Thank you for sharing this powerful example. It really highlights how easily adults can assume a student understands a concept that has never been explicitly taught. I appreciated how you recognized that your student was not intentionally being disruptive but simply lacked the spatial awareness to understand the impact of his movements on others. Your use of tactile communication and physical demonstration gave him access to information that sighted students often learn incidentally.
Your story is a great reminder that behavior is often communication and that our students need meaningful, hands-on experiences to build concepts. When instruction is presented from the studentās perspective, understanding and confidence can develop much more quickly.
Question 2: Compare two areas of concept development outlined in the reading (e.g., object exploration vs. environmental awareness). How do they contribute differently to a studentās understanding of the world? Where do they overlap?
Object exploration focuses on understanding items through touch, sound, smell, movement, and sometimes partial vision. Object exploration builds concrete knowledge about things that exist around them in their environment. This direct experience helps students understand functions of individual things. Without object exploration students with visual impairments risk having fragmented/ incomplete concepts. Direct object exploration supports conceptual and sensory development and foundation for academic learning and daily living skills. This includes organization, spatial awareness, and independence.
Environmental Awareness focuses on understand the surroundings and spatial context. This includes location, safety, participation, navigation, orientation. This may include a student learns where clinic is located in relation to the classroom and how to travel there.
These two concepts both support independence. In addition, both rely on sensory such as touch, hearing, smell, and movement. Together, they assist with creating a better understanding of the world. This allows students to understand the big picture and practical independence.
Sheila, you made some great points!! I also believe they need to have patience to allow that time for them to explore. Collaborate relationships with caregivers is definitely important to help build their confidence. You also mentioned that false impression that everyone in their world will ādoā for them and we need to assist with independence. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Mackinzie! I enjoyed reading your post. I work with 2 students that have full time paraprofessionals. I create a powerpoint and go over key points with them in the beginning of the year to help them understand these concepts!
As a newbie TVI, would you be willing to share your PowerPoint? We do have one para who covers and assists all our students. I feel this would be a great resource to share. If so, I can share my email with you. Thanks in advance.
Question 6: The reading emphasizes the role of adult mediation and the risk of overdependence (p. 2). To what extent can adult support both help and hinder development? How do you strike an appropriate balance?
Adult support is very important for a child who is blind because adults help explain and make sense of the world around them. This support helps the child learn new skills, build confidence, and understand their environment. Without enough guidance, a child may become isolated and miss opportunities to learn and interact with others.
At the same time, too much adult support can hinder development by creating overdependence. If adults complete tasks for the child instead of encouraging participation and problem-solving, the child may have fewer opportunities to develop confidence, decision-making skills, and a sense of control over their environment. This can limit the childās self-concept and reduce motivation to explore independently.
The best approach is to provide help when it is needed while encouraging the child to try things on their own. Adults should guide and support the child but also allow them to explore, make choices, and learn from their experiences. This balance helps the child become more confident, independent, and successful.
-ā This reading reminded me of a student I worked with who demonstrates how too much adult support can actually limit independence. She returned to school at 19 years old in the 10th grade after being absent from school for six years. Although she has some usable vision, she showed complete dependence on adults for nearly every task. Her mother and grandmother had always done everything for her, including brushing her teeth, combing her hair, dressing her, and meeting all of her daily needs. As a result, she expected teachers and staff to do the same.
She is now 20 years old, will turn 21 soon, and is preparing to enter 12th grade. While she has made some progress, it has taken significant time and consistent encouragement to teach her basic independent living skills and help her understand that she is capable of doing many tasks on her own. This experience showed me how important it is to find a balance between providing support and encouraging independence. Adults should offer guidance when needed, but they should also give children opportunities to make choices, solve problems, and develop the confidence to care for themselves. Those opportunities are essential for preparing students with visual impairments for successful adult lives.
I really like how you described adult mediation as a bridge rather than a replacement. That analogy emphasizes that our role is to support students while still giving them opportunities to learn through their own experiences. Iāve seen firsthand how too much assistance can lead to dependence, making it much harder for students to develop confidence and independent living skills. By gradually stepping back and encouraging exploration and problem-solving, we help students build the self-determination they need to be successful both in school and in everyday life.
I really appreciated your example because I have experienced something very similar. I work with a 3-year-old student with bilateral anophthalmia who attends a general education Pre-K classroom for half the day. His teacher initially responded in much the same way, assuming he understood concepts like personal space and body awareness without realizing that he had never had the visual experiences needed to develop those concepts.
Like your student, he needed direct, hands-on instruction rather than verbal correction. Once we physically demonstrated what was happening and gave him opportunities to explore his environment safely, his understanding improved significantly. Your story is a great reminder that we canāt assume students with visual impairments have learned concepts incidentally. It takes intentional teaching, repetition, and experiences that are meaningful from the studentās perspective. Thank you for sharing such a powerful example of how changing our approach can make such a positive difference.
Object exploration and environmental awareness complement one another while supporting learning in different ways. Object exploration helps to provide the foundation for understanding the characteristics and functions of individual items. Through direct interaction with objects, students can develop concepts related to size, texture, shape, and purpose, which helps make language and experiences more meaningful.
Environmental awareness broadens that understanding by helping students make sense of the spaces, people, and routines around them. Rather than focusing on a single object, this area of development supports an understanding of how things fit together within the larger context of everyday life. Developing awareness of locations, routines, and relationships within the environment can increase a studentās independence and participation.
Although these areas emphasize different aspects of learning, there is considerable overlap between them. Meaningful experiences often involve both. For example, a student may learn about the features and uses of utensils through object exploration while also developing an understanding of the cafeteria routine and environment in which those utensils are used. Together, these experiences help students connect isolated concepts to real-world situations and build a more complete understanding of the world around them.
You shared a great example of the difference between understanding a concept and being able to apply that concept functionally. One of the ideas that stood out to me in your post was how assessment data can sometimes paint an incomplete picture. It sounds like the skills in your example may have been assessed in a familiar, supportive environment with limited additional demands.
Your example made me think about how often we see this in our field. A student may demonstrate understanding of a direction such as āstand behind your desk,ā but it raises the question of whether the student truly understands the concept of behind or whether they are responding to a prompt within a highly familiar routine and setting. Similarly, we often read IEP goals that reference performance across a certain number of trials, but we donāt always stop to consider where and under what conditions those trials occurred.
I realize this takes the discussion in a slightly different direction than this weekās topic, but your post reminded me of the importance of conducting assessments in ways that are meaningful and representative of how students actually function across environments.
Thank you for sharing your experience and how it connected to this example. I agree that learning is most meaningful when it incorporates real experiences whenever possible. I especially appreciated how you created a physical space to help demonstrate the concept. Providing students with opportunities to actively experience ideas can make abstract concepts much more concrete and memorable.
Your example of the boy scrambling up a wall also made me think about the role of illustrations in supporting understanding. I imagine the story likely included a picture of the boy climbing the wall. Recognizing that an image is part of the story could provide an opportunity to preview and discuss the illustration before reading, helping students build background knowledge and develop a clearer understanding of the action being described.
Thank you so muchā¦ my email is kmagallon@eaglepassisd.net Iām sure itās going to be a great resource for our para who is also trying to learn all she can to better support our students.
Hi Sheila, You brought up a good point about ātimeā. The student needs time to explore and become familiar with a concept. Oftentimes, in my experience, the teachers are not allowing for this extra time. Some disregard the accommodations in the IEP that include accessible instructional materials and extended time. Others just donāt understand the reasons for the accommodations. Once a collaborative relationship is built, the teachers are more receptive to suggestions and following the law. Parents/guardians are a different challenge. We have some students with visual impairments who have parents that absolutely do not provide opportunities for exploring skills for independence. Some of the reasons are safety, others are cultural. We have to find a balance between the expectations from school, home, and the students desire to build these skills.
Hi Emily! Great summary of how these two concepts build the ābig pictureā of independence. When transitioning a student from exploring an individual object to understanding its place in the wider environment, what signs do you look for to know they are ready for that next step? I was thinking about students exploring objects in STACS. Itās challenging to know when the student will transfer the purpose of the object across settings if we are only using the system in the school setting. Transferring knowledge between settings means we need to provide opportunities for exploration in school and home settings.
That is such a great example! After taking time to determine that the concept was not understood you not only reinforced the concept in the activity you discovered it in but also in other activities like the sandwich and I am sure many other activities. It goes back to what Leanne was saying in the video about egocentric to exocentric. I have also witnessed these gaps in concepts wtih some of my students and am now recognizing how I can support their understanding in the upcoming school year. For example, I have a middle school student who confuses soft and smooth. She often explains that she prefers certain devices due to their soft texture, but the devices she references are smooth and hard plastic rather that soft.
How can educators determine whether a student is ready to move from concrete experiences (real objects/models) to more abstract representations (symbols and raised line drawings)? What evidence would you look for, and how would you respond if a student struggles with this transition?
Educators can determine when a student is ready to move from concrete experiences to more abstract when they are able to identify many concrete examples of an object. Take the duck example, the students would be able to identify the small hatchling duck, a larger (tame) duck, and moving more abstract taxidermy ducks or stuffed animal ducks. I like the idea of having a concrete idea of the item present when first exposing the student to the tactile graphic or more abstract representation of the concept or item. Also looking for the student to not only identify the parts of the whole item but also the function of the parts as applicable.
How neat! Your post reminded me of a similar event with one of my students as they were asked to create a NASA patch for one of their science assignments. Similar to your student we had to modify this very visual assignment, and they wrote out their one image description. We then had the student post their image description into an Ai engine and had an image created with their description so they could present it to their class as there was a presentation and voting aspect to the assignment as well.
