Graduate Project

Integration of multi-sensory elements into classrooms for students with exceptionalities: a project based website

People often dismiss things as primal as our senses, and how they affect our daily lives. For individuals with developmental disabilities this can be quite the opposite effect. Individuals with developmental disabilities often struggle with sensory processing which often times impacts their ability to process their environment and learn new concepts and skills. During the 1970s, two therapists from Holland began researching Multi-Sensory therapies. They discovered Snoezelen rooms, environments that offer sensory stimulation to users through a variety of auditory, visual, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory equipment. Through their research, they found that multi-sensory environments provided benefits to individuals with disabilities. These benefits include; enhance attention span, reasoning skills, thinking processes, concentration, and decrease self stimulating and self-injurious behaviors. Multi-Sensory Environments have become more known throughout the world but are still an underutilized resource. The special education community has started adopting multi-sensory intervention as a means to feed sensory diets for severely handicapped individuals. Individuals with mild/moderate disabilities are not as included in these studies. Therefore, awareness and implementation of multi-sensory interventions need to include all special education programs, as well mainstream classrooms. Multi-sensory interventions have the ability to help all students.

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