As an early childhood professional, I have often used touch to model and encourage exploration. As I was moving through the module I was reflecting on my use of hand over hand, positioning, and the amount of unintentional force or control I placed upon a student. While I was well intentioned, I see that sitting across from a student and trying to model caused me to “hold on” to the student, versus having them “hop on” while modeling. I also see that when you aren’t able to see or fully perceive what someone else is doing to your body, the child may have been more focused on what was happening than what I was trying to help them explore. I think this is a simple fix to make and in line with what my approaches with other students have been. Sitting behind students, encouraging them to hop on my hand and feel where I am exploring, seeking consent and respecting a signified No (whether it be verbal, physical, gestures, etc). Also talking through what I am doing and WHY I am doing it can be so helpful! My hope is that this will provide the student with autonomy while also teaching them that no one has the right to move their body without their permission. I also hope this provides the student the opportunity to focus on the task at hand and not wonder what is happening to their body.
Yes! I have found collaboration incredibly helpful in supporting all students, but especially BVI students. I also find it incredibly frustrating that the pace of instruction and time constraints limit our time spent supporting student needs. I’ve always thought that it’s important to develop tactile literacy, but after this module I see exactly how important it is and think the more we can advocate for this in early school, the more supported our students will be
I also appreciated the document and how it provided a well rounded view of student development and guidance on where to go next.
“All learners can learn at their functioning level”, Yes! I love this quote. I once heard David Koppenhaver say that there are no prerequisites to emergent literacy. If you are breathing, you can learn, and you don’t even have to be breathing on your own. I truly hope that this understanding of meeting students where they’re at, developing the skills they need (tactile literacy skills as an example), and helping students be functional becomes a focus of all educators, not just those that take a keen interest in the area.
question 3: When I think back to working with less sighted students and my CVI students, I may provide too much tactile support unintentionally. One student I think back to was a non english student recently blind due to illness. It was very easy to assist him with hand over hand to understand new concepts, braille contractions etc. i never thought I was taking the experience from him but thought I was assisting more. After reading the articles, I find I need to be more aware of giving the opportunities to learn without as much guidance. I need to increase active touch and explore throughout the lessons more. Providing more time for the student to assess and problem solve, giving the think time and processing time before any intervention. I can provide touch to offer feedback or information as a signal and allow the students to gather information more independently, providing more confidence, independence and understanding of the environment they interact in.
I agree with what you have said with HUH techniques. I find it provides so much more opportunity for learning experiences with just a little guidance. it allows the exploration and exposure to the tactile material, allowing them to explore at their own rate. I find not only with visually impaired students but all students this approach gives confidence and greater independence leading to greater success.
Such a great article. I hope more educators can take this knowledge and allow students to learn at their functional levels to develop the skills that are so very important to them. I often think it should be second nature, and so often it isn’t. Too many are always teaching to the test, and to expectations but not individual needs to be met and desired.
Hi Jennifer,
I really appreciated your reflection, especially your honesty about looking back on your previous experiences and considering how a more intentional tactile approach might have benefited some of your students. I think many educators can relate to that feeling of recognizing new possibilities as we gain additional knowledge and training.
I also found your observation about students preferring to use their vision interesting. Even when students have some usable vision, the ETLP reminds us that tactile skills still need to be intentionally assessed and developed, particularly because tactile learning does not always develop naturally. Your point connects well to the article’s discussion of “splintered” skills, where a student may demonstrate one tactile skill but struggle with related skills that appear similar on the surface.
I agree that one of the greatest strengths of the ETLP is its collaborative nature. Having teachers, family members, and related service providers contribute observations can create a much more complete picture of a student’s tactile abilities across environments. This team-based approach can help identify gaps that might otherwise go unnoticed if we relied on observations from only one setting.
Lacey
Hi Dionne,
I enjoyed reading your post and agree that collaboration is essential for developing tactile skills. I especially appreciated your emphasis on the distinct roles that teachers, families, TSVIs, and occupational therapists play. Tactile learning is most effective when students have opportunities to practice skills across settings, so consistency between school and home is critical.
I also think you made an important point about the barriers to collaboration. Inconsistent communication and a lack of shared understanding can make it difficult for team members to support tactile development in the same way. Even when everyone has good intentions, students may receive mixed messages or inconsistent opportunities to practice skills if the team is not working toward common goals.
Your suggestion of providing families with simple, practical activities to use at home is especially valuable. Families often spend the most time with students, and everyday routines such as cooking, dressing, sorting objects, or exploring household items can provide meaningful tactile learning experiences. When families understand the purpose behind these activities, they can become active partners in supporting skill development. Thanks for sharing!
Lacey
I love the Early Tactile Learning profile, ETLP. What I love the most is that the evaluation piece can help you find the splitter skills/gaps. We know that all students no matter their level of vision or academic need will have splinters even in skills gained sequentially. The ETLP will allow teachers to use the resource list to support weak/needed areas of early tactile learning.
These skills will eventually need filing in, unfortunately we sometimes don’t Know about gaps until we are mid lesson.
Take for example a student learning to learn Braille and is to learn to search the paper for the two lines he needs to locate. Having done the profile gives us this information so we can teach needed splinter skills.
For me with a young braille reader, this means regularly evaluating tactile needs using the resources in the ETLP to teach any skills, and using the resources to share information with the multidisciplinary team.
Being flexible in what comes next in your lesson sequence will be key. If a splinter skill is found, a new lesson maybe planned to address the needs. Bringing in others providers may also be helpful.
Such an important skill for us Kelsey. It’s also hard to teach others this. I love the idea of sitting behind the student. My current student is totally blind and I have found the lightest touch on his elbow paired with "would you like to see?‘’ or " can I show you " removes some of his trepidation. Sharing these words with teachers to use as , puts them at ease and gives the child the power to decide.
I’ve also learned old fashioned side by side play paired with vocal explanations of what I’m doing will sometimes encourage independent. exploration from the student.
Dionne! Yes! Yes! Not only do breakdowns in collaboration impact the team as a whole, the impact act the student’s development. Collaboration is key for us to be on the same page.it allows those that can’t bein the classroom every minute to know what is happening, answer questions, and help others.
I love collaboration with the classroom teaches to be able to make sure we can help make activities, all those early ed visual activities, accessible to our kids.
My favorite part of your comment is collaboration and providing families with strategies. The family has the most impact in the evenings and weekends with our students, and if we can work together with them, we will have a better chance at supporting them and build good relationships to continue teaching our students..
The Development of Tactile Skills
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Reflect on how educational teams (teachers, families, specialists) collaborate to support tactile development. Where do breakdowns typically occur, and what could strengthen this collaboration?
While parents and caregivers are a child’s first teachers, many are simultaneously navigating their own emotions and perceptions regarding their child’s visual impairment or blindness. For some families, the process of accepting a diagnosis involves grief, uncertainty, and adjusting expectations. As a result, explicit development of tactile skills may not initially be a priority.Additionally, many children with visual impairments have multiple disabilities and complex medical needs that require ongoing interventions and appointments. In these situations, families are often focused on immediate health and safety concerns, making literacy-related skill development seem less urgent.
This is why early intervention is so critical. Early Interventionists have the opportunity to build trusting relationships with families and provide practical, meaningful strategies that support the development of early tactile concepts and literacy skills within everyday routines. They can also help caregivers develop realistic expectations by emphasizing that tactile learning often requires repeated experiences, consistent exposure, and additional time to master concepts. Through collaboration, encouragement, and family-centered support, Early Interventionists can empower caregivers to become confident partners in their child’s tactile literacy journey.
I also work in a school district using the itinerant model and time constraints, and scheduling can be challenging. Many times, finding a place to work with the student is difficult. Different schools also have different expectations of when to pull a student for direct instruction, and general educational teachers are so busy that they might not be able to communicate that the student is absent or that a class party or assembly is happening when you get to the school to work with the student. I feel that when staff understands these challenges they are more willing to appreciate your time to work with the student on these tactile concepts.
I also have similar struggles with students with low vision, and especially students with progressive eye conditions. Many students want to use their eyes to read braille and tactile graphics rather than build their tactile skills. It can be extremely challenging, and I have had to collaborate with parents (if responsive) to integrate rewards systems at home for effort at school.
I am curious to see how much this resource could help.
You raise such an important and often uncomfortable truth — that the assumption of vision loss as the primary explanatory variable can mask or delay recognition of other learning needs, and that by the time the full picture is acknowledged, a student has already lost years of appropriately targeted instruction. I’ve seen this play out as well, and it speaks directly to a systems-level gap that collaboration alone can’t fix if the underlying evaluation framework isn’t asking the right questions early enough.
Your point about splintered skills really resonates with me. In a residential setting, one advantage we have is that we can observe students across multiple contexts throughout the day — not just in a structured lesson. Sometimes it’s those informal observations, a student who can recite braille letters but can’t apply them in a new context, or who struggles to generalize a concept learned in one setting to another, that first raise a flag that something beyond VI-specific instruction needs to be examined. But even then, getting the team to act on those observations in a timely way is its own challenge.
I think your point also pushes back on something important in how we frame tactile literacy instruction broadly. Exposure and access are necessary but not sufficient. The hierarchy you referenced — from concrete experience to abstract symbol — assumes that the underlying cognitive scaffolding is developing alongside the tactile exposure. When it isn’t, we can inadvertently spend years providing the right materials in the wrong instructional framework. That’s not a TVI failure; it’s a systems failure to build evaluation and placement processes that keep pace with what the student is actually showing us.
What you’re advocating for — earlier recognition, more comprehensive evaluation, and a genuine willingness to name additional disabilities — should be standard practice, not something families and TVIs have to fight for year after year.
You make a valid point about students with low vision in general education being among the most underserved. The masking piece is particularly tricky — these students are often managing well enough on the surface that the urgency for collaboration feels lower, even when real gaps are quietly widening. By the time those gaps become visible, the student is often older and less receptive to supports that feel remedial.
Your co-teaching idea is one I’d love to see more TVIs push for. When a TVI is embedded in instruction rather than pulling a student aside, it normalizes multi-sensory approaches for the whole class and leaves the general educator with strategies they can use independently — a much more sustainable model than hoping our consultation notes get implemented.
From a residential school perspective, what we have that itinerant TVIs often don’t is proximity and repetition across the full day. But even in our setting, collaboration breaks down when residential staff don’t feel confident reinforcing tactile skills without explicit guidance. Regular meetings help, but they need to include shared language and shared goals — not just updates — so everyone feels equipped to carry the work forward, not just the TVI.
Your approach of previewing and reviewing concepts through a tactile lens is exactly the kind of intentional bridge-building that makes collaboration meaningful rather than just logistical.
All of this. I completely agree and really love the urgency you pinpointed about the need for and the absence of the space to teach tactile graphicacy skills within the current educational systems particularly in public education. There also seems to be a lack of understanding in educational teams about the meaningfulness of tactile graphics and how much those skills can benefit our students’ lives within education but also out in the world which is critical for students with visual impairments. I appreciate your advocating!
I fully agree with advocating for greater emphasis on the sensory building approach with Sensing and Learning! Those skills don’t come naturally, especially for those with a sensory disability and they’re so important for access and success.
On a separate note, I’m envious of your using the Monarch! I had access to one at my previous district, but I highly doubt I will ever be able to get one at my current district. They are incredible versatile tools.
- Reflect on how educational teams (teachers, families, specialists) collaborate to support tactile development. Where do breakdowns typically occur, and what could strengthen this collaboration?
It is very important to collaborate within the educational team to help get the most support for the students. I communicate with teachers in core subjects, electives, and other related services staff to ensure my students needs are being met. I have a student that is working on shapes and matching colors in class. She is also working on hand eye coordination. The IEP teamed worked together to develop a shoe box that we made black with yellow opening on top of the box (CVI child). We put Velcro on top and can place objects the same color on top of the Velcro to stick, and request the shape we are wanting. The child will pick up the object and place in the yellow whole. This has incorporated the whole team and helps to ensure the child is getting the services and help she needs. We also communicate with the parent about homework I create for braille and task the student could work on at home. This can be a challenge at times and the breakdown can occur when people don’t want to communicate or do their part to ensure the student is working on the task given. I try to make sure that I have good communication with staff and always come from a place of caring and needing help. They are usually very open and want to help. I make sure everyone input is heard and considered.