What's a sensory circuit and why should I use one?

What is a sensory circuit and why should I include it?

In short a sensory circuit is a short series of sensory motor skills that when linked together prepare the brain for learning.  The different stages of a sensory circuit “switch on” vestibular systems, proprioception and engagement for gross and fine motor skills as well as providing the regulation ready for learning.

A sensory circuit is broken down into three stages:

Alerting – a controlled activity that will provide vestibular and proprioceptive stimulation; this can be a simple as jumping up and down on the spot.

Organising – this part of the circuit is to engage motor skills and challenge the child to organise their body and movements, and use a degree of motor planning.

Calming – these are activities to calm so that the child is ready to learn. The activities typically involve proprioceptive input, deep pressure or heavy work.

Who can benefit?

A sensory circuit can benefit most or ALL of the learners in your group. It will particularly benefit those that struggle with sensory regulation, and those that may typically appear fidgety or struggle concentrating.

How will a sensory circuit make my lessons more inclusive?

Some children are given sensory circuits to complete at home or school, usually directed by an Occupational Therapist. Often this is done with the child in isolation from others. By making it a standard part of the class you are not singling out a child who needs one to thrive in a learning environment and consequently you may be helping others in the class who could benefit from one but haven’t had the exposure to them.

How can I incorporate this into my lessons without losing valuable lesson time?

Lesson time is valuable, we often work under very tight time constraints and a sensory circuit may take up some of your planned lesson time BUT (and this is a big BUT), spending an extra couple of minutes to complete a sensory target will improve the focus and concentration of learners. That means the quality of their learning is greatly improved and as the teacher you are probably going to spend less time trying to gain the attention of students, or asking them to “sit still”, “listen”, “pay attention”, “stop splashing/fidgeting/submerging”

For swimming lessons, we can easily include this as part of the warm-up. An alerting activity may be kicking from the side, jumping up and down in the water or kicking across the pool. If you begin by kicking across the pool, adding alternating arms to the kicking means you are then transitioning to an organising activity. You can then complete the circuit by adding in some bubble practice or breath control within the water, using the hydrostatic pressure of the water to provide both proprioceptive feedback and deep pressure.

Once you understand the role of each component of a sensory circuit and how to use it in an aquatic environment it becomes a valuable part of your tool kit. If you have a child that is “over-excited” throw in a quick calming activity before moving onto the next task/part of the lesson.