Current Fundraising Project
September 2023 - We are raising money to create an Immersive Sensory Space at Meadowfield School.
All pictures below show examples of what can be achieved when we reach our target!
Immersive Sensory Room
Our pupils are on a life-long journey. Each pupil’s journey began before joining our school and will continue long after they leave. We recognize that we play a vital part in this journey. We aim to prepare our pupils for the life that lies ahead of them, and to equip them with the knowledge, skills, resilience and emotional development to navigate through life. We set high expectations for our pupils and encourage them to continue an ambitious approach into their adult lives, aiming high, and always striving to be the best version of themselves.
The complex needs of our pupils mean that we need to offer creative ways in which pupils experience a huge array of opportunities – not only for learning, but also for broadening their experiences and life skills.
The quote we are working towards fundraising is £53,000.
How are Immersive Sensory Spaces different?
In recent years, there has been growing interest in the use of immersive technologies in mental wellbeing and by extension special needs, such as Autism and ADHD. We love sensory storytelling and the room would create the perfect environment for this. Photos are from other rooms visited by our staff to indicate the equipment we would like to use.
Our new room could offer multisensory experiences that:
- Replicate the physical world
- Create scenarios that are impossible or dangerous in the physical world
- Create personalised scenarios based on participants’ needs or will
Benefits:
- The room can connect human senses with technology, creating the illusion of being embedded in the content, by mimicking realistic and compelling scenarios (Lorenzo, 2016)
- Enhances the user’s sensory capabilities
- High levels of communication and interactivity
- Develops the imagination
- Promotes learning through various roles that occur in represented social situations
- Experience activities and places that participants would not be able to see in real life e.g. outer space.
Why an Immersive sensory Room at Meadowfield School?
Over the past five years money has been invested in sensory equipment, yet as the needs of our pupils become more complex our sensory spaces need to be multi-functional and robust.
In essence, we want to add a specialist resource that will support the development of our curriculum offer and cultural capital for our pupils whilst also having a space that really offers the WOW factor.
A high-engagement room would promote group participation and the development of many key skills, including eye tracking, cause and effect, hand to eye coordination, colour and shape recognition, as well as social and teamwork skills.
We envisage that the Sensory room would be used across all ages and phases in the school to support learning. In addition, it will:
- Support in delivering EHCP Targets
- Enhance learning through play
- Improve balance, movement and spatial orientation
- Develop communication skills
- Enhance pupil focus
- Promote socialisation
- Provide plenty of opportunities to explore new activities, through lunchtime and after-school clubs
- Teach children about a wide variety of arts including literature and music
- Provide plenty of opportunities for questioning, curiosity and creativity.
- Provide sensory stimulation, sensory regulation and sensory circuits
Imagine being in a snow covered field surrounded by beautiful snowflakes, where placing your hand on the touchwall will cause the snowflakes to land and settle on your hand! Or zooming through the solar system and touching the planets to learn more about them.
The possibilities are endless!
