ALIST Spotlight: Debi Gnau, Mad River Early Childhood Center

Today we are so excited to shine our ALIST Spotlight on awesome preschool educator Debi Gnau from Mad River Local Schools' Early Childhood Center. 

Debi works hard to meet the diverse needs of her district's youngest learners through using engaging activities and differentiated supports. We also love how innovative her approach to in-person preschool during the pandemic has been.

Debi's classroom is full of multisensory, hands-on tasks to engage her young learners. Each day students start their time in the classroom by choosing an activity for their morning work. Materials are proactively laid out as students come in so they can get engaged right away. This system is great for classroom management because it allows students to stay busy as their peers continue to arrive. 

Debi differentiates activities through the use of visual supports and using structured work systems so that all students can participate in morning work. 

Students have so many fun tasks to choose from to work on a variety of skills including sorting, counting, preliteracy skills, and fine motor development. 

Once all of the students have arrived, Debi starts with a routine name sequencing task. This is a great way to ensure practice of this important skill each day. 

During centers time, Debi's students get to choose from different play centers like building with blocks, exploring the sensory table or science center, and the dramatic play area. 

Debi incorporates student special interests to ensure that all students can engage independently in centers time. For a student who loved taking things off the wall Debi created this vertical snowflake velcro wall. And for a student who loved dry erase markers she mounted a large whiteboard at preschooler height. 

Debi offers her students with special needs additional supports to help them be successful such as visual schedules and a safe space to go when dysregulated. 

Now that Debi has returned to in-person teaching during the pandemic, she has done an awesome job of organizing her classroom to allow for social distancing and material sanitization while still giving them the opportunities to play and learn. Debi has color-coded areas of her classroom where students will stay with a designated group of peers. All of the materials and equipment in these areas are color-coded for easy identification and seperation of materials. 

Additionally, Debi found these great wristbands for students to wear to help them remember their color for the day. What a great visual support for all learners!

During circle time, students have scoop rockers to help with social distancing. This is a great physical boundary to help them remember. 

We are glad to have so many awesome examples to share with our teams of a great preschool classroom. Thank you, Debi, for welcoming us into your classroom!