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A sensory room-a therapeutic space with a variety of equipment that provides students with special needs with personalized sensory input-helps these children calm and focus themselves so they can be better prepared for learning and interacting with others. In April, Edutopia published the story of Meriden Public Schools in Connecticut, including a video about the district's sensory room at Hanover Elementary School, which provides support services for students with a wide range of special needs.

This article includes detailed information about how to create a sensory room for your own community, as well as answers to some of the questions we received after publishing the video. If you're interested in finding an existing sensory room in your area, we suggest calling a local occupational therapist for a referral.

What Are the Benefits of a Sensory Room?

Improved services: Meriden Public Schools students with special needs were previously sent outside the district to receive services. According to Patricia Sullivan-Kowalski, Meriden's director of pupil personnel, this resulted in students feeling less connected to their community. By creating their own sensory room, administrators gained the ability to keep students in their community and provide them with a safe place in a least restrictive environment.

Improved student outcomes: Sullivan-Kowalski says the sensory room at Hanover has had a positive impact on students, who "are better able to follow directions and spend more time on task," she says. "With that, we see a decrease in negative behaviors. The students are very motivated. They want to go to the sensory room."

Cost savings: Setting up a sensory room costs less than sending students out for support services. To pay for Hanover's sensory room, Mark Benigni, the Meriden district superintendent, reallocated support services funds, covering the room and its equipment, staff, and professional development.

How Is the Sensory Room Used? What Student Objectives Does It Meet?

The Hanover sensory room was designed primarily for autistic students, but over time it has expanded to support all students, including those with vision difficulties, language difficulties, learning disabilities, emotional disturbances, all kindergartners, and any student who needs a safe, quiet room to calm their body. "We often find that practices designed to meet the needs of the most challenging students in a school are effective for all kids," says Peter Poutiatine, Edutopia's school selection coordinator, who researches successful school practices.

When creating the sensory room, Meriden educators focused on incorporating proprioception, the awareness of where your body is in space, and the vestibular system, the sense of balance. Students with challenges in proprioception appear clumsy-they're not able to get in line without being right on top of the next student, for example. The educators give these students a lot of so-called heavy work, like bouncing and jumping, to help develop this sense. Students with vestibular challenges have trouble balancing, so they use a platform swing that helps improve this sense. Having students work on their proprioceptive and vestibular systems helps them become aware of how their bodies move and how they can control their movements.

A sensory room can be used to meet multiple objectives, depending on each student's needs. The Hanover room in the video above has a variety of stations that were designed primarily to help students with proprioceptive and vestibular issues be better able to self-regulate. The room measures about 1,200 square feet-it was previously a kindergarten.

Working with an occupational therapist and a physical therapist, special needs students attend the sensory room for a half hour a day. Meriden educators adjust the following program to meet individual students' needs:

Bouncing ball: Students always start by bouncing on a ball in time to a metronome. It's very important to provide consistency, and starting (and ending) each session on a bouncing ball allows for ease of transition and provides predictability. Next, students either do a set rotation among the stations or make their own choices.

Circuit rotation or chosen activities: After the ball, a student may do a set rotation, visiting several stations for three to five minutes. This provides a great deal of sensory input and exposes students to the different areas of the room. Or a student may choose a desired activity and stay there for a directed amount of time. It's very important that students have enough time in a chosen station to feel the desired effect.

Yoga: The occupational and physical therapists have posted images of yoga poses on the walls in the Hanover sensory room, and make themselves available to help as needed.

Bouncing ball: Students end each session by bouncing on a ball.

Who Designed the Room?

Meriden Public Schools' head of occupational therapy, Kathleen Fritz Romania, and lead physical therapist, Heather McDonnell, designed the room. They worked with others, including the district's lead behavior analyst, the speech and language pathologist, and the special ed teacher, to ensure that the programming supported specific goals concerning behavior, communication, and academic skills.

What Do You Need to Get Started With a Sensory Room?

The team at Meriden agrees that you don't have to spend a lot of money to get started. "If you put down carpet, paint the walls a calming color, and put light fabric over the lights, your students will feel a change right away when they walk into the room," says McDonnell, the physical therapist.

You can also use equipment that doesn't cost a lot: Therapy balls, battle ropes, and scooter boards are very inexpensive and have numerous applications with students. You can also make your own sensory bins-plastic dishwashing containers filled with rice and dried beans will work.

What Equipment Does the Sensory Room Have?

The sensory room at Hanover Elementary has equipment that's designed to give students a variety of sensory inputs. For example:

1. Bouncing balls: When students enter the sensory room, they go directly to the bounce area for opening circle-an exercise in which they bounce on balls in time with a metronome. This provides full body input, but can easily overstimulate some students, so this activity should be closely supervised. Staff members also use the balls to "squish" students, pressing into their backs as they lie on the floor, which provides deep pressure. Meriden educators recommend the Bosu (half ball), therapy balls, and Lily Pads. The balls are for therapeutic use only, not for play.

2. Whiteboard: After bouncing, students go to the whiteboard station, where they can use magnetic letters or do Lazy 8s with markers to develop fine motor skills. This station is also the choice area, where students decide which stations they want to visit. Once they choose a station, they remain there for three to five minutes and then either transition around the room or return to the whiteboard to make another choice.

3. Light wall, punching bag, and battle ropes: The light wall allows for heavy work, which gives students the safe proprioceptive input they need to calm their body and feel more oriented in space. The students may use heavy red balls to hit the lights. There are many games, including Simon and Connect Four. At Hanover, students use the light wall either individually or in pairs. A punching bag and thick battle ropes also provide opportunities for heavy work.

4. Mirror wall: This station allows students to use visual feedback while playing. You can create one by attaching shatterproof mirror tiles to a wall. Students can write or draw on the mirror with a small dollop of shaving cream, which provides an opportunity a calming tactile input.

5. Lego wall: The Lego wall is a great fine-motor-skills activity for students, made by screwing Lego bases onto the wall so that students build out from the wall instead of the floor or a table. Students love Legos, and according to Sullivan-Kowalski, Meriden's director of pupil personnel, "Occupational therapists love them, too." Building things is a great way to organize a child and provides a calming activity.

6. Bubble tube: The sensory bubble tube-a glass tube that's lit from within and has bubbles that create shifting patterns of light-is located in a quiet area and adds to the relaxing environment with calming visuals and sounds. Students may bring a book or quiet activity into this area, lie in a beanbag chair, and just relax as they organize themselves and prepare to go back to class.

7. Body socks: Used in the quiet area, body socks are full-size suits that provide students with deep joint input that is calming to most children. When using the socks, students can see out but cannot be seen from outside. This is great for those students who require quiet time, prefer being in small spaces, and require very little hands-on support. Sullivan-Kowalski notes that "students should be asked if they would prefer not to be enclosed in the sock, and their wishes must be respected."

8. Tactile center: At Hanover, educators put out plastic bins and containers of beans, rice, and sand. Students work on their own or use activity cards to make sequences and patterns-using only one material at a time to prevent mixing. The feel of the materials in this section is very calming and therapeutic, and this activity presents a very low demand for students while providing a great deal of sensory input through the hands.

9. Rowers: As students work the oars on a rowing machine, they get safe heavy work, which improves their focus and orientation, and helps them calm their bodies. If the oars are too heavy, staff members allow students to push and pull the oars with their legs. Meriden's lead physical therapist, Heather McDonnell, cautions that educators should take care that rowers are used appropriately to ensure that students get the desired effect and to prevent damage to the machines.

10. Platform swing: The swing provides the appropriate vestibular input necessary to calm and orient a student. At Hanover, students may sit or lie on their belly on the swing-no standing. Only one child is allowed to use it at a time. Some students may think it's for recreation, so it's important to enforce the rules: "If your student has not been identified with needs that require a specific protocol, use of swings outside is recommended," says Sullivan-Kowalski.

When Do Students Use the Sensory Room?

At Hanover, there are five classes of eight or nine students with autism. Each of these classes comes to the sensory room for half an hour a day. Specialists can also schedule time with the physical and/or occupational therapists for one hour a week. The physical therapist and occupational therapist collaborate with each specialist to provide programming, music, and lesson plans.

Does the Sensory Room Benefit Kids Who Have Lived Through Trauma?

Meriden has three sensory rooms in all, and each is designed to meet different student needs. When working with students who have experienced trauma, it's important to have input from a team-typically including the school psychologist or a social worker who is trained in trauma-based services-as to what is appropriate and what is not.

Who Manages the Sensory Room?

Trained staff members take care of each of the three sensory rooms. Meriden Public Schools' head of occupational therapy, Kathleen Fritz Romania, and lead physical therapist, Heather McDonnell, train these staffers.

Best Practices and Things to Avoid

Make sure your facilities team is on board. "They were able to help us with construction early in the process and give us information about what we could and could not move," says Romania. "It made the logistics of the actual physical space go much more smoothly."

Develop a program and protocol for how staff should use and maintain the room-and make sure your staff is trained. "Everyone needs to understand the purpose of the room, what each piece in there is for, and how to put it away after use. Students also need to follow a routine, so that they don't come in and act like they're at Disneyland, bop all around, and then leave it in total devastation," says Romania.

Reinforce the right behavior. Especially with students on a behavior plan, you should work closely with the school team and the behavioral specialist to make sure kids get the right message from their time in the sensory room. Sullivan-Kowalski, the director of pupil personnel, cautions that children should not be sent to the sensory room for acting out, "because you've just reinforced, 'Act out in your classroom, you'll come out and do this.' The sensory room needs to be a part of a behavioral plan as either a reward or a break."

Locate your sensory room in a central location within your building if possible. At Hanover, the sensory room is directly across from the school office, which makes it easy to keep tabs on the room and to ensure that the staff is using it correctly and that equipment is being maintained properly. In the other two schools in the district with sensory rooms, those rooms are located in the farthest corner from the office, making them more difficult to monitor.

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A sensory room-a therapeutic space with a variety of equipment that provides students with special needs with personalized sensory input-helps these children calm and focus themselves so they can be better prepared for learning and interacting with others.

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As educators, staying updated on the best ways to support our students' learning experiences can be difficult, especially given all of our other responsibilities. Luckily, the field of learning sciencehas taken on that important mission for us by translating theory and research findings into practical tips, techniques, and pedagogies that we can implement every day in the classroom. Most learning science research takes place in the authentic, chaotic, and noisy environments we call our classrooms, which makes it relevant and practical. Simply put, the goal of learning science is to help teachers teach better and learners learn better, and that certainly applies to the domain of social emotional learning (SEL). This blog aims to present several best practices from learning science research that you can use in your classroom when teaching SEL.

Feedback provides students with a better understanding of what they know and what needs to be given another look. Feedback is all about making informed decisions and implementing changes: it should enable students to revisit their understanding and update their work accordingly.

As educators, we are constantly providing feedback. Following some research-based best practices enables us to communicate more effectively with our students:

1. Students often want to know the right answer after making a mistake, but the best kind of feedback engages them in a productive struggle to error-correct on their own rather than giving them the solution upfront.

2. Students tend to ignore feedback outright when it is accompanied by an external motivator (such as a letter grade, score, or other marking). Studies show that feedback is implemented more often when it is provided independently and references the work rather than the student.

3. Feedback is taken up more frequently when it is given immediately rather than delayed.

It is helpful for both teachers and students to have a framework for giving and receiving feedback. One popular method is the SPARK method , which gives guidance on how to structure feedback for students. Here are some examples of how to give SPARKly feedback in SEL scenarios for young students:

Specific: feedback connects to a particular point in the work or conversation

Prescriptive: feedback offers a potential strategy that can be implemented for improvement

Actionable: feedback clearly indicates tangible steps for improvement to the student

Referenced: feedback is grounded in the skills or criteria needed for success

Kind: feedback is encouraging and never puts students down

By celebrating student effort, SPARK feedback shows students how to be supportive of each other and themselves. When students receive kind and constructive feedback, they begin to view themselves in that same positive light. In that way, SPARK feedback helps students develop and a supportive inner voice.

Other feedback frameworks are explored here . If you are interested in digging deeper into feedback research, reading work by Dylan William is a good place to start.

2. Incorporate Embodied Learning

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4 Ways to Incorporate Learning Science Research into SEL Teaching - Better Kids

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As educators, staying updated on the best ways to support our students' learning experiences can be difficult, especially given all of our other responsibilities. The field of learning science helps us do just that. This blog aims to present several best practices from learning science research that

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School classrooms sit at the center of the education ecosystem. Students spend the majority of their school day in classrooms, and these spaces are at the

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When students have limited social-emotional skills, they're more likely to struggle when they face a new challenge or conflict. A lack of social-emotional skills can even cause kids to drop out.

Teaching SEL is not a solution for all of the challenges our students face. But there's a lot we can do as educators to make a significant positive impact. It starts with our own social-emotional skills.

Why your social-emotional skills matter

To teach SEL, we need to be aware of and continue to develop our own social-emotional skills as educators. Only then can we model and teach those skills to our students.

Learn more about the five core competencies, why they're important to our practice as teachers, and how you can model them in the classroom.

Identifying and expressing your emotions

Recognizing your strengths and challenges

Having an accurate self-perception and self-confidence

Practicing a growth mindset

Why self-awareness is important to your teaching

Have you ever been upset about a student's behavior, but paused to ask yourself, "Why am I feeling so angry?" You might have run through a quick series of responses in your mind before deciding what to say or do. That is self-awareness.

This response may have been instinctual. Or maybe someone taught you self-awareness skills: how to self-reflect, accurately perceive your feelings, and express those feelings to others.

It can be hard to maintain that level of self-awareness in a busy classroom. We're all human. We won't always be our best selves at every moment of the day. Embracing that reality helps us authentically engage with students, check our biases, question our own motivations, and pause to take stock of our decisions.

Ways to practice self-awareness in the classroom

Acknowledge your own emotions and how they may play into your reactions.

Name the skills you're using (or "think aloud") for your students as you model them. (It's important for students to recognize that you're still learning and practicing these skills, too.)

View students as partners in developing social-emotional skills.

Understand that it may take a little longer for some students to learn social-emotional skills as they develop self-confidence.

After you're aware of your emotions, then you can work on managing them. Self-management is the ability to regulate your emotions, thoughts, and behavior in varying situations. Self-management skills include:

Why self-management is important to your teaching

As educators, we're constantly using self-management skills to meet the demands of a high-stress job and manage life outside of school. So it's not surprising that we all struggle from time to time.

Using these same skills can be hard for students too, especially when you think about the barriers they face in and out of the classroom. Some students might have trouble managing the stress of "not getting it" when the curriculum isn't flexible for their learning and thinking differences.

The same curriculum may also not be historically and culturally diverse enough for them to see themselves represented in it. You might see students who appear to lack motivation or interest.

The barriers that students face can affect not only their readiness to learn, but also your own self-management. It's normal to feel challenged or stressed when you try to grow your classroom practice. It feels new and requires attention when time is short. Consider it an opportunity to build your self-management skills.

Ways to practice self-management in the classroom

What is social awareness?

Social awareness is the ability to understand other points of view, show empathy, respect diversity, and understand social norms. In many ways, social awareness is what helps relationships to thrive. It includes:

Why social awareness is important for your teaching

To maintain and build healthy relationships with students, we need to be aware of and respect other perspectives, values, cultures, and differences. Equity and empathy are both at the heart of this work.

One of the best ways to use social awareness with your students is to get to know them and their families. It helps you decide how to approach lessons, present content, react to student behavior, and more. It also allows you to create opportunities for students to bring their whole selves into your classroom. That is one of the best ways to show your respect for differing perspectives and life experiences.

Ways to practice social awareness in the classroom

Build a classroom community that values the collective good and concern for other people.

Create space and norms for you and your students to talk about how hearing a new perspective changed your point of view.

Ask for your students' feelings and perspectives on the classroom environment.

What is responsible decision-making?

Responsible decision-making is the ability to think about how what you do impacts yourself and others. You make choices about how to behave and interact, based on ethical and social standards and safety. Responsible decision-making includes:

Identifying and analyzing problems and situations

Solving problems as they arise

Evaluating and reflecting on the consequences of your actions

Taking ethical responsibility for your decisions and their outcomes

Why responsible decision-making is important for your teaching

As educators, we juggle decisions every day about workload, time management, and self-care. We all have different values, priorities, and experiences that impact our decision-making.

Because of the different factors that influence our decisions, it can be helpful to draw on colleagues' knowledge and experiences to make choices, like how to best support students who learn and think differently.

Decision-making is a big part of how we interact with students, too. We make choices each day about instruction and classroom management. We also make choices about how to help our students become decision-makers.

Remember that schools have their own set of values that influence decision-making. Many schools value higher education and may focus on sending graduates to college. Think about the decision-making process this requires of students. Imagine how difficult that process may be for students who would be the first in their families to go to college.

Your role in supporting students may be to acknowledge that their process may be very different from your own. Help them identify people with similar experiences who can serve as models.

Ways to practice responsible decision-making in the classroom

Recognize that students need your help to learn to become responsible decision-makers in developmentally appropriate ways.

Share with students your own process as you make decisions and explain the "why" behind them.

Seek out and provide access to diverse role models who have similar experiences as the students in your class.

What are relationship skills?

Relationship skills are the ability to build and maintain healthy and fulfilling relationships with others. Humans are wired for relationships, connection, and community. But these skills need to be developed. Relationship skills include:

Why responsible relationship skills are important for your teaching

Relationship skills help us connect with others. Listening skills, conflict resolution, and communication are important tools we use to navigate relationships.

Like the other social-emotional competencies, building relationships skills is hard work. You need to use the skills of self-awareness and self-management, and to engage with others in a meaningful way. Relationships also require a certain level of trust, vulnerability, and practice. Without practice, we often default to the emotions we are more comfortable expressing.

In the classroom, it can be a challenge for both teachers and students to build trusting relationships. But when it comes to modeling social-emotional skills, there's an added layer: You need to partner with students on building their emotional vocabulary so they can become agents of their emotions.

Students might struggle with expressing themselves, so they need your support. Being able to give and receive help is an important way to build and maintain relationships. It means not just seeking help in a time of need, but also being able to offer help to others. Many of us are better at offering help than we are at asking for it when we need it.

Ways to practice relationship skills in the classroom

Search for the "why" behind a student's behavior before responding.

Identify when an action wasn't appropriate. Provide an appropriate alternative action or response.

Acknowledge that these skills can be difficult to practice.

Find ways to practice problem-solving without actual conflicts, like role-playing.

Build in ways for students to reflect on their own thinking, patterns, and relationships.

Be an active listener and show students you are listening and responding to their feedback.

Plan classroom activities that focus on building trust and a sense of belonging.

As educators, we may not be able to control some aspects of our jobs. We may not be able to directly help with the many challenges our students face outside of school. But we can use our own social-emotional skills to make our classes a safe place where students know we value them, their families, and the experiences they bring to school.

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How Social-Emotional Learning Helps Teachers | Understood

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When students have limited social-emotional skills, they're more likely to struggle when they face a new challenge or conflict. A lack of social-emotional skills can even cause kids to drop out. Teaching SEL is not a solution for all of the challenges our students face.

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Responsive Classroom is an evidence-based approach to teaching that focuses on the strong link between academic success and social-emotional learning (SEL).

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Marzano's High Yield Instructional Strategies

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10 Classroom Organizational Hacks | That Teacher Life Ep 49

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