Creating and Using Sensory Stories

For a pupil with profound and multiple learning disabilities, a book read aloud can be just noise. A sensory story changes that. Each of eight to 10 short sentences comes with one strong sensation, like a torch shone through coloured cellophane or the honk of a squeaky horn. A child can follow it through the senses, the words, or both.

You'll learn to write your own, using the smells and moments your pupils already know, and to tell it the same way every time. That consistency is what lets you spot a small response that keeps coming back and read it as the child telling you something.

It isn't only for special schools. Your guide is a sensory engagement specialist who spent most of her career in one. She once got a switched-off bottom-set English group so keen that they built a wooden ship for the story they'd written.