COMMUNITY BASED EXPERIENCES

By: Carmen Willings
teachingvisuallyimpaired.com
Updated February 26, 2016

Community outings are a perfect way to provide students with hands-on experiences and opportunities to touch, taste, hear, see, and smell within their natural environments and are important components of the student's educational program! 

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Not only do field trips provide direct experience with real places and enforce concepts, but they also provide students with basic community and transportation skills including use of public transportation specific to your area and exposure to ways of navigating throughout unfamiliar buildings through the use of building maps and elevators and escalators.  Field Trips, or community outings, should have advance preparation (group time discussions) and follow-up activities incorporated into the various curricular areas. As part of your preparation, have students think about what they want to learn and help the students prepare a list of possible questions that they could ask. 

Prepare in Advance for the Visit

​When visiting a theater, museum or any other exhibits, you may want to notify someone on the staff that a student with a visual impairment will be attending.  If they are told in advance, the staff may be able to make arrangements for the students to go beyond the museum barriers or to touch some of the exhibits. Be considerate and provide the staff with ample time to prepare for your visit. This will also provide time for the staff to develop unique experiences and opportunities for your students.

Explore Environmental Braille

​For future or current braille readers, be sure to point out and explore braille signs found in the community. Direct contact with environmental braille is important in becoming familiar with where signs are typically located and also helps the student to transfer their skills to other environments (Braille on elevators, bathrooms, braille menus). This exposure to ADA signs is equally important to students who have remaining vision. They are uniform signs that provide all people with understanding and access to information. Print and symbols are in good contrast and simple font.

Record the Experience

​During some experiences, you may want to record an account of your adventures onto a cassette tape or other electronic device.  These can be kept on the bookshelf and listened to whenever your students choose. Make an “auditory experience album” by recording events and experiences on cassette tapes; review the album occasionally as you would a book or picture album.

Build Concepts

​During the community visit, talk with the student about the experiences and encourage items and sounds to talk about and compare them, such as:  the car motor is quiet and smooth; the bus has a high step, and is noisy, and can make you bump around; the counter is high and smooth. Provide opportunities for the student to have many experiences over time and variations of those same experiences, such as:  tactual experiences with all kinds of chairs; rides in all kinds of cars, buses, subways, trucks, tractors, trolleys, and boats. In the community, use tactile, auditory, olfactory, and visual exploration accompanied by meaningful verbal descriptions. This will help them make sense of the world around them.

Visual Awareness

​Encourage students to use their vision as they scan to locate items, buildings, and people. Scan a map to determine where places are located in a city or within a building. Scan to locate and identify street names, building numbers, and bus numbers. Encourage tactual discrimination and fine motor development by having the student push open heavy doors, push buttons on elevators, activate features in a museum, etc. Provide opportunities for the student to read a variety of menus in the appropriate medium (print or braille). During your visits, be sure to take pictures, obtain any related objects, and record sounds.

Possible Community Outings

• Airport
• Bakery
• Bowling (bumper bowling)
• Camping trip
• Children’s Discovery Museums with hands on exhibits
• Concert
• Convenience stores
• Farm (where animals can be touched)
• Fast food and sit down restaurants
• Firehouse and police station
• Fishing at a pond or lake
• Grocery store
• Local Library for story time
• Movie Theater (some theaters provide descriptive videos)
• Museum of Natural Science (Some museums will arrange to come to your class and bring animals)
• Nature walks with interaction with the environment (putting arms around a tree trunk, wading in a stream, collecting leaves or shells or stones, smelling pine trees, comparing the shapes of leaves, feeling the different flower shapes, etc.)
• Pet stores or animal rescues
• Post office
• Roller Rink
• Spectator Sports
• Superstores
• The mall

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TVI’s Guide to Teaching the ECC: An Activities Based Curriculum for Teaching Students who are Blind or Visually Impaired
The TVI’s Guide to Teaching the ECC is a digital pdf available for download. It is designed specifically for fellow itinerant Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments (TVI’s), and consists of over 400 activities and topic areas of discussion for instructing students in the Expanded Core Curriculum. The activities are age-neutral and multi-sensory and therefore can meet the needs of the broad range of students served on an itinerant caseload serving. The activities can be individualized to the students various learning modalities and scaffold in order to challenge students but ensure success. Select those activities that align with the student’s learning objects based on the student’s unique visual needs and academic and developmental level. In addition to the core activity areas, each of the 32 Thematic Units incorporates additional unique ECC concepts and skills providing you with a years’ worth of activities. These units are cyclical and can be used repeatedly to help students build on prior knowledge and develop a deeper understanding of concepts. Each unit includes suggestions for activity adaptation associated with the unit. These include lists of objects, possible community-based experiences, environmental print, poems, children & young reader books, children's songs, pop culture songs, movies, and websites.


In addition to the book, the following two supplements are included:
·      TVI’s Guide to the ECC Concept Checklist
·      TVI’s Guide to the ECC Activities Checklist


For complete product details and additional images, visit the TVI's Guide product page.


TVI's Guide to the ECC Product details
·      Digital pdf download: 346 pages (11 pt font)
·      Publisher: Teaching Students with Visual Impairments
·      Author: Carmen Willings
·      Language: English


Visual Efficiency & Near Magnifier Fluency Worksheets: TVI's Guide to the ECC Grab and Go Supplements
The Near Magnifier Fluency Worksheets is a Grab and Go supplement to the TVI's Guide to Teaching the ECC. This workbook is a pdf download that can be printed on demand for use with students. It contains five different types of worksheets for developing visual motor skills and near magnifier fluency skills particularly with the use of a video magnifier. As a companion to the TVI’s Guide to the ECC, the worksheets correspond to each of the 32 ECC Thematic units. The worksheets, along with a list of environmental print for each thematic unit, are designed to help students refine their visual motor skills while reinforcing ECC concepts presented in the thematic units.  


For complete product details and additional images, visit the Visual Efficiency & Near Magnifier Product Page.


Visual Efficiency & Near Magnifier Fluency Worksheet Details:
·      Digital pdf download: 210 pages
·      Publisher: Teaching Students with Visual Impairments
·      Author: Carmen Willings
·      Language: English


Thematic Keyboarding & Braille Fluency and Maintenance Worksheets: A TVI’s Guide to Teaching the ECC Grab & go Supplement
The Thematic Keyboarding & Braille Fluency and Maintenance Grab and Go ECC worksheet packet is a print on demand workbook that contains worksheets in print and simulated braille to use for data collection. Present the student with a hard braille copy and use the worksheets to document accuracy and fluency in reading braille. As a companion to the TVI’s Guide to the ECC, the worksheets correspond to the ECC Thematic activities presented in the curriculum guide. These word lists and sentences will help the student refine their keyboarding or braille reading skills while bridging ECC concepts presented in the thematic units. Although the lists and passages can be produced using a manual braillewriter, you may also copy and paste the passages into any braille translation software for quick production on an embosser. They may also be entered into a typing program such as APH’s Talking Typer to build keyboarding fluency.


For complete product details and additional images, visit the Thematic Keyboarding & Braille Fluency & Maintenance Product Page


Thematic Keyboarding & Braille Fluency Worksheet Details:
·      Digital pdf download: 338-page print and simulated braille worksheets
·      Publisher: Teaching Students with Visual Impairments
·      Author: Carmen Willings
·      Language: English


Thematic Vocabulary Cards and Checklists: Grab & Go ECC Supplement
The Thematic Vocabulary Cards and Checklists Grab and Go ECC supplement is a 446 page pdf downloadable print on demand workbook that includes 2940 vocabulary card on 3 1/2" x 2" templates divided by each of the 32 Thematic Units along with a checklist of each unit words in print and simulated braille. As a companion to the TVI's Guide to the ECC, the vocabulary cards correspond to the ECC Thematic activities presented in the curriculum guide. 


Additional Use:
Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments can have a extremely varied caseloads. It is possible to go several years without having a student on your caseload who requires braille instruction. Like other skills, if you do not practice your braille regularly, it is easy to lose those skills. Use these checklists and cards to maintain your braille skills. Fold the checklist along the line dividing the print from the braille. Choose to either read the print and produce the word in braille using a braillewriter or read the simulated braille and decode it. Finally, these vocabulary cards and checklists may be used with family members or peers who are interested in learning and practicing the braille code.


For complete product details and additional images, visit the Thematic Vocabulary Cards & Checklists Product Page


Thematic Vocabulary Cards and Checklists Details:
·      Digital pdf download: 446-page print on demand resource
·      Publisher: Teaching Students with Visual Impairments
·      Author: Carmen Willings
·      Language: English


BONUS!
Lotto Cards
The LOTTO Cards Grab and Go Supplement includes 37 theme related unit cards along with activity suggestions that support activities within the TVI's Guide to Teaching the ECC.


On My Way File Folder Cards
Print and use these cards to represent locations the student may visit that are related to the current thematic unit. Use these with the On My Way File Folder Game outlined in the TVI's Guide to Teaching the ECC p. 27.

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