SENSORY EFFICIENCYBy: Carmen Willings
teachingvisuallyimpaired.com Sensory efficiency skills includes instruction in the use of residual vision, hearing and other senses including use of tactual, gustatory, and olfactory input to identify one's personal possessions, or use hearing and other senses to identify people. Areas the student may need instruction in or consultation in include maximizing their use of vision, developing gross motor skills, developing fine motor skills, developing strength, stamina, and endurance in legs, arms, and hands, identifying textures tactually and underfoot, identifying kinesthetic and proprioceptive sources and identifying olfactory sources. Visual Efficiency SkillsThis page provides an overview of skills for visual efficiency. These include visually attending, tracking, shift of gaze, scanning, visual discrimination, visual motor and visual closure.
Visual Attend & Scan ActivitiesVisual attending skills are important skills in laying a foundation for all other vision skills. This page provides suggestions and strategies for helping students visually attend and scan.
Visual Tracking ActivitiesVisual tracking skills skills will help a student read as well as prepare them for safe and efficient travel. This page provides suggestions for encouraging students to use their vision to the highest extent possible.
Visual Discrimination ActivitiesVisual discrimination is the ability to recognize details in visual images. It allows students to identify and recognize the likeness and differences of shapes/forms, colors and position of objects, people, and printed materials. This page provides visual discrimination activities.
Visual Motor ActivitiesVisual motor skills are the skills to coordinate eyes and feet as well as eyes and hands. It is the coordination of vision with the movements of the body. A student with a visual impairment may need assistance in developing and facilitating gross motor movement, pointing to a destination or object, and in performing fine motor activities. This page provides visual motor activities.
Optical Device UseMany students who have visual impairments will be print readers and will use print as their primary mode of communication. The teacher of student with visual impairments (TVI) will assess the student's functioning and determine what non-optical devices will assist a student in accessing print and instruct the student in the proper use and care of the devices.
Low Vision Device ActivitiesMany students who have visual impairments will be print readers and will use print as their primary mode of communication. This page provides activities that can help students learn how to use low vision devices in order to access print.
Tactual ReadinessThe development of tactual exploration and discrimination skills are necessary for future braille readers as well as for students who may not be able to learn formal braille, but can learn to discriminate objects by touch to help make sense of their world or to use for communication. This page lists the general order of the development of tactual skills.
Developing Skillful HandsAll students need to develop strength and dexterity to complete everyday tasks. It is important for students to manipulate materials and develop their fine motor skills. This page provides suggestions on ways to develop skillful hands.
Auditory ReadinessListening skills are important for everyone, but especially for students who are blind or visually impaired. This page provides strategies in developing a students auditory readiness, a skill needed to lay a foundation for listening skills.
Listening Skills InstructionSince listening skills will be a major source of information for a student who is blind or visually impaired, it is important to develop good listening skills when the child is young. This page provides strategies for developing listening and auditory skills.
Listening Skills ActivitiesSince listening skills will be a major source of information for a student who is blind or visually impaired, it is important to develop good listening skills when the child is young. The following are some listening skill activities to use with students.
If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn. -Ignacio 'Nacho' Estrada |
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TVI's Guide to Teaching the ECC: An Activities Based Curriculum for Teaching Students who are Blind or Visually Impaired
$50.00
Written specifically for fellow itinerant Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments (TVI’s), this book 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. The core activities listed in the Activity section can be adapted to each thematic unit. These include:
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. Unique Concepts within the Units include:
Although the intended audience of this resource is fellow Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments, special education teachers may find these activities beneficial to the students in their classrooms as the activities are multisensory and include life skills and concepts needed by all students. This resource, however, is not intended to take the place of a Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments (TVI). Readers are advised to consult their own TVI’s regarding instruction in the ECC and the unique visual needs of the student’s served in their programs. Note: This curriculum is a digital pdf download. Once you make your purchase you will be directed to an order confirmation page where you will find the download link. This download will also be included on the receipt sent to the email address you provide. The pdf download can be found directly under the order number. Each download is intended for single instructor use per copyright. Thank you for helping me preserve the content and not distributing copies to third parties. Product details Digital pdf download: 364 pages (11 pt font) Publisher: Teaching Students with Visual Impairments Author: Carmen Willings Language: English 
Visual Efficiency & Magnifier Fluency Grab & Go ECC Supplements
$20.00
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 supplement 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. Visual Efficiency & Near Magnifier Fluency Worksheet Details: Digital pdf download: 210 pages Publisher: Teaching Students with Visual Impairments Author: Carmen Willings Language: English |
