Creating Multi-sensory Environments: Practical Ideas for Teaching and Learning (nasen spotlight)

The revised edition of this highly practical guide to creating and using multi-sensory environments is packed full of ideas for low-cost, easy-to-assemble multi-sensory environments suitable for children of varying ages and abilities. Each creative learning environment is designed to be constructed in a classroom or school hall, encouraging creative thinking and learning, and the development of social and emotional skills. Each environment idea is accompanied by suggestions for use for children with special educational needs.

Key features of the revised edition include:

• Ideas for creating sensory experiences that stimulate all the sensory channels – auditory, visual, kinaesthetic, olfactory and gustatory
• Suggestions for extension or differentiation depending on student capability or time available
• A summary of the theory and background to multi-sensory learning, to allow you to adapt the suggested scenarios according to the needs of individual learners

Although these activities will be of particular value for children with special educational needs or sensory impairments, they are more broadly designed to provide stimulating learning environments, as promoted in the themes and principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage guidance. This is an invaluable resource for teachers and other professionals in education.

Christopher Davies has been artistic director of Bamboozle since he co-founded it with Sue Pyecroft in 1994. He was a primary school teacher for 13 years before becoming a drama advisory teacher where he ran courses for teachers, worked in special schools, set up youth theatres for learning disabled students and developed the thinking that has become the pedagogy underpinning the Bamboozle Approach. He has run INSET courses, delivered workshops and given seminars nationally and internationally for organisations including: The National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne, Hakawy Festival (Cairo), Shanghai Children’s Art Theatre, New York University, Assitej World Congress (Malmö) and Singapore Arts Council. As a director he has created work for the London and Edinburgh Fringe and toured internationally.