Alena- I think pre-teaching is so beneficial and it’s great that you have the opportunity to work with classroom teachers prior to align your pre-teaching with the upcoming curriculum. It’s good to build the concepts for not only vocabulary but context. Using real items or items that represent concepts that the student is struggling with can be helpful depending on the student’s needs.
Both the picture and the story are amazing items to share. I like that the story involves the family as part of the child’s learning experience. I have families that purposefully teach their children daily through natural exposure and continuous explaining and exploration. These students are more confident and have better concept development compared to students who come from families that do not purposefully and continuously expose their child to exploration.
- How might collaborative planning and instruction between TVIs and general education teachers be structured to ensure alignment, particularly in terms of addressing the interconnectedness of language comprehension and word recognition?
Some of my favorite years teaching as an itinerant TVI was when I was able to participate in collaborative planning with the general education team on a regular basis. Not only did it help guide my braille and literacy instruction but it also empowered the general education teachers which in turn led to greater student success and inclusion. Further, I was able to make sure all necessary accommodations were in place in the classroom such as word walls with braille or large print. I could pre-teach language comprehension and word recognition while also incorporating new contractions and the use of low vision devices. When we all work together, everyone benefits and adopting a co-teaching model is rewarding for students and teachers alike. I found though that collaboration and co-teaching can be inconsistent from year to year. Although it can seem intimidating and time consuming at first, when we would get into a routine it was more efficient and took less time as the year went on. With the trend of TVIs providing instruction using an online model, I wonder about the impacts it will have on collaborative planning.
I loved your example you gave about your student asking if monkeys have wings. It really made me think about my teaching. I often find myself just giving the answer rather than asking probing questions. Thanks for the reminder as to how I can improve!
I agree students should be receiving small group and whole group instruction in their classroom. Not only does it build collaboration between the general education teacher and TVI, but it also builds collaboration with the student’s peers. I thought your example of verbal phonics instruction made a lot of sense. It’s so interesting to hear the similarities and differences school districts approach to literacy instruction.
In what ways can educators incorporate real-life experiences and tactile learning activities to help students with visual impairments build their background knowledge and vocabulary skills, thus enhancing their reading comprehension abilities?
Educators can incorporate real life experiences and tactile learning activities to help students increase their background knowledge. Many of our visually impaired students, particularly those with limited vision may lose background knowledge since they can’t see the world like their sighted peers can. For example sighted peer can see a horse which helps them understand how big a horse is, that they have a tail, a mane, 2 ears, etc when they are then reading a story with a horse. A student with a visual impairment may not be able to have seen what a horse looks like. Providing students with real life experiences, such as letting them touch things like a horse or making tactile items so they can have a better understanding of something helps them increase background knowledge which helps them become stronger readers.
When I planned conferences for my students, it was a bit challenging. Out of the 19 middle school students I had, only four read at grade level or above. The below grade level students struggled not only with decoding and fluency, and phonemic awareness, which caused them to guess instead of sounding the word out. For example, I administered the Jerry Johns Basic Reading Inventory to an 8th grader and when he was reading the Word List, he said ‘city’ instead of ‘cry’. This was the Middle kindergarten Word List. There is no pre-primer list, which is what he needs. This is the dilemma I face and my ‘Why’ for taking this course: braille reading is another facet of reading and I would like to be able to incorporate both into my instruction.
I think about the Itinerant TVI because of their travel schedule and caseload. I would be interested to know to what degree ITVIs can and do participate in collaborative planning.
- How can teachers adapt instruction to ensure that students with visual impairments are able to apply their understanding of language structure in a variety of reading contexts, considering the challenges they may face in accessing written syntax and text structure?
Within the Scarborough framework teachers can utilize a variety of techniques to address the ongoing challenges of accessing written syntax and text structures. One instructional tool is the use of the Socratic circle which fosters not only group collaboration but helps to strengthen verbal reasoning when deconstructing a topic/a particular text. Another method is to allow students to draw out what they have learned. Other visual aids, such as Concept mapping and Semantic maps help to physically translate complex and abstract ideas. Playing a number of interactive games is another alternative. In other words, the Scarborough model incentivizes innovation—pushes for wild experimentation—so that children could truly learn the provocations of a language. For it’s more than just a word on a page—it is something more radical.
I don’t have any visible disabilities and I naturally learn best having a number of visual interventions, which makes this alphabet bag exercise though simple and practical so truly fantastic. I agree with you Molly that learning should be a continuous activity and that families should be required to play a more active role in fostering a more dynamic learning environment outside of the classroom. Things don’t always have to be uber professionalized to be counted as effective.
With such a hectic schedule, I can’t imagine any kind of collaboration for itinerants to be exhaustive in scope here.
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- Scarborough’s Reading Rope emphasizes the interconnectedness of all strands of the rope; including decoding, vocabulary and language comprehension as some areas needed in order to establish proficient reading. We know that our students often have fewer opportunities for real life experiences; often supplemented by students with typical vision who can learn incidentally. Real life experiences can be incorporated through literacy approaches such as experience books, book bags with real items that connect to a story being read, use of sound and more. Ultimately, I encourage my student’s parents to engage in “field trips” to stores like home depot, or even their own tool box at home, drawer of kitchen tools, etc for the sole purpose of guided tactile exploration and object identification. Ultimately, as the TVI, I try my best to preview materials and pre teach concepts or core objects found in stories being read in class. Nothing beats real experiences for our students in connecting literacy and comprehending what they’re reading using background knowledge. A braille reader that I work with had read thee F&P book about “chicks” but always struggled with understanding it despite use of sounds, fur and even bringing in an egg for him to feel. Months later, his school hosted baby chicks and I ensured he had hands on time with them. He felt the chicks body parts he knew the names of but could not fully comprehend the size of the animal. His understanding and comprehension of the book from that moment on was more whole than ever!
Reading instruction is everyone’s responsibility. If our student struggles with reading they will struggle in math, science, specials, etc. All teachers need to be prepared to support reading instruction. It also communicates to the student that teachers/adults are working and communicating with each other. It is more difficult for a student to hide or disguise an area they are struggling in if the TVI and the student’s teachers are in communication and sharing that information. Having a united team may also discourage the student from demonstrating behaviors of learned helplessness, refusal, or anxiety in the area of reading if all educators are able to provide materials and instruction to meet the learner where they are.
- How might collaborative planning and instruction between TVIs and general education teachers be structured to ensure alignment, particularly in terms of addressing the interconnectedness of language comprehension and word recognition?
Collaborative planning and instruction is critical between the TVI and general education teacher to ensure alignment and ensure accessibility for out students. They need to discuss student needs. Language comprehension is important and a student with visual impairments may not have the development needed.or may need language knowledge presented in a different way. Often if a student doesn’t have knowledge of something, such as a tree. Simply showing a picture of different trees may not help a child with a visual impairment. The TVI can help give the student access to this knowledge. Also, often the way this material is presented to the student with a visual impairment can help many other students. Having a collaborative environment where the general ed teacher and TVI are albe to communicate and have an open dialogue will benefit the students.
Thank your for these examples and ideas.
Co-planning is essential for our students’ success. Being able to pre-teach concepts to our students help give our students the confidence they may need to participate in class discussions.
I do feel it would be best practice for collaborative planning meetings to happen on a regular basis, but I don’t feel it is always possible depending on schedules. Being an itinerant teacher it is not always easy working my schedule around the general education teachers schedule. Often when they are planning or on conference is when I pull students for direct instruction. However, I do try and always keep an open line of communication through email and if possible I like to have a copy of the teacher’s lesson plan so that I know what is coming up to ask questions over and be prepared. Also, if the general ed teacher has a concern about a concept coming up we will get together and problem solve.
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It sounds like this works for you and the Gen Ed teacher. It also sounds quite practical. Thank you for all you do as an Itinerant TVI.
Katrina Thomas
#LiveInPeace
@sharon.clark
I use this chart to better understand the fluency of braille learners under my caseload. Thank you for sharing. Hopefully this can answer a lot of questions regarding fluency for braille learners and readers.
Pamela Joyner
- In what ways can educators incorporate real-life experiences and tactile learning activities to help students with visual impairments build their background knowledge and vocabulary skills, thus enhancing their reading comprehension abilities.
One of my favorite activities to incorporate real-life experiences and tactile learning is the use of cooking lessons and field trips in the fall. When I worked in California , students and I would go to the store and use an adaptive shopping list to get ingredients that we needed for our cooking lesson. I would then have students use reading skills to follow the adaptive recipe to make the food. Students would be encouraged to use all of their senses to explore and describe or experience the ingredients prior to cooking. Students would then participate in creating the food item. Of course after we cooked it, students were given the opportunity to experience eating what they had created. I would also have a book/story to go along with the food item that we experienced. We made apple sauce when we read a book about picking apples. During the fall, we would go to a pumpkin patch and pick a pumpkin to make into a pumpkin soup as our cooking activity. We also read the story “Pumpkin Soup”. Again working on giving my students real-life experiences to connect with the reading .
Yes, real-life experiences are key to building that background knowledge. Since comprehension is a knowledge-based skill providing rich experiences using all 5 senses can strengthen background knowledge for students with visual impairments. They also need multiple opportunities with a concept area like a horse because they will learn something new each time. When I did have a student that was blind, I struggled with finding and incorporating reali-life experiences to broaden my students background knowledge to the extent that I thought she need.