Science Adaptations for Students who are Blind or Visually Impaired

Teaching Students with Visual Impairments

SCIENCE ADAPTATIONS

By: Carmen Willings
teachingvisuallyimpaired.com

Science typically provides students with a variety of opportunities to explore and examine real materials closely.

In Early Childhood Classrooms and Self Contained Rooms
The science station, area or room is also a great area to house class plants and pets if your school permits. Caring for pets and plants is excellent way to learn about life science as well as responsibility. Students who are blind or have low vision can participate in experiments and gain experience with measuring, balancing and weighing a variety of materials when provided with simple material adaptations or modifications. Incorporating concrete experiences within the natural environment can provide students with a greater understanding of their world (seasons, wet and dry, plants, and insects). Providing a variety of magnification devices for closer examination will benefit sited students as well as students with low vision.

Importance of Collaboration
It is essential for the classroom teacher to collaborate with the Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments (TVI) on the upcoming curriculum. Collaboration can take place in a variety of ways, but ideally, there should be a beginning of the year discussion about the topics for the year/semester. What concepts are going to be introduced? What concepts will need to be reviewed? Working together as a team, they can develop strategies to create concrete experiences and adapt materials, models, and charts that meet the students unique learning and visual needs.

Incorporate Tactual Exploration and Fine Motor Development
The science area naturally provides students with the opportunities to develop their tactual exploration and fine motor skills through the exploration and manipulation of real materials. Students can: stroke small animal’s hair while caring for a class pet or studying animal life; squeeze a spray bottle to water class plants; pull weeds and snip old flowers when discussing plant life; or mold clay or dough into cells or DNA.

Incorporate Low Vision Devices
Students can practice using low vision devices in science to: Go on a rock hunt and examine and label the rock collection; compare fingerprints; compare and categorize stamps in a stamp collection; examine miscellaneous collections of student interest or themes; study and compare leaves; and study nature on a nature hike.

Incorporate Visual Skills
There are also many fun ways to encourage students with low vision to use their vision within the science area. You might consider collecting items in one color to study. Create an I Spy box by scattering theme related materials in a box. Provide student with duplicate items and challenge him to locate the match. Have the students look at changes while melting ice cubes, making ice cubes, watching flowers bloom and watching snowflakes melt. Study the movement of water in puddles, in fish tanks, rain drops on the window, dew on leaves, grass and flowers, by filling plastic bottles with water.

Incorporate Concepts
Purposefully incorporating concepts such as size (small, medium, large), quantity (many, few), texture (hard/soft, rough/smooth), temperature, moisture, smell, taste, sound/pitch, comparison terms, and empty/full is natural within this station. Incorporate positional concepts such as in/out, on top of, underneath. It will also be natural to incorporate listening to and follow directions when performing an experiment (begin with simple one-step directions and progress to more difficult two step directions). Also encourage students to recognize, identify, and imitate sounds like those of classroom pets.

Provide a variety of materials

To closely examine: Include rough, smooth, hard, soft, scratchy, bumpy, crispy, hot, cold, warm, cool, and tepid. Include rocks, minerals, shells, leaves, pine cones, plants, stones.
To examine with: binoculars, electronic magnifier, hand-held magnifiers, and microscope
To measure with: rulers, talking scales, and tape measure
Explore colors with: color paddles, prisms, and color wheels
Class Pets: fish in aquarium, insects in cages, and small animals in cages or terrarium

Additional Science Resources...

Perkins School for the Blind hosts a site entitled "Accessible Science" that is a great resource on making each area of the science curriculum accessible. Additionally, they offer classroom printouts on accessible science experiments.

The American Chemical Society is an independent membership organization for chemistry professionals. It distributes free training materials about classroom modifications for students with vision loss as well as other disabilities.

MOLinsight is a web portal to open- source software. It offers free software that allows a screen reader user to access an electronic version of the periodic table and a free program that reads aloud the visual configurations of atoms and molecules.

The National Center on Accessible Instructional Materials provides information for students with sensory, physical, cognitive, or learning differences and their teachers about accessible instructional materials.

National Center for Blind Youth in Science is an initiative of the National Federation of the Blind. Users may find information about how to adapt science lessons, where to find accessible math programs, and what non-visual techniques are most effective in the STEM areas.

SciTrain provides free online courses for high school math and science teachers to train them to be more effective instructors for students with disabilities.

Adapting Science for Students with Visual Impairments: A Handbook for the Classroom Teacher and Teacher of the Visually Impaired.
This resource book from APH provides suggestions in making operational science activities accessible to students who are visually impaired or blind. It includes an advance preparation checklist to alert teacher to safety issues. It also includes a skills checklist to ready the student for laboratory and classroom activities.

Science Materials

The student who is blind or visually impaired will typically need some accommodations in order to safely and fully access the science curriculum. This page provides suggestions for science materials that are adapted for the student who is blind or has low vision.

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—Henry Ford

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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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