Posts

Showing posts from 2017

Holidays!! Perfect Time for ADL Skills in the Kitchen

Image
Holiday time for all children is very exciting: school parties filled with sugar, traveling to visit family, presents, and extra time at home. Holiday time is the PERFECT time for families to support development in the ECC (Expanded Core Curriculum) area of ADL (Activities of Daily Living) especially in the KITCHEN. Keep those little minds and hands busy over the break while having fun and building concepts! **Challenge for adults: STEP BACK when possible. Your child should be hands on during all parts of the activity by either direct touch/manipulation or utilizing hand under hand (child's hand rests on top of adult's hand). Introduce parts of a microwave by making popcorn Things to do: Apply a bump dot to the add a minute or 30 sec button Introduce to parts of the microwave allowing time for hands on exploration Have child help gather needed materials (popcorn, bowl, etc.) Picture: Bump dots on microwave panel Skills/Concepts (just to

Snowman Scavenger Hunt

Image
Snowman Scavenger Hunt (Photo credit: Alfa image. Description: snowman made of 3 paper plates with 3 black circular buttons, carrot nose, black circular eyes, and arms that look like sticks with mittens made of construction paper. Snowman also has a red hat made of construction paper). For this post, I'd like to highlight one of our Orientation and Mobility service providers, April Gasper. April has been working as a TVI since 1988 and in the O&M field since 2013. She is a Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist through ACVREP and has been a service provider for Allied Instructional Services (AIS) for 5 years. As a landmark reinforcement activity during the winter months, a snowman can be dissembled into his three parts: each a paper plate with appropriate accessories. One paper plate with top hat and face, another with buttons and arms, and the last with boots. These can be made with features that are tactual in nature or have bold, contrasting colors for the

5 Little Turkeys: A Distance Scanning Activity

Image
                                    Picture description: Picture of 4 cut out paper turkeys with bright feathers and numbers 1-4  on their bellies lined up in a row from left to right. We all know visual efficiency skills play a role in our students with low vision. Sometimes, as TVI’s, we need to help our students learn to use the vision they have more efficiently. Visual efficiency is how an individual uses their current vision. Vision efficiency skills are a set of skills that help a student with learning tasks and understanding their environments.  Visual efficiency skills include visual discrimination, visual memory, eye-hand coordination, visual imitation, visual attention and fixation, visual closure, and visual tracking, scanning, and tracing. One of the visual efficiency skills that I, as a TVI and O&M Specialist, continue to need to work on with my students is visual scanning.  Not only do we need to scan for reading at near distances, but we need scanning

Sensory Integration Activities for the Season

Image
(Picture is of a 'Sensory Turkey'. It is a Turkey shaped base with multiple feathers. Each feather has a different texture.) This week in the blog post we are going to explore different ways to expose students who are blind or visually impaired to different sensory activities of the Fall Season! Keep in mind that many of these ideas incorporate Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy Skills, so it could be fun to collaborate with other professionals on these activities!  They also can include Orientation and Mobility or Body Awareness Skills. If doing this activity with a student, always check for allergies prior to making the activity as many of the Fall recipes can include nuts, gluten, or other allergens! Since Halloween is just passed, many of you probably carved pumpkins. If you painted or left the pumpkin whole, here are some activities you can do to introduce your child to the many parts of the pumpkin. (Picture is of a divided dish with 7 compartments, 6 o

Wrapping It Up

Image
2 children wearing sleep shades use white canes to navigate a tactile trail As Blindness Awareness month comes to a close, I wanted to highlight an elementary school that leveled up. After posting my previous blog last month sharing ideas about how to celebrate people who have visual impairments while also creating awareness, thoughts started flowing through a particular elementary school in Georgia! (I remain vague for confidentiality) The paraprofessional who works with my student wanted to put together a day honoring and building awareness for our student and others who have visual impairments. It takes many hands to put together an entire day of activities and she was an incredible orchestrator! Here is an overview of the day: White Cane Safety Day The art teacher designed a t-shirt which were sold to the staff to wear  A gentleman from the community brought his guide dog and spoke with the class The PE coach set up bouncy houses, tactile trail, and played games stude

Catching Up

As a teacher of students with visual impairment (TVI) and certified orientation and mobility specialist (COMS) for over 17 years, many of my students have graduated and made it into the “real” world. Some decide to go to college, obtain a job, or take a break to figure out what their next step might be. Some are far beyond that next step and now have families of their own, a career, and are living life to the fullest! As a teacher, I always wondered where life has taken them and what life looks like now. I had a chance to interview a former student of mine, who now has a family of her own. I began working with her when she moved into the school district as a 6 th grader. Graduating from high school at the top of the class, she earned an academic scholarship to the University of Colorado in Boulder. She received her first guide dog the summer after graduating high school. Goalball was a passion- playing for the United States Paralympic Team who traveled to Finland, Sweden, the Un

GOAL!

Image
Stick figure drawing of a Goalball player https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Goalball_pictogram_%28Paralympics%29.svg/768px-Goalball_pictogram_%28Paralympics%29.svg.png I've always loved sports, I've always played sports, and I've always loved watching sports. From the moment I understood my options for my career and life as an adult, I dreamed of becoming a teacher and a coach. I accomplished my first goal right away and now have been a teacher of students with visual impairments for 19 years. I always I thought I would coach Field hockey or Soccer, the more traditional sports, my high school and college favorites.  But, my career experiences led me in a new direction. My first opportunity to be a coach was in 2002.   I was named the Girls Goalball coach at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind from 2002 to 2005. This coaching experience was life-changing for me. Not only did get to learn about a sport that is truly competitive and erase

What is the Expanded Core Curriculum and How Do I Explain it to Others?

The Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) is toolkit that extends the academic curriculum for every person who is blind or visually impaired. Often, we find that teachers or administrators outside of our field have no idea what it is or what it does! It is important to help educate teachers, administrators and the students on all the benefits of the ECC. Another important piece of the Expanded Core Curriculum is the freedom it grants our students! By mastering these skills, students who are blind or visually impaired will have the ability to compete in academics and everyday life without feeling held back or disadvantaged.  To being, let's look at the areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum. You will notice that ECC areas are not the same as academic areas. These skills are learned through direct and repeated instruction to assist in development of skills not acquired through incidental learning. Below you will find the Expanded Core Curriculum areas with a brief description of the skills