I thought it might be helpful to share here a little bit about one way schools in the North West of England ensure their practice is up to date and share excellent practice.
Since 2006 I have been working with schools in North West England to support them in their work with learners who have sensory needs. There has been a growing recognition within schools over that time period of the importance of identifying and supporting learners with sensory needs to enable them to be regulated, engaged and therefore be able to learn and participate within school. There is excellent practice occurring within these schools and rather than remain as isolated settings, the momentum gathered over the last few years to find a way to share best practice.
In the Autumn Term of 2018, we joined as a group to create a network of schools with a common motivation to the work we are all doing with learners with sensory needs and a common level of expertise and level of practice. There are now currently 20 schools in the group at different stages in their ‘sensory’ journeys.
The purpose of the group is to enable a forum to share knowledge and best practice to improve the sensory provision within their schools. We meet for half a day once a term and as the number of schools have grown, we now have two groups.
For the first time this April, we held our first day conference to give a chance for both groups to come together for a more extended period of time. The group chose the topic “Embedding Sensory Strategies into the Curriculum” Many schools recognise that they are good at targeted and individual approaches, but how could we improve the universal offer to every learner in the school. In the next newsletter I will discuss this universal approach.
The Power of Stories
One of the highlights for me of the conference was listening to the two case studies and seeing the incredible difference that can be made to young people’s lives.
The two case studies were incredibly reflective and full of learning points, so I will ask the contributors if they would be willing to share in a future newsletter. But in the meantime, here are just a few quotes from the case study presented by Vicky Farish from Pear Tree School.
Vicky shared a case study of their experiences with a young man who presented with very complex behaviours.
The presentation was entitled “Sensory Integration, Inclusion & Learning when the system doesn’t fit – What one young person taught us about regulation, trust & teaching differently.”
Here are a few of the highlight quotes from the presentation:
“Our questions changed from ‘Why won’t he?’ to ‘Why can’t he?’ and ‘What is his body telling us?’.
“Sensory Integration was not an add on – If A was dysregulated, learning was not going to happen”
“Our priorities became:
Safety
Trust
Regulation
Relationship
Learning (eventually)”
“Use interests (enthusiasms) as regulation.”
A had a passion for litter picking and recycling. This was used to build lots of proprioceptive input into his day. On leaving school A was employed by his local council to litter pick and empty bins. This is such a wonderful success story for a young man who had such complex problems, moving from being out of education and unable to get into a school building, to being able to be a valued member of his community. It reminds me of ‘The Dancing Starbucks Barista’ .
