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Mr. Ratchford’s Classroom Edit display name

  • Sonora Middle School
  • Springdale, AR
  • More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more

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Our students are passionate about helping others. We have partnered with a local therapy center to test ways to reduce sensory overload in the school environment for students with special needs. We are working on creating a sensory room in our school for students to come in and manipulate light and touch in a way that is calming and effective for teaching. We are truly trying to create the best environment for exploration and discovery for our students. We have been very effective in our approach to touch and sound with the installation of sensory boards that are movable that work with students in wheelchairs. With the addition of light related objects and a projector, we feel that we can enhance the learning even further. We will use the kinetic sand and the projector to create an augmented reality sandbox that allows students to study landforms and the effect of water on the size and shape of different manipulated structures in the sand via touch. We will use the lighting bar to aid with the vision impaired students to create a more ambient environment for learners and the glow in the dark vinyl to create our own solar systems and constellations for learning. These items will allow us to create an atmosphere that inspires our autistic students to get involved in the learning process, and inspires us to help others that learn differently than most.

About my class

Our students are passionate about helping others. We have partnered with a local therapy center to test ways to reduce sensory overload in the school environment for students with special needs. We are working on creating a sensory room in our school for students to come in and manipulate light and touch in a way that is calming and effective for teaching. We are truly trying to create the best environment for exploration and discovery for our students. We have been very effective in our approach to touch and sound with the installation of sensory boards that are movable that work with students in wheelchairs. With the addition of light related objects and a projector, we feel that we can enhance the learning even further. We will use the kinetic sand and the projector to create an augmented reality sandbox that allows students to study landforms and the effect of water on the size and shape of different manipulated structures in the sand via touch. We will use the lighting bar to aid with the vision impaired students to create a more ambient environment for learners and the glow in the dark vinyl to create our own solar systems and constellations for learning. These items will allow us to create an atmosphere that inspires our autistic students to get involved in the learning process, and inspires us to help others that learn differently than most.

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About my class

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