Week 3: July 14-20

Core Curriculum Unlocking the Foundations of Reading
142

I love what you did with the castle. You brought an amazing representation to that student. It was a ingenious way to give that student a tactile model of something that may not have been like you said prior knowledge.

I feel you said what I was thinking as I was reading your post. I don’t think we always realize that not every child has the same experiences or prior knowledge. I love your idea.

143

Hello Claire,

I didn’t know you were taking this class too! I love the idea of “surprise concept of the day.” I can see how it is teacher facilitated, but also student led. It can be a great tool to assess what the student already knows and what needs to be taught!
It is a great opportunity to build vocab and concepts in a fun way! I will definitely be incorporating it into my daily routine!
Thank you for sharing.

144

This looks like a great resource. Thanks for sharing.

145

Hi Faye,

I love your activity with the treasure box! Something similar I do with my students is I work with the general educator to provide real objects and real learning experiences when trenching different concepts. For example, if a student is learning about leaves and how trees change during the winter, I would recommend for the teacher to bring in an actual leaf for the student to hold. I would then encourage the student to describe it, then have the teacher verbally describe it. I would also encourage the teacher to take the students outside to observe the trees! I find myself doing this a lot in science to demonstrate the many different phenomena they cover!

146

Hi Angela,

I literally have done the same as you! Every year, I touch base with my braille student’s teachers. I often ask questions about what the student is learning and I am constantly asking how different concepts, such as reading, writing, and math are addressed in the classroom to ensure I am presenting these concepts in a similar way when I am working one on one with the student so they can learn braille. Our school district also has curriculum documents that outline what should be covered in each week in a course. When general educators follow these, it is easier for me to figure out how materials need to be adapted in the classroom and how I can beat assist the team. I also love it when teachers share their lesson plans with me in advance! It really helps me to ensure I am assisting the team in the most efficient way possible.

147
  1. 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?

The biggest way teachers can adapt instruction to ensure students with visual impairments can apply their understanding of language structure in a variety of different contexts is to guarantee that the student with a visual impairment always has access to written language. This means providing materials in braille, large print, or ensuring the student has the proper magnification device/supports in order to access the reading material. On top of this, for our students that primarily use a screen reader on a laptop, there are certain screen reader commands (such as navigating letter by letter, having the word spelled aloud, etc.) they can use to bring awareness to how words are written or spelled. In addition, a refreshable braille display could be connected to take what the screen reader is saying and provide braille output. No matter what, in order to increase our student’s awareness to written syntax and text structure, we need to ensure that they have access to written output.

148

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?

Preparing for instruction is vital for teachers. The module reviewed types of planning which included daily, small group and collaboration. The third type of planning, collaboration, seems to be the most important for TVI’s working with students within the general education environment. The general education teacher and the TVI must work hand in hand to ensure instruction is not only being covered, but it is being taught in ways that mirror each other. Both teachers should use the same jargon for continuity. It might be necessary for both teachers to meet weekly or bi-weekly for planning purposes. With each teacher having different background knowledge, collaboration would be useful for both parties. This essential communication between teachers will result in more meaningful academic instruction. Last year was my first year working exclusively with students with visual impairments, while I was earning my degree. I worked closely with the general education teacher for the student with visual impairments who was on my caseload. We collaborated and talked all the time. One of the most beneficial things I believe we did was the teacher shared her lesson plans with me. I was able to see what the plan was and if there was anything I had a question about we were able to talk through it! It was really great, especially as a “first year” TVI!

149
  1. Considering the interconnectedness of decoding and language comprehension highlighted in Scarborough’s Reading Rope, how might teachers identify and address specific areas of weakness or gaps in understanding for students with visual impairments, particularly in phonological awareness and decoding?

The statement that spelling reinforces reading more than reading reinforces spelling was an “ah ha” for me. I know that they go hand in hand but never really thought about it in that way before.
I think that it is especially difficult in todays growing technology to enforce the importance of spelling because “spell check” and “predictive text” make it so easy to not have to spell. However, now I am rethinking how important it is for READING.
I have always had had HFWs and Vocab words for my students to learn, but don’t always emphasize the spelling practice until the end of the year. However, now I am thinking that I should do more of it. I can have them verbally spell and decode even if they can’t braille or write, yet.
This helps explain why one of my students last year had an obvious whole in her understanding of the connection to braille letters (print) and phonetic sounds. She was able to write whole sentences when we spelled the words, but was unable to name the letter when we gave the sound. She could tell us what sound a letter made and identify beginning sounds that were the same.
In the future, I will be sure to check for understanding in both encoding and decoding. Teachers can identify specific areas of weakness or gaps in phonological awareness and decoding by having a daily routine that incorporates both reading and identifying letter sounds from print or braille to decode and using that knowledge to spell words by sound whether that be in print, braille, or verbally naming the letters.

150

Hello Faye,
I like your idea of the treasure box. It sounds similar to what Claire said about the “concept of the day”. I like how you expand it by having the student write sentences using the words they came up with. This is an excellent way to incorporate the decoding aspect.

151

What a great way to really incorporate all aspects of teaching beach/water fun. I think it may be easy to forget or overlook what concepts students may not have an actual idea about. Something that may be obvious to others, may actually not be. I really like how you thought of lots of different concepts, especially sounds! I think it is very important to consider all aspects when building background knowledge. A shovel is not a 2-D picture, yet many of students may have only been exposed to it that way.

152

I love your idea of using simulation glasses. I have been a special education teacher for the past 18 years, but will begin my career as a TVI this coming school year. I have already been thinking of what I can do for the students in my school system as a way of introducing them to new faculty and staff. I think it would be so important to set the standard at the beginning of a school year as far as expectations from all teachers points of view. This is especially important for faculty and staff who have not worked with a student who has a visual impairment. There are so many layers!!

153

MaryAnn -
Thank you for providing a list of ways to provide background knowledge and vocabulary in real-life experiences. In my post I just talked about one of the ways that I use real-life experiences and tactile exploration in the classroom setting. I have copied yours to to remind me of the other ways that I had not thought of. We are fortunate in our area we are in close proximity to NABA, Northeast Association for the Blind where they offer monthly and summer week long day camps and home visits through out the year, one of the many activities/services they do is cooking skills. I am interested in these activities with my students but never have the opportunity to have first hand experience with cooking with my students with visual impairments. This year I have a student in the middle school and they will be taking a home economic class which will involve kitchen usage, table setting and food preparation. I am excited to be able to be part of this instructional experience with my student this coming school year.

154

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?
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?
Considering the interconnectedness of decoding and language comprehension highlighted in Scarborough’s Reading Rope, how might teachers identify and address specific areas of weakness or gaps in understanding for students with visual impairments, particularly in phonological awareness and decoding?
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?

  1. Ways that instruction can be adapted to low vision might include highlighting punctuation at the ends of sentences. Most questions begin with the W/H words so highlighting the endmark and the first word with the same color could help to understand and recognize questions. Exclamations and excitement, statements and periods. Visual or braille, students can sort a variety of sentences or statements to match the correct endmark. Another way might be to provide rich examples of accurate use alongside poor examples then discuss both. This could be done using “I do, you do, we do”,
  2. Providing real-life experiences whenever possible is best but when you can’t take the child to the experience, bring the experience to the child. When teaching about a concept, bring related items into the classroom. For example, when learning about airplanes, invite a pilot, bring a pair of pilot wings,a piece of seat belt material, little packages of airplane snacks, sounds of airplanes taking off, dress like an attendant. Set up an “airplane” in the classroom and project a “flight”. Talk about what they saw, felt, heard. If they are going on a flight, show a video of a flight experience and talk about what the airport might be like. Children with no light perception will hear the experience and can discuss what they hear. Exposure to books about the concept with explicit instruction may be needed to show low vision or braille users the structures of different types of texts so bring in nonfiction books about flight making sure the books are enlarged and/or braille. Preview the text with the child Discussing the purpose of specific text structures can evoke conversations about the text. These conversations can engage students in purposeful opportunities to build on background knowledge in real time, purposeful discussion to evaluate understanding of text and opportunity to reinforce or correct understanding. During a sorting activity, provide real items that would be connected to air flights to sort rather than pictures then provide large print text or braille labels. Talk about how each item is used and other places or ways that the items can be used.
  3. Teachers can identify specific areas of weakness and strength in so many ways- through observation, informal and formal assessments, listening to conversations between the student and peers, talking to other team members, analyzing work and through interactions with the student. As an itinerant, when I see a gap or misunderstanding, I often can address the gap quickly (within 1-2 lessons). I might address it through a game that elicits conversation or through the use of an audio book supported by a large print text or braille text. If possible and if there is a huge misunderstanding, I might set up a field trip to expose the student to a real-life experience so they gain a better understanding. In a small group field trip or personal experience (student and myself), we can more easily explore these experiences up close and more thoroughly to fill in the gaps.
  4. Collaborative planning can be so difficult when you are an itinerant teacher. Schedule weekly 10 minute virtual meetings to get vocabulary and topic for the week. I am lucky to get a meeting scheduled for the beginning of the year to go over the child’s needs, supplies and how I can support the classroom teacher and student so it is extremely important to make meetings quick and focused if I can get a 10 minute meeting weekly. The more severe a student’s needs, the more open to collaboration most teachers are.
    I do follow content grade level standards on topics that are used as supplemental reading materials to my lessons for students whose gen. Ed. teachers are not able to set a time to meet. Getting the “big picture” classroom topic for the week, or month, I can tie my lessons into what the classroom was doing. In braille or print, using the vocabulary and spelling words, in any material I am using can invoke conversation about the fact that this is what is being learned in the classroom even if the child is looking for which word is different.
155

Experience boxes or book bags are such a great teaching tool. It does take a lot of time to put these together and I have asked my district for professional development time to work on these. I am building a library of these and I rotate them throughout the classroom of my students. I agree that as an itinerant I, we need to rely on collaboration in a different manner- showing/teaching/providing so that others are able to support our students when we aren’t there.
I have seen night and day differences in students whose aides are present during our sessions and then continue the instruction use of materials and practices when I am not present as opposed to students whose aides do not join us and supplies I have left just sit on a shelf when I am not there.

156

I have done things like the braille box before but just to have students improve tactile exploration experiences with only 1 item and they had to identify the item. I love the way you expanded on brushes. I have used hair brushes and toothbrushes but I never thought about expanding the concept. I am going to build a brush box adding a bottle brush, a straw brush, a paint brush- OH MY! What an easy way to expand ideas and build conversations! Now I am thinking of so many ways to expand this idea, for example-shells: sea shells, shell macaroni, shell of a building, living in your own shell. Obviously some of these are higher level concepts but what a way to build understanding and knowledge.

157

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?

I find that when working with students with low vision or blindness, it helps to preteach ideas and concepts. This is exponentially true when the student is also and ELL student. Preteaching ideas and concepts allows for greater understanding during classroom instruction. I like to use book boxes and identifying/defining vocabulary that might be hard for the student before a new story, book or activity.

158

Follow through of skills when the TVI is not present is so important! Skills increase so much more when the student is viewed as a part of the class and has high expections for growth!

159

I have sent story bogs home with students and the parents, even thought I thought the understood that the whole bag was like a library book- enjoy it then send it all back and I will send another one- the bag came back with the book only and all items were gone. I now send the books home but keep the “experience” items for classroom or instructional use.
Some books and materials can be very expensive to put together.

Periodically, different schools clean out their bookrooms. I have been able to get big books and small copies of the books. I make experience bags with the multiple copies. This allows individual -up close use of the book for multiple children and the whole class can expereince the experience bags.

160
  1. 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?

This past year, I worked closely with a 2nd grade general education teacher in all areas of the curriculum. The student in her class was an emerging braille reader who is also an ELL. After trying out a few different methods of collaboration, what ended up working out best was that the teacher would send me her lesson plans every week for the following weeks. I would review the gen ed lesson plans (including key vocab) and offer adaptations/modifications for each subject. I also would look at the key vocab from SCI/SS and work on developing the the word recognition during our vision pull-out sessions. Although it wasn’t perfect, I think it helped my pull-out lessons to build upon what the gen ed teacher was teaching. My student had significant growth with her English language comprehension (auditorily) this year and was also able to connect some of this to word recognition in braille!

161

Hello! I love that you were able to work closely with your VI student’s gen ed teacher this year. I have realized that the more “in-sync” the members of a student’s IEP team are, the more growth that student typically makes! It helps so much when everyone is on the same page and reinforcing the same concepts.