Health and Wellbeing
What is Our Vestibular System? Why is it Key to Education for Learners with PMLD?
Understand why movement frightens one learner with PMLD and never seems enough for another, and what you can do for both.
- 29 minutes
- 6 modules
- 0.5 CPD hours
- Certificate
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What you'll learn
- Explain what the vestibular system does beyond balance
- Recognise signs that a learner is over- or under-responsive to movement
- Offer movement and texture experiences through rocking, swinging and sensory trays
- Reduce anxiety around hoists, transfers and changes of position
- Record observations you can share with occupational therapists and families
About this course
Think of the learner who tenses and cries every time the hoist lifts them, or shuts down on the bus tail-lift. Or the one who never stops rocking. Both may be telling you something about their vestibular system, the sense that tells us where our body is and how our head is moving.
It does a lot more than keep us balanced. It helps with muscle tone, posture, following things with our eyes and making sense of sound. When it isn't working well, a learner can spend all their energy just feeling secure in their chair. You'll learn to tell whether a learner is over- or under-responsive to movement. Then you can give them what they can't go looking for themselves: rocking together to music, swinging, and trays of different surfaces for bare feet.
You'll also see what to record, so an occupational therapist has something useful to work with.
- For support staff, teachers and teaching assistants. Early years and special.
6 modules
Open in order
- 2 min
Introduction
- 7 min
What is our vestibular system and why is it more than just balance?
- 8 min
Vestibular systems what happens when it goes wrong?
- 6 min
Vestibular processing and learning
- 6 min
How do we support it?
- 4 min
Wrap up- ways forward