So a year on from starting our Active Learning & Sensory Pathways journey and it’s time to report on how our pilots have been running.
So in case you didn’t know we had 3 pilots set up locally to test durability, simplicity of installation (pupils can install the stickers with no guidance!) and pupil usage. Our three pilots, St Stephens Primary School in Coatbridge, St Charles Primary School in Glasgow and Woodlands Primary School in Cumbernauld, have had great success.
The headteacher from St Charles Primary School had this to say…
The benefits would be that children's coordination and motor skills are improving as they follow the pathways. Children are having to think about how they are moving along the corridors and it is helping to develop their hand eye coordination and spatial awareness.
For our children in the LCR, many of whom have a diagnosis of Autism, they sensory pathway is giving opportunities for movement breaks if the children are becoming unsettled in class. The action graphic shapes are also helping to develop speech and language as the children get to say/repeat the words. it's very visual so the children can quickly work out what they are expected to do.
Some staff were concerned that the pathway would encourage the children to run along the corridors but this hasn't happened at all. It actually seems to stop the children running as they follow the path weaving along the corridor rather than darting along the corridor in a straight line.
They also provided this great little video of the pupils following our most popular pack (Skip, Hop and Jump), it’s a great example of use in the real world.
So what did we actually learn?
So after our 3 pilot schools we’ve went on to have over 50 installations throughout the UK, even with the Covid-19 pandemic shutting down primary schools for most of the last term of 2019-2020!
What did we learn?
Quite a lot actually! But I’ll round it up to our 3 major points (our Active Learning & Sensory Pathways whitepaper has the benefits in detail);
- A lot of primary schools in the UK have carpet in corridors!
- Our pathways actually stop running in corridors.
- Our stickers are extremely durable, far more than we originally anticipated.
What did we do with our feedback?
So a lot of Schools have carpet in corridors, designed to remove echoing through Schools & increase insulation properties in new builds. Originally we had designed our stickers to be used on standard tiled and linoleum based surfaces.
We had to go back to the material specification stage and now our floor stickers will stick to carpet, linoleum, vinyl, tiles and laminate.
This now allows us to cater for any School environment for Active Learning and Sensory Path Stickers.
Durability!
So all our Active Learning and Sensory Pathway Stickers come with a 1 year warranty & guarantee. If any damage after installation happens we’ll replace the element no questions asked (after receiving photos of the damage).
To date we’ve not had any damages! We were expecting wear and tear of 1% from children being children and picking the stickers at the edges! Seems they are too busy playing to be picking!
Best way to try them out is to order an Active Learning & Sensory Pathways sample pack!
