Richard
Hirstwood
The multi sensory room, or studio, has been around for 20
years in the U.K. and Ireland and is still growing in
popularity. There is no question that its use with children
with special educational needs is well documented and it is
now an established, wonderful, imaginative tool in the
educational armoury afforded to schools and centres all
over the country.
In
special schools and colleges, when working with children
& young adults with more profound disabilities, the
multi sensory studio is a very flexible space for sensory
stimulation. Many children need the controlled
environmental stimulation to engage in appropriate sensory
stimulation activities or 'sensology'. It is also a space
where the children can experience and learn the pre
requisite skills to some of the more complex curriculum
subjects.
Consider the numeracy skills involved in touching a bubble
tube. You may sit with a child saying, "one, two, three,
bubbles" and then, hand over hand, with the child touch the
tube. You would then repeat this over and over again, not
only reinforcing the communication and sensory stimulation,
but also reinforcing lots of mathematical experimentation.
The numerical language we use in the exercise "one, two,
three...bubbles" strengthens sequencing skills and
prediction. It also exposes the child to numerical
language. Moving towards and touching the tube is
reinforcing the child's understanding of space, distance,
time and pressure. There lots of numeric pre requisites to
be learned and the former are all essential components
involved in this process.
Multi sensory rooms are being included in the guidelines
for many curriculum documents - such as the Irish
Curriculum from the
National Council for Curriculum and Assessment
(NCCA)
and the
wonderful new 'Routes to learning' from the National
Assembly for Wales. Through these publications
practitioners will have a much better idea about the
targets that can be achieved in special education within
the multi sensory studio.
One of the biggest steps forward for the continuation of
sensory approaches and multi sensory rooms/studio's in
education is the inclusive setting. Many pre-5's centres
have multi sensory rooms and most have very few special
children, so what are they doing with sensory equipment?
The answer lies in using the equipment to meet the needs of
varied learners or varied learning styles. Howard Gardner,
a professor of cognition and education at Harvard Graduate
School of Education, identified different learning styles
including musical learners, mathematical learners and
linguistic learners to name but a few. These are all
preferred learning styles many of us possess. As an
academic at school I faired poorly, because I was one of
the many kinesthetic/visual learners in my school. In other
words, I could not sit still for long, and my eyes wandered
to more interesting subjects outside the window of the
classroom, resulting in many reprimands from my teachers!
'Multiple intelligence's' as they are known, encourages the
practitioner to find out what the child is good at and to
work from there.
If you work with the child’s preferred learning style, as
opposed to the more common method of working from what the
child is not good at, you are then teaching them from a
position of strength rather than weakness.
As many practitioners are finding, it makes sense! However,
what has been difficult has been to translate the theory
into practice. You may have a majority of visual learners
in your group, but how do you make literacy visual?
Pictures, puppets and music and other more traditional
tools will, of course, greatly assist. But the tools
offered by the multi sensory studio have given
practitioners a new exiting range of tools needed in their
armoury to meet the needs of children with varied learning
styles. Try using a projector to look at leaf wheels to
increase interest in science or a bubble tube to captivate
the imagination of children when reading stories!
A few
weeks ago, I worked in an inclusion unit in a secondary
school for two days where we used the studio purely for
curriculum learning. A teacher commented that writing in
light was a great way of teaching some of the more banal
words and concepts of grammar, which for some students is
as dull as dishwater! In the school sessions we used a
'Harry Potter' DVD video back projected into umbrellas to
study literacy. We found that many areas of the curriculum
can be excitingly demonstrated using the tools in the multi
sensory studio. I encouraged the students in the school to
make science wheels for the projector; we then used the
projector like a giant microscope to enlarge the objects
the students had put inside the wheel. We studied materials
such as paper and netting, discussed the subject of
transparency, opaqueness and solidity. One student made a
Ferrari wheel, with a picture of the car and a Turkish flag
depicting where the next grand prix was going to be held -
wonderful geography! We used sound equipment to create
sound environments and to encourage communication skills.
It was a great two days and when the space was described to
teachers and students in the school as a 'studio' not a
multi sensory room, the ideas began to flow.
As it is
a large school, so we also considered the eight hundred or
so mainstream students in the school. How could they be
involved in the studio? I had a meeting with sixth form
students and demonstrated the studio. They could see that
it was a very exiting concept and they offered many skills
to assist in the innovation and imagination needed to use
this new tool for secondary education. The mainstream
students offered skills such as making projector wheels
appropriate for curriculum on the computer using digital
photography, and then printing them ready for use - a skill
that many teachers have not mastered! There was also the
technical side of the room for those students interested in
sound and lighting. The humanitarian angle was discussed.
It is important to know about & understand the needs of
others. The multi sensory studio has a lot to offer a very
wide range of students in school - at many different levels
of understanding.
Multi sensory studio's will be around for sometime yet and
there use is evidence that they are going to become more
technical and varied in their use. The increased use of
computer control and introduction of data projectors are
turning these spaces, one perceived for relaxation and
early stimulation, into wonderful areas for imaginative
learning.
Richard Hirstwood
www.multi-sensory-room.co.uk
richard@hirstwood.edi.co.uk