Chris Rue, headteacher at Epinay School, in South Shields, gives an insight into the school's new immersive room.
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00:00So it's used very differently depending on where the children are in the school and what type of
00:04provision they are in the school. So we've got one little boy who comes in every morning before
00:11nine o'clock and uses it himself. He uses the interactive floor with some background sounds on
00:16and he loves that. Throughout the day then our younger children might come in as a group and we
00:21do turn taking and we do social play and things with the interactive floor. As then we move through
00:28the school we use it either by our specialist subjects, so for instance we can have children
00:36in DT learning about different parts of equipment which might be quite dangerous to use first off in
00:42a lesson or for academic subjects like English and Maths where we can play Maths games or for
00:49English we can immerse them in the middle of the countryside or under the sea or anything with their
00:55topic as long as it's on YouTube you know we've got access to it so it's really kind of enriched
01:01our subjects and the children have loved it. Obviously you mentioned that you know the
01:05children have loved it, what's been like the feedback like what's been their reactions
01:08like they've walked in here for the first time? It's been strange really in terms of it's
01:13overwhelmingly positive the children love it and now they've just had their few first lessons
01:18and they talk about it all the time. Some of our more sensory seeking children have kind of
01:24took to it differently in terms of we need to find the exact kind of sensory background input
01:30that they really need and so this room's comes equipped with a wind machine and different scents
01:36and so we have been putting scents into the room of cut grass or candy floss or gingerbread
01:41and actually that's not had the reaction we thought with some young people with other young
01:45people and with some staff it's made us hungry or it's calmed us down and I've got to say the
01:50staff have taken to it as well as what the kids have. Do you think I should like that? No just we're so
01:56pleased that we put it in place and just to kind of see from a regulation of focus point of view
02:00what it's done for our kids already it's worth every penny.