5 Little Turkeys: A Distance Scanning Activity
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 skills for searching and looking for items in our environment at distances. Increasing the efficiency of our scan can increase reading speed and allow for more efficient environmental scanning which keeps us safer as independent travelers.
So, I have included an activity for distance scanning with a seasonal theme that I use with my students.
Materials:
Turkey template (see picture below)
Feather template (See picture below)
Fluorescent card stock
Markers
Painters tape
Glue stick
Scissors and kid scissors
Stopwatch/timer
Open space 10 x 10 (wall free of clutter)
Extension activity materials: Monocular
Audience: elementary school students working on scanning activities at far.
Directions for scanning activity:
1. Gather materials. Print out turkey templates. Cut out turkey's bodies. Write numbers 1 through 5 (or beyond, tailor to your students) onto the turkey's belly.
2. Print out feather template. Make tracing template. Have students trace feathers onto bright fluorescent construction card stock and cut out. Two feathers for each color. Orange, yellow, green. (You can pre-make turkeys ahead of time if you don’t have a lot of time.)
3. Glue feathers to the back of the turkey.
4. Take a painter's tape make loops to put on back of turkeys to allow for wall placement.
5. Place turkeys in order 1 through 5 (or whatever your numbers you are using, or you can use letters, etc.) about an arms or shoulder height of your student along the wall.
6. Explain that when we search for objects/things we always look for these objects/things starting on the left side and moving to the right as we move our eyes from top to bottom. I demonstrate this pattern by pointing to each turkey following the pattern.
7. Place a piece of painter’s tape on the floor anywhere from 5-10 feet away (adjust for your student's needs) and have your student stand there facing the turkeys on the wall.
8. Have your student walk up to turkeys on the wall and visually touch each turkey from left to right. I tell him to touch the turkey's belly. (Extension Activity add-on for more movement: You can add onto this activity by placing the turkeys slightly higher and having the student jump up to touch the turkey for a second round having them focus on the left to right scan. Then you can place turkey's lower and have the students bend down or squat. (My students love jumping for the turkeys.)
9. Continue activity until the student can quickly and easily touch each turkey 1 through 5 on the wall.
10. Next, mix the turkeys up along the wall. Mix the order, so they are not in numerical order. Have the student stand at the painter's tape you have placed on the floor. Then, call out numbers 1 through 5 and have the students start from the spot of painter's tape on the floor run up to touch the called-out turkey. Before you call out the number, set a timer so you can time the student for each trial and how long it takes them to locate each set of turkeys. Emphasize that they need to look in the left/right pattern to locate the numbers as quickly as possible trying to beat their own time each trial.
11. Repeat, keeping time for each trial and keeping track of how long it takes the student to scan and locate the numbers. (For younger kids, you could put symbols on the turkey bellies instead of numbers.)
10 . For an extension activity for monocular use: Have the student scan the turkeys left to right calling out the numbers they see as they scan left to right with the monocular. You can also do a vertical line of turkeys doing the same asking the student to start from the top and call numbers out as they go to the bottom turkey and vice versa.
Picture description: Student (young
girl with blonde hair) holding a monocular
up her right eye looking toward a wall,
from a distance, with 4 paper turkeys lined up
in a row along this wall.
Please modify this activity as needed, I hope you find this activity fun and useful!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I am thankful for all of you TVI's and O&M Specialists out there!
~Gwyn
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