Well today's leg of the journey took a slow start. I had an issue with my 'Wise Old Owl' (one of my characters). The problem being that I had him sitting in the Old Oak Tree. Loved this line of the story..."Wise old owl in the old oak tree...." of course my inspiration for that piece of text came as a result of listening to Tony Orlando singing 'Tie a yellow ribbon....' as part of Radio 2's golden oldies! However the problem was that my owl was giving pine cones to the greedy squirrel at the bottom of the tree. Why was the owl giving out pine cones? Well that's easy - much easier for me to resource pine cones as a sensory stimulus than acorns! Reluctantly I had to move away from the oak tree idea and put my owl into a pine tree instead!
Well so far I have a lovely 'autumnal' themed story in the making - however it needs to be reduced from three sheets of A4 to only 10 sentences!! If you are not too bored with reading this blog and want to know why the story has to be pruned to 10 sentences please continue reading below and you will see why.
Where it all started
One could say that this Sensory Story journey really started in June this year, when I first heard that there was such a thing. I couldn't believe that I had been around in the 'education' sector for so long and had never come across this concept before. I have often used props to support story-telling with children, and during my years working at Pre School, I made countless Story Bags! But a Sensory Story was something new to me. I was intrigued!
Well I had the opportunity to go and visit Park Lane School, Macclesfield (yes, my first place of work in Macclesfield when we moved here 27 years ago!!) to watch a Sensory Story in action and from then on I was hooked!
Without going into copious amounts of detail, here are a few interesting things that I have found out about the concept of a Sensory Story - let's call it research! At this point I must acknowledge the work of the staff at Park Lane School, Jo Grace and Pete Wells.
- A Sensory Story uses the five senses alongside each part of text to tell a story using a multi-sensory approach.
- Sensory Stories appear to be primarily used for particular groups of children/young adults such as individuals with profound and multiple learning difficulties, autism, sensory processing disorders and those with communication and language difficulties.
- A Sensory Story is usually no more than 10 sentences long.
- Stimuli must be good yet affordable.
- A Sensory Story is consistent in its delivery.
....so not much pressure then!
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