Overview
Kettering Science Academy is an inclusive mainstream secondary school where they recognize that every student has different needs. Their aim is to create a positive environment where every child can succeed and enjoy their learning journey. Students with special educational needs are well supported to become independent learners.
Client Brief
The Academy required a truly flexible space to enhance their sensory integration offering. They wanted to take it to another level with the three zones of regulation. This was to include calming, organizing and alerting features to help the children to regulate and return to class ready to learn. They had a large room available for this with plenty of space to spread the various elements out and create a purposeful space.
What are Sensory Circuits?
Sensory Circuits use sensory-based movement activities, with the aim to help children achieve an optimal level of alertness for effective learning. They consist of 3 sections: Altering Activities, Organising Activities and Calming Activities. The circuits are a great way to both energise and settle students into the school day, typically lasting between 10 – 20 minutes.
Sensory Circuit Design
Focusing on the zones of regulation, we started with mood lighting which the children could select as soon as they entered the room – to match their mood. This can be placed on a single colour, scroll mode or change to sound, overall covering many modes of reflection. The mood lighting works to wash the whole room with colour, so is great for calming periods or regulation.
As the children moved around the space, they had very clear areas for each section of the sensory circuit. For the alerting zone, the children can explore various proprioceptive based movements such as: over the trampette, under the tunnel, and through the mangle. Moving to more vestibular input, the children had a swing with various attachments and a balance beam to walk over to improve their balance and coordination.
To aid concentration and help the children to regulate, fidget panels were included around the room. These interactive panels feature a range of activities including moving counters, finger mazes, twisting shapes, spinning discs and more. The academy was keen to ensure the room was fully inclusive with a wide range of products to ensure each child could experience multiple benefits of the room.
The final area was to focus on calming elements where we included a Borealis Tube, Fibre Optic Harness and LED Infinity Tunnel which provided a display of calming visual light effects for the children to interact with and a Solar LED Projector which featured a range of themes from ‘space’ to ‘under the sea’ for added relaxation. The children also had a large sensory rocker to provide a more gentle and encapsulating rocking motion.
Sensory Circuit Installation
The installation went very smoothly with our skilled team, transforming the empty space into a fully functioning interactive sensory circuits environment. Our Services Manager, Emma, liaised with the school to arrange timings to suit, in an efficient manner to move from survey to manufacture and installation as swiftly as possible as the school were keen and excited to have the facility available for the children.
Sensory Circuit Training
On completion of the installation, the engineers provided the academy with a full run down of equipment and how the products work. They demonstrated the interactive switches available to work with each product and ensure all instructions are clearly fitted near to the control panels for any new staff.
Conclusion
This was a lovely project to work with the academy on with it having so many varying elements. The room really does contain the best of everything for the children within a large space for them to explore.
