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SIDPID Strategies

By: Carmen Willings
teachingvisuallyimpaired.com
June 12, 2022
Students with severe and profound disabilities learn best through natural environments and routines and a functional curriculum that is activity based. It is important to think about skills the student will need to learn to be as active and engaged member of their home and community. Although a parent may plan to care for a student at home after graduation, many students will live in care facilities. It is important to focus on teaching independent living skills and social skills to ensure the student is cared for and not neglected. You will want to ensure you find ways for the student to be engaged in enjoyable activities, make friends and find interests that they can have for life.

Age Neutral Instruction

Unless you have infants and toddlers are your caseload, these toys are not appropriate. for students. Instead create or purchase age neutral toys or switch activated materials.  You can ensure topics and lessons are age neutral when you use facts, real topics, real objects.

Literacy Rich Environment

As you help create environments, be sure you create a literacy rich environment. Label areas and materials with objects, pictures, print, or braille labels so a student knows where to find materials and where to return them while you promote literacy. Label cubbies and hooks with the student’s name along with any other personal items or areas. Adapt readily available books or create tactile and object books for the student. Provide audio books and particularly those that are read by actors or authors as opposed to synthetic speech. Interactive sensory books and PowerPoint books are another literacy opportunity you can create for the student. I will share strategies for creating these later in this presentation.

Use Routines

Use routines to help the student anticipate activities. In addition to helping the student prepare for and predict activities, they are a means to encourage communication. Routines naturally have a clear beginning and an end, so they provide an opportunity for modeling and reinforcing communication. They are predictable and you can embed target vocabulary. Once a routine is learned, help the student generalize the skills and apply it to new situations.

Role Enrichment

As you work within teams, learn the terminology and practices of other disciplines. Not only will this help expand your knowledge and understanding to better support your students, but by learning information about the roles and practices of team members you demonstrate your willingness to be a team player. Your willingness to listen and learn from others will not only help you support your student but may make team members more willing to listen to you. While you should always be ready to share information and offer support, be just as ready to listen & learn as other team members share information.

Work Alongside the Special Education Teacher

By working in the classroom, you can model instructional strategies and provide feedback on how to support the student. While you can provide suggestions and help set up sensory areas and provide strategies for encouraging the student to use their vision throughout the day, remember they can provide great input to you as well. They can let you know what activities the student is having difficulty with, and let you know what motivates the student or how to best address any negative behavior. By working within the classroom, you can collaborate with the teacher on activities and interactions for all positions so there is always something for the student to interact with. By collaborating and working alongside the classroom teachers and therapists you will be able to best meet the student’s visual and learning needs.

Physical Therapist

If the student receives physical therapy, you will want to collaborate with the physical therapist on positioning. They can share the different positions the student needs to be in throughout the day, and how to make them the most comfortable so the student is then able to use their vision. I find physical therapists will also want strategies on what materials to present and how to present them so the student will hold their head up or be motivated to walk to obtain an item. Collaborate with the teacher and physical therapist on activities that can be presented or sensory areas or active learning stations for each position or location during day. It’s also helpful to collaborate with them on how to divide daily activities in order to alternate between different positions and movements.

Occupational Therapist

The occupational therapist can provide great strategies and material suggestions to meet the student’s sensory needs. Work together to determine the best adapted materials such as plates, cups or spoons to promote mealtime independence. If the student has CVI you may want to obtain materials in a certain color or that have certain visual features that will help the student locate and identify the material. Other students may need high contrast or textures incorporated. Through collaboration you can best identify strategies and materials that will facilitate participation in all activities of daily living. Through mutual support and collaboration, you can also work on shared goals to encourage the development of fine motor skills, sensory development or those that will prepare the student for braille instruction.

Speech and Language Pathologist

You will want to work closely with the speech and language pathologist to learn the current communication methods and also when communication systems are being determined. You will be able to give input on what the student is able to visually access, the size of print needed, the type of pictures used and how spaced apart they need to be or if the student needs objects or braille. This also applies to any type of schedule that is used in the room. While you will be able to provide input to support the speech and language pathologist, don’t forget to glean information from them as well. I have probably gotten the best activity suggestions from speech and language pathologists over the years including ideas for teacher made activities and the use of interactive sensory stories. You may find a shared speech and language and vision goal is appropriate for some of your students.
While I have collaborated with speech and language pathologists on many students, one student in particular stands out. She had a degenerative muscle disease and had lost all muscle control including her eye muscles leaving her with exotropia. A blink was her only means of communication as she could blink to indicate “yes”. In an effort to provide her with a means of communication and to interact with activities, we were trialing an eye gaze board with her. My role was to help her with visual tracking to view all her choices and to maintain a visual fix long enough to make a selection. This is just one example of a shared goal that may be appropriate.

Meet Sensory Need While Learning

When working with the student, be flexible and adjust instruction to meet the student’s sensory needs. Pictured on this slide is one of my students. Her happy place was in a classroom therapy swing. Rather than forcing her to come to the table to work on skills, I would use an iPad and bring it to her. Forcing her to work at the table was not a necessary battle. Why not bring the iPad or activity to her in the swing so she could receive the sensory input she was seeking while I introduced vision activities? 
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