preferred play activities.
And lastly . . .
Resolving social conflict: Preschool aged children are still learning social skills. Turn taking, perspective taking, empathy, and other important skills are still in the very early stages of development for all children at this age. The most important thing that we do as early childhood educators is teach kids how to manage their big emotions and resolve conflicts with one another. The linked visual below are a great resource to start this journey of teaching young children how to resolve conflict.
Go slow with any of your new learning around supporting young children with visuals and keep in mind "progress not perfection."
Up next on the blog: Creating sensory friendly preschool classrooms
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