Sensory stories: what they are and how to make one

A sensory story is a short story, usually eight to ten sentences, where each sentence comes with one rich sensory experience: a smell, a sound, a touch, a light. The sensations do the telling, so a pupil who doesn’t use words can still follow the story through their senses. For many pupils with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD), that’s the difference between a story being noise and a story being theirs.

You don’t need a kit to start. Most good sensory stories are resourced from the classroom cupboard and the kitchen.

What is a sensory story?

Two things make a sensory story: concise text, and a rich, relevant sensory experience partnered with each part of it. Joanna Grace, the sensory engagement specialist who presents our course, puts it simply. In a picture book the pictures help the text along. In a sensory story the sensations carry it.

The words still matter, even to a pupil who doesn’t understand them. Said the same way each time, a sentence becomes a cue that a sensation is coming, so the pupil can get ready for it and get more from it. For pupils who have some language but find it hard to process, fewer words leave more room to think about what’s happening. That’s true of the rest of us too, which is one reason sensory stories work well beyond special schools.

How is a sensory story different from a story sack?

A story sack is a bag of props to go with a book. You pull out a toy character or a picture of a place, and it builds curiosity. That’s lovely, but a little plastic figure has hardly any sensory pull. It means something only if you already know what it stands for.

In a sensory story, each experience has to appeal to the sense on its own. A torch shone through coloured cellophane changes everything you see. The honk of a squeaky horn fills your hearing. Neither needs any understanding to grab your attention. That’s the point.

What makes a good sensory experience?

Look for something that draws the attention of one sense, or fills it completely. It doesn’t have to look impressive. Tin foil and a torch, or a handful of flour, will do. What matters is how strongly it hits the sense.

Joanna suggests a quick test. Blur your eyes and shake your head a little, and notice what still stands out in the room (usually the lights). That’s the kind of pull you want from a visual resource. A UV pen torch costs a couple of pounds and makes anything fluorescent jump out. White hole punchings thrown into the air in a dim room and lit with UV look like a firework.

The experience also has to be relevant to its sentence. In one of Joanna’s stories, about how stars form, the first sentence describes the clouds of hydrogen that stars are born in. The sensation is that cloud of hole punchings: it looks like particles spreading out, which is what the sentence is about.

Over the whole story, try to give each sense a turn. Joanna works with seven: the familiar five plus a couple of less obvious ones, such as movement and balance. Always check a pupil’s care plans first. Anything they taste must fit their eating and drinking plan, scents, sprays, flour and spices need checking against allergies and breathing conditions such as asthma, and lights should suit any pupil with epilepsy.

How to write a sensory story

Start with the words, not the props. Joanna finds it easier to write a new story than to boil down an existing one. If you’re nervous, tell a couple of published stories first to get a feel for the shape. Joanna walks through her own process in Creating and Using Sensory Stories.

1. Write your story in eight to ten short sentences. Don’t worry about it being brilliant.
2. Sketch a spider diagram with the senses round the middle. What would you smell, hear, taste and touch in this story?
3. Match sensations to sentences, shuffling things about until most senses are covered.
4. Plan how you’ll offer each one. Held under each nose, or sprayed round the room? One clash of the cymbals, or one for each child round the circle?

The best bit is that you know things no published author does. You can write in the school dinner lady, the bus driver, the coconut smell of that old sun cream from sports day. A story built from your pupils’ own lives has a pull a bought one can’t match.

Joanna’s approach is one strong experience per sentence: say the sentence, then offer the sensation. Lights, noise and smell all at once can excite some pupils and overwhelm others. The brain tends to put sound first, so if you talk over a visual experience, some pupils will listen to your voice and miss what you’re showing them.

Sensory story ideas and examples

Topics that work well are ones your pupils already know: a trip out, the swimming pool, a birthday, lunch. Seasonal stories are popular too. Here’s a Halloween one to show the shape:

• “The night was dark and cold.” Lights off, and a fan on low.
• “We crunched through the leaves.” Scrunch dry leaves near each pupil.
• “The pumpkin glowed orange.” A torch through orange cellophane.
• “We scooped out its slimy insides.” Hands into real pumpkin pulp.
• “The kitchen smelled of spice.” Cinnamon on a cotton pad.
• “A bat swooped past.” Swish a piece of fabric so the air moves on their face.
• “We rocked by the fire.” A slow, gentle rock or sway.
• “Then we had a treat.” A small taste, within each pupil’s eating plan.

Sensory stories work across the ability range, too. Joanna once asked a disengaged bottom-set secondary English group to turn their exam text into a ten-sentence sensory story for the pupils she taught. Deciding which sensations belonged where got them talking about the plot and the characters. A couple of months later their teacher got in touch to say they’d built a wooden ship in DT to go with the story they’d written.

How do you share a sensory story with pupils with PMLD?

Tell it the same way every time. Same words, same order, same resource, offered in the same way, with pupils sitting in the same places if you can manage it.

Consistency is what lets you listen. Say the line is “The parrot squawked”, followed by a squeaky horn. The first time, a pupil flinches. Was that the horn, or a coincidence? You can’t know yet. If she flinches at the horn across several tellings, you can be more confident it’s a response, and that she’s telling you something about that part of the story. Then one day she flinches before you’ve squeezed the horn. That’s anticipation: she knows the story and what happens next.

The responses can be tiny, like a change in muscle tension around the face, so everyone who tells the story needs to tell it the same way. Write it down and keep the resources together. Familiarity helps some autistic pupils too. Once they know how loud and how close each part will be, the anxiety of the unknown drops away and they can join in.

Don’t let any of this put you off, though. A rough-and-ready telling still gives pupils rich experiences and a way into a story. Consistency just gets you more out of it.

Where to learn more

Our course Creating and Using Sensory Stories is presented by Joanna Grace, founder of The Sensory Projects, who spent most of her career in a special school for pupils with severe and profound learning disabilities. Its seven short videos take you from what a sensory story is through choosing sensations, writing your own and sharing it consistently, to using sensory stories to build literacy skills (including a sensory version of reading left to right). It’s for teachers, teaching assistants and anyone working with pupils with PMLD, and for mainstream staff who are curious about a different way into a text. You’ll find more on supporting pupils with special educational needs on our SEND page.