We plan to have the sensory room be used in 3 ways: students have scheduled breaks through out the day prior to academics that are difficult for them or require sitting/concentrating for a long period of time, providing breaks when it appears they are beginning to feel frustrated or anxious before demonstrating negative behavior and it will be used as a reward for good work.
When entering the sensory room the student checks in by retrieving their own sensory card that will have the 5 stations on it, they will pick one of the stations, take the visual cue to the station area and remain there for a determined amount of time. When their time is up they can chose to leave the area and return to class or chose 1 more station. The student will only visit up to 2 station for each visit in the sensory room. When they return again that day they will need to chose whatever stations remain on their card until all 5 stations have been visited. At that point their card can be reloaded with all 5 stations. This encourages exploration of all stations and a variety of activities.
Staff that accompanies the student to the sensory room will chart each visit by date/time/initial, what station they visited and the students response. This will help us track what is effective for the student in preparing them for learning and in calming them.
I have also set up a communication board between staff to learn about the curriculum, "How Does Your Engine Run" where I will post a "tip of the week", new sensory room activity ideas and a "parking lot" for staff to leave questions and comments for me and/or others.
I took pictures of the sensory room at one of our schools, it still looks a little bare but it is in the early stages of the project and we hope to get more equipment soon! (When there is money, and we all know how little of that there is! Time for ingenuity!)
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Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs
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ReplyDeleteHi there,
ReplyDeleteI work in an elementary school and we have created a sensory room for our students on the spectrum. We have about 14 students in all, and I was wondering how you set up the schedule. Do they each have daily times? three times a week? etc? Do you have "open" times when the room can be accessed on an "as needed" basis? What about if a student has been having severe meltdowns... is there a way to use it as a calming room as well (I refuse to restrain physically). Would love to hear from you!!!