Are all state primary schools given to sensory overload nowadays?

[oodlesofdoodles]

I was at primary school some 30 years ago. It was a Victorian building with high windows. I remember rows of desks facing a black board, a spider plant on the window sill and a few pictures on the wall.

I went to visit local primary school (for ds) last week and was taken aback by the volume of stuff; pictures and posters to 10 feet high up the wall, loads of shelves groaning with books and boxes and art materials, a multi coloured rug, chairs, I couldn't take it all in. As if the environment wasn't stimulating enough the teacher told me that the children move to a new activity within the lesson every ten minutes.

Is this normal? If I keep looking will I find a calm tranquil (state) school or has that gone out of fashion?

ds2's OT commented on the amount of stuff on the classroom walls. He has huge visual processing problems, not only is it a distraction to him when they refer to stuff on the walls he cant process what they are telling him to look at.

His table isnt facing a blank wall but is in a clearer corner of the room & only the class schedule is on the wall in front of him.

It's tiresome if schools have become such hostile environments that you need a label and an OT report just to get some head space.

We refused a dx because in the right environment, ie current montessori nursery, ds is so borderline as to be almost 'normal'.

I feel so many of the problems with asd/communication delay are in the environment, nor the child.

Nor = not

Oodles, hypo-sensitive is under sensitive, hypersensitive is over sensitive. Most things I hear about DC with HF ASD seem to be about being over sensitive to sensory stimuli, but my DS is nearly exclusively under sensitive, hence would work happily on the pier! It sure makes him very very active as he's under sensitive to movement and he likes rollercoasters, noise, strong tasting food, trampolines, kaleidoscopic videos... I'm sure most DC with sensory issues have a mixture of hyper and hypo for different senses and different situations and they can even change from one to the other in the space of a minute!

That's why 'busy' classroom walls don't seem to distract or bother him, I think.

Perhaps we need to start a campaign.....

I have just had to tolerate some inset where we were told we needed to just 'get it all on the walls' and if we run out of display boards then use the walls, windows etc.......

I like children's work nicley backed and displayed on proper boards, behind the children's heads if possible or even better, on the walls of the corridors, the odd visual reminder near the whiteboards, books on shelves the right way round and exercise books in labelled boxes all with the spines facing the right way..... I think teacher's need a cupboard with a door that closes and none of these curtained off shelves like we have now and NO DESK because a desk for a teacher(in my experience) means a place for clutter to gather. I cannot be doing with 'working walls' and frenetic drivel on every space....... But then I am ancient and a 'dinosaur' .........

Ah well. < slopes off to dream about the school she will run when she has the chance >

Pale blue, display free walls and all resources away in muted pine cupboards at my place (and we are pretty cutting edge ). That, however, it the bits the kids are in, the office is a complete and utter tip a bit more lived in.

I agree about the clutter. I cannot stand it. Piles of stuff everywhere is very distracting and leaves no space for actually working. Lots of teachers are hoarders though.

The school I work in has no storage. It is awful. I spend SO much of my day trying to keep things tidy and organised.

As for the walls, I agree that it becomes wallpaper to the children really quickly. I try to have nothing up there that we don't use daily, but as someone else pointed out earlier, SMT walk around checking that stuff is up there. It is there for evidence we are doing stuff. My particular hate is the key skills poster I have to have up. I know what the bloody key skills are, thank you very much.

Ebd do you teach at a ms school?

Never, maybe there is a campaign? Although if there was I guess you teachers would know about it.

But perhaps there are lots of people reading this thread thinking, 'pier-like classrooms are great, what a misery guts that Oodles is', but too polite to post.

Nah- specialist unit within a Special School for severe and complex behavioural difficulties. About as far from MS as you can get!!

We don't have displays because the kids just rip them down when they're angry because almost all of our children have sensory integration difficulties.

EBDteacher, am loving the struck-out bit of your post - I can so relate to that .

I would like to go for muted and white space, but most of the rest of the staff at our place want all singing and dancing displays. And to be fair, only about a quarter of our pupils have sensory issues. I try to find a place in the room where it is least distracting for them to sit and work.

I think one of the problems is that teachers are subjected to so many new initiatives, the latest great idea for your classroom etc. etc, and are pressured into making sure they have; vocab banks, phonics walls, signs all round the white board saying things like "don't stop thinking!!!" or "keep asking why!!!!", posters plastered round the book corner, "shoot for the moon, you'll land among the stars!" and other such encouraging epithets,welcom signs in 100 langauges, numberlines strung across the room on pegs, labels on anything that stays still long enough, word charts sellotaped to desks, this term's value, person of the week, house points.... the list goes on! And this is as well as the displays of work!

Someone on here has already said that most displays are only helpful for a few weeks, after that they just don't notice them anymore. I have to confess to being guilty of trying to create a "perfect" learning environment that looked very impressive, (for "perfect" read "busy and very hard to maintain" but to be honest after a few years I realised that less is more! (And so much less work for the adults!)

bigTillyMint your lunch will be waiting for you when you've cleared that up.

EBD and your golden time

Has anyone seen the Roald Dahl film Matilda, where Miss Lovely had a load of colourful displays which could be hidden away in seconds when the evil headteacher walked in? We need the opposite .

I haven't seen it Maria , but I guess the head teachers have all watched Matilda and fear that not having loads of stuff on display looks mean and crabby.

Katy well done you for standing to the messy tyranny.

The other part of my OP was about moving to a different activity every 10 mins, eg writing letter M, drawing things beginning with letter M, story with lots of Ms in it (i'm making these examples up). Is that standard practice? Does that work for the slower children?

Well, I really think that some children suit this style... and other's don't! There are children who just can't focus on something directed (self directed play is different) for more than a few minutes at a time. But there will be others who do, and for me it was always about striking the right balance. I am always mindful that as children get older they do need to develop the ability to sustain concentration. So I would expect the carousels of shorter actvities to be happening in EYFS and early KS1 but by half way through year two I would want my chn to be able to spend longer doing certain things.

(I'm talk about a whole class here, with a mix of abilities. There are also children with specific needs who need things like a quiet booth to work in etc...)

I remember the mrz post recently on classroom clutter and creating calm spaces. There was a good link to 'how to declutter' as well.
Schools can do both styles - it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Children's work can be displayed on plain backgrounds. If there are desks, some can be made distraction free. In EYFS, there can be calm and quiet areas, also small secluded areas for only 1 or 2 children at a time so they do not feel lost in huge open plan environments.
As with everything - you need someone on the 'inside' trying to help change the environment for your DS, oodles

Thanks Katy, so you think the stop start stuff works well for slow children.

Auntevil, thank you that's a good positive suggestion.

Well, I'm really not an expert, but when I was teaching I was passionate about being inclusive to ALL children, and tried to use different approaches for different things. For example if I was teaching children with a specific langauge difficulty (my school had a Language Provision so we all had at least one child with a language statement) then things like vocab labels were essential. Short sharp activites were the name of the game but it was important not to throw to much at them in one go - so going from a writing to a reading to a craft activity (just off the top of my head) would not have been helpful because it would be too many different language concepts surrounding the completing of each one for them to deal with, even if they were all linked to the same topic.

The children in my class with ASD would also need activities that kept them focussed and didn't take to long to complete, and so I would often use post it notes on the table - "1) write the date 2)write the title 3)copy down the first calculation" etc. and after each step was completed they removed a post it. (I'm not using good examples as it's late and I'm tired and I haven't actually taught for a few years.)

My belief is that there are SO MANY things teachers and TAs can do as good practice that benefit specific learning needs, but that, in turn, benefit ALL children. For example, I believe that every classroom should have a visual timetable; who doesn't want to know what's happening next?

Why not write on your whiteboard with a different colour marker for each line? Then you can say "look at the blue line", and this will help dyslexic children, but it may also focus a child who doesn't know where to look because there is too much visual stimulation - it may also help little Miss Smarty Pants (there's one in every class!) who was chatting to her friend.

It costs no money to make a noise-o-meter that can be operated by anyone who is finding it too noisy - and some of my ASD kids were fab at moving the arrow to red and getting them quiet!

Sorry for the rant. As a mum I'm feeling this quite keenly at the moment - my DD1 is almost certainly on the spectrum but am currently faced with "But she's fine in school!" from her teacher. Grrrrrrrrrr.

I hadn't really thought about it but you right the whole enviroment is totally overloading and it was so different when I was a child. DS classroom is just a mass of colour but that is reception, it does seem to get more subdued the older you get.