Re: [AERNet] Dual Readers
Shelley, Ah yes. The joy of trying to squeak out enough time to actually sit down and teach. If I can snatch a kid right out of Early Intervention and the student looks like print and Braille would be the way to go, I set up identical lessons in print and Braille. Then I present them at the same time. We go over what the letter or whatever looks in both mediums. Then we "check" one system against the other. Is the Braille right? Is the print right? The advantage to this is the reading student learns to accept the two systems as natural; it may also help them set up for new technology down the road. The disadvantages are it slows down the lesson, requiring more instructional time. It also means the TVI spends more time Brailling. I worked with a little one, no useful vision, from the time she was 6 months old. As the subject interested her, we spent a lot of time describing how blind people performed an activity and how sighted people do the same thing. In preschool the teacher was talking about telling time. At the time I was wearing two watches--a raised dot for her on one wrist, and a print for me on the other. My student called me over and grabbed my wrists. This is how blind people tell time, she announced, carefully lifting the crystal and patting the dots. Replacing the crystal gently, she then pulled on my hand, jammed my print watch up against her eye and declared this was how sighted people tell time. Ow! By the time she hit kindergarten she could print her name in both Braille and print. It was funny to watch her be all officious and ask if this was for a sighted or blind person and if they want it in print or Braille. Laura Nickolainear Syracuse, NY
Laura,
It is very helpful when the issue is congenital. But most of mine are not.
Stargardt's in 3rd grade or 5th grade. Brain tumor at any age. The list
goes on. Then it's playing catch up.
Shelley
On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 11:15 AM, lnickolai@juno.com lnickolai@juno.com
wrote:
Shelley,
Ah yes. The joy of trying to squeak out enough time to actually sit down
and teach.
If I can snatch a kid right out of Early Intervention and the student
looks like print and Braille would be the way to go, I set up identical
lessons in print and Braille. Then I present them at the same time. We go
over what the letter or whatever looks in both mediums. Then we "check" one
system against the other. Is the Braille right? Is the print right? The
advantage to this is the reading student learns to accept the two systems
as natural; it may also help them set up for new technology down the road.
The disadvantages are it slows down the lesson, requiring more
instructional time. It also means the TVI spends more time Brailling.
I worked with a little one, no useful vision, from the time she was 6
months old. As the subject interested her, we spent a lot of time
describing how blind people performed an activity and how sighted people do
the same thing. In preschool the teacher was talking about telling time. At
the time I was wearing two watches--a raised dot for her on one wrist, and
a print for me on the other. My student called me over and grabbed my
wrists. This is how blind people tell time, she announced, carefully
lifting the crystal and patting the dots. Replacing the crystal gently, she
then pulled on my hand, jammed my print watch up against her eye and
declared this was how sighted people tell time. Ow! By the time she hit
kindergarten she could print her name in both Braille and print. It was
funny to watch her be all officious and ask if this was for a sighted or
blind person and if they want it in print or Braille.
Laura Nickolai
near Syracuse, NY
That was so awesome! That was my point exactly. I wanted to learn print as a child and I had a teacher who understood and taught me. I still to this day, try to read raised print on anything I can get my hands on. Just recently, I saw raised print on a building and read that there was a foot doctor and a dentist in the building where my nutritionist has her office. If I had not learned print to use the optacon and before that, to read my dad's headstone, I would have missed out on a lot of things. The same holds true that if I had been able to learn to read large print visually but couldn't keep up with the speed of fully sighted people, and had not learned Braille, that would have been a disadvantage for me. There were fringe benefits of reading Braille (under the covers and/or in the dark when I had homework to do and had to keep up or when the story was so good I couldn't put it down like The Old Man And The Sea, when I was in high school.
Marcie Brink-Chaney CVRT
Visually Impaired Services
Detroit Receiving Hospital University Health Center
Detroit Medical Center
Phone: (313)745-4131
Email: mbrink-c@dmc.orgmailto:mbrink-c@dmc.org
From: lnickolai@juno.com [mailto:lnickolai@juno.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2017 11:16 AM
To: smackbrl@gmail.com
Cc: Brink-Chaney, Marcie A; aernet@lists.aerbvi.org
Subject: Re: [AERNet] Dual Readers
Shelley,
Ah yes. The joy of trying to squeak out enough time to actually sit down and teach.
If I can snatch a kid right out of Early Intervention and the student looks like print and Braille would be the way to go, I set up identical lessons in print and Braille. Then I present them at the same time. We go over what the letter or whatever looks in both mediums. Then we "check" one system against the other. Is the Braille right? Is the print right? The advantage to this is the reading student learns to accept the two systems as natural; it may also help them set up for new technology down the road. The disadvantages are it slows down the lesson, requiring more instructional time. It also means the TVI spends more time Brailling.
I worked with a little one, no useful vision, from the time she was 6 months old. As the subject interested her, we spent a lot of time describing how blind people performed an activity and how sighted people do the same thing. In preschool the teacher was talking about telling time. At the time I was wearing two watches--a raised dot for her on one wrist, and a print for me on the other. My student called me over and grabbed my wrists. This is how blind people tell time, she announced, carefully lifting the crystal and patting the dots. Replacing the crystal gently, she then pulled on my hand, jammed my print watch up against her eye and declared this was how sighted people tell time. Ow! By the time she hit kindergarten she could print her name in both Braille and print. It was funny to watch her be all officious and ask if this was for a sighted or blind person and if they want it in print or Braille.
Laura Nickolai
near Syracuse, NY
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