Program: Online In-service Courses
Audience: K-12
Dates: 10/18/2022 to 11/22/2022
Flexible seating is gaining popularity in classrooms across the country. Research demonstrates the multitude of benefits flexible seating can have on academic performance. Movement increases blood flow, which in turn increases the amount of oxygen delivered to you brain to help keep your mind alert. Flexible seating systems also facilitate trunk muscles for improved posture and core strength. For students with attention deficit disorder, flexible seating provides just enough movement to help reduce in seat fidgeting, which in turn enhances focus. For students with social anxiety and testing anxiety, flexible seating offers not only more comfortable seating, but allows for flexibility of location in the classroom, allowing the anxious or inattentive student a place that can minimize stress and distractions for enhance focus and participation, engagement, and thus improved performance. Providing seating alternatives can create an environment that is engaging for students with a variety of needs, as well as the typically developing student or even those with superior intellect. As we have all experienced the constraints placed upon us during this recent pandemic, flexible seating systems can be manipulated to allow ample space between students and staff as well.
This course will include research on flexible seating systems in the classroom, provide a rationale for diverse types of seating systems, safety considerations, and offer a variety of options for classroom systems that can be used in all settings and age groups. This course will also provide educators and therapists with the tools they need to identify the type of system that will most benefit students in their classroom, as well as facilitate lessons, academic performance, engagement, attention, and anxiety reduction.