in mainstream schools – designed to heighten the profile of books and foster a love of reading for pleasure. The traditional model of this was unsuitable for many learners in SEN settings so we wanted to ensure that reading or accessing books and stories for pleasure was something we could still actively champion in alternative ways. This led to us organising training with the charity ‘bag books’ which is a product designed specifically to engage pupils with profound and multiple learn- ing disabilities (PMLD) with stories both for enjoyment and education in a more hands on and sensory way. The training was informative and has allowed us to better fulfil the needs of particular classes in school who have pupils that do not read text at all. We have improved our stock in this area and updated, fixed and edited our current collections so this is now a suitable and appealing selection for schools to borrow.
For the same reason we felt it important that we learn to produce our own sensory stories around books we love, or that tie into a curriculum need. So, we arranged further training with Star Bright Arts from Elena; a wonderful performer and sensory storyteller with a range of experience. After researching topics with our trial schools and putting much time and effort into choosing the books, we sourced a range of resources to bring some stories alive and trial. We wrote scripts to enable others to tell the story as designed and
Winter 2025
chose basic Makaton signs to learn, which complimented the stories and songs. During the year we have developed three brand-new sensory stories which we trialled to great success and then bought multiple copies of the items, so that these stories can be delivered as a pupil session in school, or they can be borrowed by schools to deliver the stories themselves. We are in the process of developing two more stories so will shortly have a bank of five to choose from and hope to continue to expand the collection.
Both Art and Museum Learning sessions underwent a total overhaul as during the trial the team discovered that the tradi- tional facilitator-led sessions were only suitable for some learners. Brand new museum learning sessions were trialled which enabled pupils more free flow time of exploration. This method was hugely successful but also presented some prob- lems with some resources being unsuit- able to put in mouths etc. and have since been tweaked and risk assessed. Schools are now able to select newly named ‘object explorer sessions’ as a tra- ditional, more directed session or as one which offers open ended multi-sensory exploration time, depending on the needs and level which pupils in that class are working to. Similarly, the art sessions are now able to be booked as sensory free flow experimental time or as directed sessions working towards producing an end-product. These sessions were trialled with small
groups and one to one with a variety of mediums so we can be more confident in how to direct teachers in choosing the right sessions for the needs of their class. The themes chosen, length and number of pupils in all of the sessions we tested and developed were chosen with our trial schools to ensure we were assum- ing nothing and only spending time on what schools would actually need. Some offerings like the family reading café are still available as before but we took the opportunity to invest time in adapting and trialling the content to ensure it is more tailored to parents of SEND pupils. The loan of our wide variety of resources was a huge part of what we needed feedback on, as we have always had some special items which schools don’t often choose and so it was important to know why. Schools were encouraged to borrow a range of books, story sacks, artefacts, bespoke pieces of sensory art which we call ‘Touch Tiles’ and ‘Held in the Hand’ objects, and collections of resources selected by staff. We allowed schools to borrow what they wanted for however long they wanted instead of imposing our traditional loan limits so that we could see how they would ideally be used.
What we learned
During the trial, the biggest learning for us was that no two special schools or DSPs are remotely the same. What is taught, the language that is used around
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