Teach-Primary-18.3

www.teachwire.net | 63 S END S P E C I A L How to carry out A SENSORY AUDIT A few small adjustments to your environment could make all the difference to an autistic child, says Alison Eason W e all reach a point now and then where too much noise or chaos makes us want to shout “Stop!” But imagine if the place where you’re expected to spend every day calmly working alongside your peers caused this much sensory overload. Sadly, that’s the case for many autistic children. The primary school classroom as we know it simply doesn’t work for every child. While their classmates thrive in the busy and stimulating space their teachers create, many autistic pupils find themselves struggling with the sunlight streaming in through the window, or with the sudden screech of a chair being pulled away from a desk. This is why many mainstream schools and specialist autism providers are carrying out sensory audits. These help teachers and practitioners to make the right changes at school, so that autistic children feel more comfortable in their environment. In our experience, sensory audits provide all staff with a deeper understanding of the challenges our pupils face, and how we can help children feel, calmer, happier and more at home in the classroom. Here, I’ve outlined the key steps that I would recommend taking when starting out on a sensory audit for your school. 1. Create a sensory checklist While we often tend to refer to the five senses, there are in fact seven: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, balance (vestibular) and body awareness (proprioception). Processing everyday sensory information in any of these areas can be difficult for autistic people. They may be either over-sensitive or under-sensitive to stimuli at different times. These sensory differences can affect how they feel and act, and can have a profound effect on a person’s life. To gain an understanding of how the children in our additionally resourced provision (ARP) are affected by sensory differences, we use a sensory checklist from the Autism Education Trust (AET), which schools can access through the AET’s training programme ( autism educationtrust.org.uk ) . Another good sensory assessment checklist can be sourced from NHS Scotland ( tinyurl.com/ tp-AutismQuestions ). Your checklist should evaluate children’s responses to visual and auditory stimuli, tastes, smells and movement, for example, ‘puts hands over eyes or closes eyes in bright light’, ‘dislikes the feel of certain fabrics and substances’ or ‘responds negatively to unexpected touch from peers’. 2. Conduct a sensory assessment To gain a clear picture of each child’s sensory needs, we talk through each of the behaviour types listed in the checklist with someone who knows the child well. This could be a colleague, the child’s parent or carer, or even a sibling. We go through the statements together, and tick ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘don’t know’ for each. If the child is at the stage where they are able to self-advocate by communicating their needs, we try to include them in the process, too. But rather than saying “Amy has difficulty catching balls” we might simplify the sentence, changing it to something like “When a teacher throws ball, can Amy catch it?” or use “The primary school classroom as we know it simply doesn’t work for every child”