KINGSTON, Pa. — At first glance, this classroom looks like a playroom for students at Third Avenue Elementary School in Kingston.
Yes, with the swings, trampolines, and more, it is designed for play, but play with a therapeutic goal.
"The district is expanding a lot of in-district support," explained Marya Baratta, the director of special education in the district. "So by creating this learning space for our students, it gives our staff the opportunity to target their individual needs in any capacity."
This exploration classroom is available for all elementary students in the Wyoming Valley West School District to use for about 30 minutes at a time with supervision, especially those with an autism diagnosis.
"Or anything that comes down to fine and gross motor delays to social communicational delays. Again, problematic behaviors engaging in appropriate play with students as well," said Baratta.
A lot of the tools in this room are designed to provide decompression for students to help calm them and their nervous systems if things have gotten escalated, or they're having a bad day.
"Absolutely. The goal of the sensory room is to meet our students' needs, and it can either excite or calm students," said speech-language pathologist Katelyn Sarnak. "So regardless of their abilities, regardless of how they communicate, this can meet almost every student's needs in some way."
Sarnak says tools here will help her students with auditory processing and comprehension.
"You would use it, and this can be used to teach task completion, but also for following directions. So I might tell a student find two numbers in the blue tray, and they would then use the tweezers to find two numbers to complete the task," said Sarnak as she showed Newswatch 16, a tool used in the classroom.
This classroom opened last week in the district, and it's already getting put to good use in Kingston.
Check out WNEP's YouTube channel.