We asked, you answered. Here are a collection of teacher comments made on the AFB Press Facebook page in response to the question, "What is your best advice or success about teaching reading skills to children who are blind or visually impaired?"
“When I first became a TVI [teacher of students with visual impairments] I had a group of teens who were not very motivated to read or write. This was many moons ago and they wanted computer games for the brand new classroom computer (I won't tell you what kind but it had a "2" in the name!). The staff at the school had made a cookbook several years before and I wanted one. They were long gone. So, I got my students to go to staff and ask them to contribute recipes to a cookbook, they then typed them up and printed them out. They used Print Shop (see told you this was eons ago) to make a cover and divider pages. They assembled the cookbooks and sold them. They got the money for the computer games and to this day I still have my cookbook. This activity incorporated other skills such as O&M to find staff, social skills to ask for recipes, money skills etc. I was doing the ECC [Expanded Core Curriculum] before we even had the ECC in so many words!”
- Penny Rosenblum
“I liked using Legos to learn braille. And, turning print into braille, and then back again. A complex process, best used with short paragraphs.”
- April Brown
“I use the echo reading strategy with my braille students. We read and re-read the story together with the student reading just behind me until the story "sounds like talking." Fluency is very important in moving from decoding to comprehension.”
- Natalie Stewart
“I love finding books that my students will love! I love seeing their passion for reading come through a good book and their reading speeds increase, because they just can't put the book down. I love using parts of different curriculums and putting their theories in the classroom materials. I love using technology, especially the refreshabraille. Technology always grabs my students especially when I can link it to an iPad or laptop!"
- Jennifer Sexton
“I’m a teacher and during my study children’s literature I discovered a missing link in books for the youngest blind children. Adapted picture books are hardly available, and if available, the content is by far not comparable to the regular picture books. Therefore, I designed a method to adapt a picture book with tactile pictures and braille for visually impaired children.
Additionally I added a reading manual on how to use the picture book when reading aloud to blind children. This way the young child can be made familiar with a wide range of stories and their figurative language. Teachers, parents, but most important children are very exited about the first edition! See ?www.PrentenboekenPlus.nl”
- Collete Pelt
“I work with students with a vision impairment and other activities. I like to use real life experiences so I use project based learning and I-M-Able (Wormsley). I have created a make a sentence activity so that my student can make her sentence then braille it on her Mountbatten. I am working on a make a word activity currently for my student's key words.”
- Gillian Pilcher
“It is important to me to apply any skill I teach to real life. If I can connect my students to the skill in an authentic way that applies to their life now, then I feel like I have done my job and helped that student be more successful. They also "own" the skill and use it without me, instead of only using it when they are in my class.”
- Denise Robinson
For tips on teaching reading to students with visual impairments, including classroom activities, check out the AFB Press book Reading Connections: Strategies for Teaching Students with Visual Impairments by Cheryl Kamei-Hannan and Leila Ansari Ricci, available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and the AFB Store.
What tips would you add? Share your ideas in the comments.
