Module 5E: Multisensory Cues for Navigation
It is easy to think that the corridors in your school only enable learners to navigate round the school and for some learners, this might be easy. For others, it may be a time of anxiousness or confusion and multisensory indicators of where they are could be useful.
Corridors may be used as a temporary storage place for items too big for the classroom. A wheelchair outside the door may mean more space in the classroom but creates an obstacle to movement in the corridor. Are your corridors all the same colour? Do they all look the same? How do your learners tell where they are?
The presentation on the right gives some ideas for creating more sensory navigation clues in your corridors and around the school.
Have you considered that a corridor could be used to extend the sensory learning environment outside of the classroom? This could be the perfect place to create a mini sensory environment for learners to explore, which is linked to a current theme or topic.
Key Points
- School corridors may create confusing journeys for some learners without sensory clues to indicate where you are
- Corridors may be visually & physically cluttered, which means the sensory clues that exist in your corridor are hard to for learners to find
- A corridor can be an extension of the sensory learning environment in your classroom
Thinking Point
Choose a corridor in your school. Close your eyes and walk down the corridor. What sensory clues can you find to tell you where you are in this journey? How do you know when you have reached your classroom/toilet/staffroom/front door?