Vision Skill - Tracking/Scanning - Kristin Dibler

Tracking & Scanning

Tracking is the ability to visually follow horizontally, vertically, and diagonally without head movements and with smooth eye movements. This is an important skill for reading. 

 

Scanning is the ability to visually search for an object and then systematically from one object to another. This is important for scanning text when reading.

These skills tend to overlap at times, which is why they are listed together. In order to properly scan, you must be able to properly track in all directions. For students with visual impairments, we teach them the systematic tracking & scanning approach, which is top to bottom, left to right - the same pattern we follow when reading! This skill can be important for students with unstable eye movements, and/or vision field loss.

Visual

Paper activities-

   -dot to dots

   -mazes

   -tracking worksheets - letters, shapes, numbers, etc.

iPad activities

Hidden Pictures or Look & Find books

EyeCanLearn.com

   Clown Tracking

Auditory

Verbal description of specific activity

Verbal description of techniques

Verbal review of areas for improvement, skill improvement

Tactile

 Paper activities that involve drawing-

   -Dot to dots

   -Mazes

iPad activities that involve tactile input

Bodily-Kinesthetic

Hide & Seek related games in various environments

Eye Spy in various environments 

Educational Articles - Jackie Steer

The Secret to Making Learning Fun



The importance of Kinesthetic play

Between the Lines Advanced Lite

 

Between the Lines Advanced Lite HD

By Hamaguchi Apps for Speech, Language & Auditory Development

Description

Hamaguchi Apps for Speech, Language & Auditory Development presents this groundbreaking iPad app designed for adolescents-adults who would benefit from practice interpreting vocal intonation, facial expressions, body language, and idiomatic or slang expressions. Using real photographs, voices and short mini-video clips of a variety of social situations and expressions, this app provides a dynamic way to help learn and practice interpreting the messages that are “between the lines” and simply can’t be replicated with worksheets and static flashcards. Scenes for the body language activity include a shopping mall, office, restaurant, family room, outdoors, school and party.

This Lite app provides 12 samples of each of the three activities for a total of 36 tasks and is for a single user only. (The full version provides 225 total tasks)
This app uses American expressions and body language.

 

Teaching & Learning through Multiple Intelligences - Jackie Steer

Teaching & Learning through Multiple Intelligences
Campbell, Linda; Campbell, Bruce; Dickinson, Dee

ABSTRACT:

In his studies of human capacity, Howard Gardner revealed a wider family of human intelligences than previously suggested. Noting that restricting educational programs to focusing on a preponderance of linguistic and mathematical intelligences minimizes the importance of other forms of knowing, this book presents strategies for creating open systems of education utilizing the multiple intelligences philosophy. The book's introduction details each of Gardner's seven intelligences and what the book offers in terms of addressing each intelligence. The succeeding seven chapters correspond to each of these intelligences: (1) verbal-linguistic intelligence and learning processes, focusing on speaking, reading, and writing; (2) logical-mathematical intelligence, focusing on teaching of logic, mathematical processes, working with numbers, and sequencing; (3) kinesthetic intelligence, focusing on drama, creative movement, dance, manipulatives, classroom games, physical education, and exercise; (4) visual-spatial intelligence, focusing on pictorial representation, flow charts, visualization, board and card games, architecture and the visual arts; (5) musical intelligence, focusing on singing, musical notation, curriculum songs, and musical instruments; (6) interpersonal intelligence, focusing on positive interpersonal environments, conflict management, learning through service, appreciating differences, multiple perspectives, problem-solving, and multicultural education; (7) intrapersonal intelligence, focusing on self-esteem, goal setting, thinking skills, emotional expression, and self-directed learning; (8) "Curriculum Development through the Multiple Intelligences," focuses on lesson planning, apprenticeships, and teaching for understanding and (9) assessment that enhances learning. (SD)

Vision Skill - Braille - Kristin Dibler

 Braille Instruction

One important skill that I teach is Braille. We are required to teach Braille for students with a diagnosis where they currently have severe vision loss OR if they have a prognosis where their vision will progressively diminish. Most of my students that I am currently working with do have functional vision, but their diagnosis is progressive, meaning in the future they could lose most of, or all of their functional vision.

There are a variety of skills involved with Braille, not just learning the letters, numbers, contractions, etc. You must enhance tactile identification skills, tactile tracking skills, learn to read and write Grade 1 Braille, and then Grade 2 Braille.

It is important to incorporate a variety of modalities for Braille instruction, not only to provide a variety of activties and to touch a student's preferred modality, but to also ensure that the student's tactile sense is not "overwhelmed". For Braille learners, their fingertips can become sore and sensitive, until they work on prolonging their tactile skills.

Visual

Braille Flashcards - enlarged image of contraction

Color-in Enlarged Braille Template

Tactile books, papers, etc. with images

iPad activities for Braille contraction learning

Auditory

Verbal review of lesson, contractions

Verbal identification of flashcards or Braille images

Tactile

Braille Flashcards - actual Braille contraction

Braille images

Tracking Paper

iPad activities for Braille contraction learning that involve tactile selection

Braille using Brailler

Bodily Kinesthetic

Board activities-

 Select/circle the appropriate contraction

 Draw the contraction

 Match print letter(s)/number(s)/word(s) to appropriate Braille contraction

 Pictionary - draw image of contraction or a word containing the contraction 

Braille Code

Auditory Dominance and Its Change in the Course of Development -- Sue Bank

Auditory Dominance and Its Change in the Course of Development
Christopher W. Robinson and Vladimir M. Sloutsky

Child Development, Vol. 75, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2004), pp. 1387-1401

ABSTRACT:

Young children often have a preference for auditory input, with auditory input often overshadowing visual input. The current research investigated the developmental trajectory and factors underlying these effects with 137 infants, 132 four-year-olds, and 89 adults. Auditory preference reverses with age: Infants demonstrated an auditory preference, 4-year-olds switched between auditory and visual preference, and adults demonstrated a visual preference. Furthermore, younger participants were likely to process stimuli only in the preferred modality, thus exhibiting modality dominance, whereas adults processed stimuli in both modalities. Finally, younger participants ably processed stimuli presented to the nonpreferred modality when presented in isolation, indicating that auditory and visual stimuli may be competing for attention early in development. Underlying factors and broader implications of these findings are discussed.

To view this article, please click on the title above to link to source website.  

This study reports on the shift from auditory preference in early childhood to visual preference as children develop.  Modality preference is demonstrated as relevant to educators with any population.

--Submitted by Sue Bank

Bodily-Kinesthetic - Jackie Steer

A bodily-kinesthetic learner uses their body and senses to explore the world around them. These students like to think out their problems while they are moving and learn best when they are taking a hands-on approach. The best example that I have in my classroom to tap into a student's bodily-kinesthetic learning style is when my students are out in their practical experience in a real preschool setting. These students are actually learning by doing. In this setting, all four learning modalities are covered; movement, tactile, visual, and auditory. 

They have similar responsibilities that reflect a teacher's assistant. Learning modalities is such an  important topic to cover for my highschool students to learn because they need to know how they learn best so that they can be successful. They also need to realize that children learn in many different ways and it is their job to plan and adapt for a variety of intelligences in the preschool classrooms. 

Everyday, the preschool children engage in a fine and gross-motor activity. What better way to see the value in movement, then to watch it first hand with the children that they are teaching. A special part of our curriculum is adapting gross-motor activities for developmental delayed children because we work in a preschool special education setting. These children are getting an early intervention in all areas of development. The high school students really appreciate the fact that they get to see children improve their skills as time goes by. Most of the activities that the high school students plan and develop work on the preschoolers fine-motor skills. When they are creating their activities, they are the ones that practice on each first before they carry it into the preschool classrooms.

Although it is not always possible to have my students get up and move in a lesson, I try very hard to incorporate some form of movement so that they are interacting with their environment. Bodily-kinesthetic learners perform a task much better after seeing someone else do it first such as myself, the instructor and the preschool teachers that they work besides. The Early Childhood Care and Education task list has a lot of competencies to teach, for each skill I provide many opportunities for my students to explore. Many situations that occur in a childcare setting can be practiced in a role-play scenario which we often do in my theory classroom.

 An obstacle course is one of the best ways for the preschool students to work on their gross-motor skills!