College of Pension Actuaries

What is an Early Childhood Special Education degree?

Earning your Bachelor’s degree in early childhood special education will give you the opportunity to work with and teach children who have learning or mental disabilities. Children who face difficulties with learning due to a disability need someone who is knowledgeable and trained to handle students who are young with special needs. A Bachelor’s degree in this field can be completed in four years.

What is a Bachelor’s program for Early Childhood Special Education like?

Different colleges structure this major differently; some may have a specific major for it, while others will offer an early childhood education degree with electives in special education. The most important part of a Bachelor’s degree in early childhood special education is that students emerge from the program feeling competent and able to teach young children and accommodate those students who have special needs.

Key points that are studied during a Bachelor’s degree in this concentration are how to manage a classroom, how to effectively instruct a class, and mastery of the subject matter being taught to students. All students participating in an early childhood special education program will be required to student teach at an elementary school, where they will be supervised and have the opportunity to demonstrate their newly acquired skills.

Are there prerequisites?

Gaining admission into an early childhood special education program will require you to successfully complete high school or the equivalent. Other prerequisites vary depending on the college. Some schools may require a minimum GPA or SAT score, while others are more flexible.

Since the first year or two of an undergraduate degree is typically dedicated to general education courses, you will need to complete these requirements. It is common for students to declare their majors after the second year, so find out what your college requires you to complete before you can start taking your core major courses.

Active Baby, Healthy Brain: 135 Fun Exercises and Activities to Maximize Your Child’s Brain Development from Birth Through Age 5 1/2
Margaret Sasse
The Experiment, New York 2010

Margaret Sasse has provided parents with an invaluable manual on how to maximize your child’s brain development. She has divided the first 5 1/2 years of life into 8 stages with numerous activities for each stage. In the beginning of the book the reader finds two pages of defined terms. Parents learn in the preface to choose activities to develop a wide range of skills.

Also, three important words are introduced: intensity, frequency and duration, reminding the parents that no activity should last more than two minutes and should be done slowly. With short, frequent activities both parent and child can put their full effort (intensity) into it for maximum benefit. This concept applies to all ages, though as one matures the “short” activities increase in length.

Most of the book describes and illustrates all of the activities. Here are sample activities for each stage:

Stage A – birth to six months: massage and gentle roll overs

Stage B – six to twelve months: creeping, cruising, walking

Stage C – walking to eighteen months: vision and balance

Stage D – eighteen to twenty-four months: dance, beanbags and balloons

Stage E- 2-2 1/2 years: music, rhythm, nursery rhymes, and songs

Stage F: 2 1/2-3 1/2 years: Massage in crocodile position

Stage G: 3 1/2-4 1/2 years: Rhythm sticks, ropes and cords

Stage H: 4 1/2- 51/2 years: mini-trampoline, tumbling, rocking, swinging

Further, she discusses the foundational subject of nutrition. While Sasse uses only one page to discuss nutrition, she hits the important aspects that can have a major impact on learning: “artificial colorings, additives and excessive sugar.” Food sensitivities including wheat and dairy must be explored as well.

Once we have determined that the brain is receiving quality sensory input and have begun to increase auditory and visual processing skills, we decide if the information is “worthy” of keeping in long-term memory. Sadly, we cannot remember all the information that we want to remember. Why is this? We are designed to have a one-side dominance, which allows us to function most efficiently. Many are functioning with a mixed dominance. With a mixed dominance information goes to different parts of the brain. When information enters on the right side it goes to one part of the brain and when it enters on the left side it goes to another part of the brain. Then when we want to retrieve that information we have to look for it, going back and forth from one side of the brain to the other. This can be very slow and frustrating to a learner of any age. Depending on what it is, we may give up before we finish a task.

Functional Indicators of a Mixed Dominance:

• Remember one day, and not the other
• Constantly losing things
• Reversals (transpositions, omissions, inversions)
• Right/left confusion
• “Mirror writing”
• Diagnosis of Dyslexia
• Disorganized
• Difficulty remembering letters, numbers or sight words
• Stuttering or stammering
• No sense of time
• Overreact to situations
• Emotional melt downs – especially related to learning

In addition to these functional indicators, we can observe which eye, ear, hand and foot an individual uses:

• Using one-eye objects like a kaleidoscope, a microscope, telescope, or a paper towel roll
• Pointing or sighting through a “window” made with hands for far point vision
• Using one-ear objects like a phone, watch, etc.
• Hopping, kicking, running, etc.

Once we have established that the brain is receiving quality sensory input, we move on to step two in learning: Processing. Processing or short-term memory manifests itself in the ability to pay attention visually and auditorily. Sometimes people call this the “working memory.” While processing input an individual holds it in short-term memory long enough to determine what to do with this information.

Low auditory processing shows up in the following difficulties:

* Following directions

* Immature speech patterns

* Understanding cause and effect relationships

* Ability to learn to read using phonics

Low visual processing appears in preschoolers who have problems recognizing:

* Numbers,

* Letters and

* Words.

Low visual processing appears in older students who have problems with:

* Math

* Spelling

* Visual attention

* Picking up visual cues

* Eye contact

How do these skills develop?

In the past (and in some families today) children developed auditory processing skill by sitting at the dinner table and listening to the conversations of older members of the family. Without television or other electronic visual stimuli, they listened to others read or to radio shows. While listening people learn to create pictures in their minds which in turn contributes to a person’s auditory processing. Visual processing skills begin developing when our faces are within 12-18 inches from the baby. Presenting babies with input the appropriate size and distance from the face begins the process. Generally children today develop visual skills much more easily because of all of our visual stimuli.

How do we test these skills?