Featured Speakers
Get Up & Move! Inclusive Play and Creative Movement for ALL
Active learning is essential for social emotional development, wellness, and learning growth. Play is a power teaching and learning tool. GUM (Get Up & Move) activities help to engage children with diverse abilities socially, intellectually, and physically. During this session we discuss both research and evidence-based benefits of integrating active play, kinesthetic awareness, and physical movement into inclusive early childhood experiences for children with and without disabilities. Participants will engage in large and small group interactive games designed to get bodies moving, brains thinking, and smiles beaming. Instructors will demonstrate strategies for adapting lessons and learning activities to actively include young children with a wide range of strengths and needs. Application exercises will center on ways to increase early literacy, early language, and early social-emotional skills through meaningful play.
For access to the resources and materials used during this session, click here!
About the Speaker
Dr. Amanda Kloo is an educator, interventionist, and developmental specialist with decades of experience teaching children of all ages and abilities. She is Director of Inclusive Recreation at the National Inclusion Project, a nonprofit providing recreation programs, schools, and community organizations the training and support needed to meaningfully include children with disabilities in all activities.
A frequent presenter, widely published author, and consultant, Amanda is also a coach and athlete with Cerebral Palsy who provides inclusive play and exercise experiences to children and adults with exceptional needs. She is passionate about all things inclusion and the power of play!
The Elemental Building Blocks of Literacy
In this culminating session, we will explore the elemental building blocks required for young children to develop emergent literacy skills that will lay the path forward for successful literacy mastery in their later academic years. Learners will review their understanding of how language skills, social-emotional development, and emergent literacy are intertwined and leave with tangible take-aways to put into practice immediately following the conference.
About the Speaker
Jacqueline Towson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders with a joint appointment in the School of Teacher Education at University of Central Florida. She completed her doctorate in 2015 at Georgia State University in the Education of Students with Exceptionalities with a focus in Early Childhood Special Education following 14 years of work in public schools. Her research broadly concerns building the capacity of individuals who work with young children experiencing language impairments and those considered at-risk and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.