Dual Media Learners: Instructional Strategies and Assessment

of 19 ______Dual Media Learners: Instructional Strategies and Assessment

[ROBIN SITTEN] Hello everyone. This is Robin from Perkins school to the blind just welcoming everybody as you come in. You will notice several people are introducing themselves in the chat room and we invite you to do the same. We will get started right at the top of the hour. Thank you everybody for joining us. Today is Thursday, September 25, 2014. My name is Robin welcoming you to today's presentation with Anne Spitz, Dual Media Learners.

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Today's presentation is by Anne Spitz and will provide an overview the characteristics of dual media learners, who benefit from instruction of both braille and print strategies for instruction and assessment. Before we get started, let me review a couple of things quickly about the technology. To keep noise levels under control, we have muted your lines, but a question-and-answer space will be provided on your screen shortly. Post your questions as they occur to you during the webinar. If we are not able to answer them all in the space of this event, Anne has agreed to follow-up afterwards.

We will use this virtual meeting room for audio, so make sure your volume is on and turned up. External speakers or personal headphones give the best audio. You do have individual controls for your screen for audio and video so feel free to expand or contract the individual frames as you need them. Sometimes you may notice that the audio and video of our speaker are not in sync. This has to do with connectivity and bandwidth and wireless connections can be particularly sketchy. It is not something we can control on our end so if you find that a little distracting or disturbing, you can minimize the video window. That can help.

This event will be recorded and available tomorrow on the Perkins website, including a read-only of the slide presentation. Thank you for joining this event. We appreciate your feedback and topic suggestions. It is my pleasure to introduce today’s speaker. Anne Spitz is an itinerant teacher for the visually impaired working in the Boston public schools. After spending several years in the early childhood field, she began a career as a teacher of the visually impaired. For the past nineteen years, she has worked with children who are blind and/or multiply handicapped in preschool, resource and itinerant settings, and public schools and collaboratives. She has developed specific interest in braille literacy, technology, and dual media learners. Anne, if you will unfreeze your screen and I’ll unmute your microphone and you will have the floor. Welcome.

[ANNE SPITZ] Alright, so I am very pleased to be here today to talk about something that I in recent years have found helpful, strategy assessment and share ideas to find something that is worthwhile for you. Page 2 of 19 ______

The times have changed. It used to be that previously either you had a student who would learn braille or print, not both. Now we have some learners who benefit from both print and braille.

Determine learning media assessment based on functional vision assessment and learning media assessment. A tool that I want to put out there for people to use is the Federal Register/IDEA. This is just a snippet. The IEP must, in the case of a child who is blind or visually impaired, provide for instruction in Braille and the use of Braille, unless the IEP team determines, after an evaluation of the child's reading and writing skills, needs, and appropriate reading and writing media, including an evaluation of the child’s future needs for instruction in Braille or the use of Braille, that instruction in Braille or the use of Braille is not appropriate for the child. I think what’s important there is knowing that it indicates future needs as well.

We might see a child for whom it is not really clear for us whether braille will benefit them or not. We have to consider what their life will be like, especially if they have a degenerative eye condition, what the future needs will be. This document can also help teams to understand what the law says in regard to educating children who are blind and visually impaired in regard to reading instruction and it explains the need of what needs to be assessed, although it doesn’t say specifically, as I recall, learning media assessment, it does explain the need for assessment around literacy and learning media.

It goes on to address that a certified teacher of the visually impaired is providing the service and instruction, and it is not based on teacher availability, but on student need. This can be distributed to special education directors, principles, team members at the beginning of the year when it comes time for IEPs, or distribute it along with the expanded core curriculum, this can be listed under the additional information in the IEP section where you can say you have this document in the child’s file.

I like to pass this out at the beginning of the year because it allows readers to know what we are dealing with in regards to the law, and what we are providing for our students, and why. This can be definitely a piece of literature that can be helpful to try to get the job done.

Just a reminder that when we do the functional vision assessment, conducted upon initial eligibility, after change in visual functioning, or at least every three years.

[Inaudible]

Let us see what that does. We are going to give this a go. Hopefully we have our audio problems figured out here.

Alright. In looking at the characteristics of dual media learners, we do oftentimes see students, this is not the case always, but we do see dual media learners who have Page 3 of 19 ______degenerative eye conditions. They might have retinal detachment or the possibility of retinal detachment. They might have retinopathy of prematurity. They might be a student with Stargardts or retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration. We might also see children who have severe or restricted fields. I've also seen children for whom it is a combination of field restriction and reduced acuity that really impacts their ability to access printed materials.

We also see in dual media learners, we want to see that they demonstrate the ability to tactually discriminate shapes. And we are looking at, oftentimes, that a student’s reading rate and fluency are below their peers. We are talking about sighted peers there.

What are the challenges of dual media when we are providing instruction? Service delivery - how are we going to provide it? It is not doubled the time just because it is double the media. Coordination of literacy instruction - who is teaching it and what are they teaching, when are they teaching it? Is that the TVI, classroom teacher, combination? The integration of Braille and print in the classroom can be challenging. What if you bring Braille into the classroom? Use of materials - how you are producing them and how you are acquiring them. And sometimes getting the team on board can be challenging.

But it is so worth it. This means that we have more literacy tools for students. It empowers them to determine when to use which medium. That might be not at the current moment, but as they get older, they become more proficient in both of them - both print and braille, or in various situations. For example, a child may be doing a poster in social studies with a group. They may do headings in large print and they have their presentation in braille, so they're using a combination for the presentation. This also facilitates the maximum learning for the student. Maybe they still do their math in print, but their ELA and language arts is in braille.

It increases the availability of materials and technology. The increase of materials and technology is there for them, whether it is using the iPad in conjunction with braille or being able to download books and to put them on a braille notetaker.

Anne Swenson and I have done a presentation of braille literacy and included dual media as what we found teachers are increasingly interested in. We came up with the acronym of TIME – T for time, I for instruction, M for motivation and E for expectations, in order to discuss dual media learners.

And looking at TIME more in depth, we look at time. How much service time should I provide? How do I find time to teach Braille? How do I integrate Braille into the curriculum?

In regards to that, I would encourage people to look at the professional consensus on instructional considerations for students in Braille literacy programs. This was written up many years ago by Akanick and Holbrook and it is a chart that is included in the Page 4 of 19 ______information they gather based on professionals experience in the field in regard to Braille instruction for Braille readers and Braille print readers.

What they found was that for the most part, professionals were providing, for Braille readers and Braille print readers, daily instruction at 1 to 2 hours per session, throughout at least one school year. That is something to keep in mind as we consider our Braille print readers.

Instruction - what approaches can I use to teach braille? Commercial or teacher designed. How do I balance fluency with learning the code? Which is more important - fluent reading and knowing the entire code?

Motivation - how can I motivate my students to learn Braille?

Expectations - what are the goals of Braille instruction? How will Braille benefit my student in school and after high school graduation as well? In looking at time, can you teach Braille once a week? The reality is that we really cannot. We really need to consider the time we are providing for students. I know it can be challenging as a teacher of the visually impaired, especially if the child is learning print as well as Braille. We have to think about the consistency and the number of weekly sessions and the duration of the sessions. We need to think about the role of the paraprofessional. It has been my philosophy that paraprofessionals working with students who are Braille readers or dual media learners should also be learning Braille. I currently have a paraprofessional right now who knew a little bit of Braille when I began working with her. Every day we try to make a time where when I'm working with a student, she is able to do an online Braille course for a little bit of time. It has been amazing in just a few short weeks to see how much she has been able to learn and how beneficial it is with a student with whom she is working.

You can have paraprofessionals who can also reinforce the braille skills your teaching. I will give some suggestions in a few moments around that. You might vary the intensity over several months. In some cases, you might have an older student, maybe middle school or high school, where you use a study period. Sometimes students will get a grade for the Braille course that they’re working on and that can be a motivator. It might during in standard or extended school year time. It could be that you have to increase, for dual media learning, the amount of time initially and then you can spread out the service or decrease service over time as they learn the Braille code.

You might to see them before afterschool. You have to be creative and use your imagination sometimes when working with certain students, especially students who are older.

This is actually one thing that I use, a tool that I use, especially with paraprofessionals who might be able to reinforce work when I'm not there. This is a tasks sheet that is adapted from Anna Swenson's book. I usually keep these in a notebook for students to document their process, what tasks they are working on. It helps me when I'm meeting Page 5 of 19 ______with the classroom teacher or if I’m meeting with families or IEP to be able to show this and show how I actually systematically work through these. I might have specific braille instructions, contractions I'm working on, spelling, keyboarding. It is really flexible and I do a little check or check plus or check minus so I know how the child is doing with the skills. A paraprofessional can also be following through specific things that they were working on. And they can give you feedback when you are not there working with the student.

In this notebook I typically keep, I will talk about the assessment binder, I keep this as a section. I also keep a section that’s writing samples. You can have a notebook for each child with whom you work who was a Braille reader so you can have it all of one place and document the progress.

Now I will show you an example of a student with whom I worked several years ago. This child had albinism and her vision was around 20/300. That is what I saw functionally in the classroom. Her vision was stable. I was seeing her when she was in second grade. Prior to that, she had been identified as a print reader who would benefit from Braille as well. The volume of work was increasing for her. We knew it would increase and so we wanted to look at Braille as a secondary medium for her. This time this child was in third grade, sorry, the middle of third grade. She had about two years of instruction. There was, at home, probably not a lot of support for homework or a lot of reading happening outside of the school for various reasons. And looking at her, this is data that is from DIBELS. In January, she was a large print reader with 18 point font with some additional magnification and was reading about 61 words per minute. The DIBELS target for that age was 100 to 130 words per minute, so clearly she was significantly behind

For Braille, she was about cluster 38. She was reading about 38 words per minute. Based on research with seeing, we would try to get you to 60-80 words per minute. What we did, we realized she was far below her peers and we wanted to increase her one-on-one time. We didn’t necessarily increase her service time, but changed how we were providing that time. The team convened, we discussed this and I increased the amount of one-on-one time where I was working around Braille instruction. I targeted looking at her fluency rate and selecting leveled readers with their classroom teachers that were appropriate for her. Reading A-Z is a website where you can find leveled readers if you're not finding them easily with the classroom teacher.

I knew her reading level, words per minute, and I could pick a book on that. I could pick a book that I knew she could read in 15 minutes and later I will talk about how I adapted materials for children who are using Braille Fundamentals. It was in the contractions that she knew and we would read this book each day. A copy went home, a copy was at school. When I was not there, the paraprofessional would bring her in for 15 minutes at the start of the day and would read the same book with her. We were building fluency as we are working on the Braille instruction with her. Page 6 of 19 ______After a period of three months of this intense instruction, we looked at her scores again. Three months later, she had jumped in large print from 61 words per minute to 112 words per minute, bringing her into target with her peers. In regard to Braille, she jumped from 38 words per minute to 62 words per minute within the target we established for her. Assessment helped to determine the planning, which determined instruction, which led to assessment again. This really is the model that I use with students in order to determine their progress and make modifications as needed.

In regard to instruction, we want to build-in success. Over-instruct the skills so the student knows them automatically. Using Braille notetakers can also be a motivation for children. I used to oftentimes introduce Braille notetakers when children were in fourth or fifth grade, but now many years later, I often introduce if possible to children at the end of first grade and beginning of second grade, because what I found is that it actually gives on the auditory feedback right away when they are writing and it has also allowed them to more easily edit their material and be more prolific writers, in my experience. They are producing more volume, editing more easily, and the fluency comes along with it because as they are reading the work over and over again and changing things, they are becoming more fluent readers.

I also think it is important to document your progress. I will show that with the assessment binder, but I think videotaping students is so important to show hand movements for Braille and also to show their progress.

Balance fluency with learning the code. Fluency is very important and that is where we see that children that have the best comprehension are children who have higher levels of fluency.

Use materials of interest to the student. They may not be able to read Harry Potter but we might be able to take an excerpt or section for Harry Potter and a couple of paragraphs to put into Braille for the child to read. We might use songs that they’re motivated to learn, or poems. The students own writing is something that can be very motivating to read. For older students, you would want to look for high interest, but low- level books. So you can find books that might be about the Titanic or about the Civil War, but they are books where the vocabulary would be appropriate for them to be able to read, but the topic is very motivating.

In regard to materials that you might use, there are Braille specific commercial programs. There is Patterns, although I typically don’t use that with students, although I know many people that do. Braille Fundamentals is what I typically use because I found it works for students who have a print foundation already.

I have heard wonderful things about I AM ABLE with Diane Wormsley, which is looking at meaning-centered approach to children learning Braille and having it relate to the child's interests and what is motivating to them. The Mangold Basic Braille Program, I’ve also heard some teachers use as well. Page 7 of 19 ______I’m going to talk a little bit about Braille Fundamentals in case people are interested in this. This has been something I've found with students has been a great program for teaching students the Braille code, especially if they have a print foundation or are also learning print.

What is Braille Fundamentals? It’s through the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired publication department and it’s a program to teach complete literary Braille code and about 56 clusters. It is leveled to be of interest to various age groups, although I have always use the primary level and found it has worked with a variety of children up through middle school. It does have an assessment tool, which is the first volume. And allows you to monitor the progress of students through the Braille code and calculate the percentages of different contractions and contraction families that the student has learned and needs to learn.

Why use it? Print readers of all ages with beginning to advanced print foundation have benefited from it. Special populations - like English language learners and multiply handicapped. I’ve had students with Cortical Vision Impairment with whom I’ve used this who are on an academic track, because of the over-teaching and the nature of the worksheets, this works well for them. It is only the Braille code, it is not a separate literacy program, so I’ve been able to the focus on Braille code as we have been learning Braille code and contractions, and I have also been able to supplement the materials that are motivating for the student and appropriate for their level.

You have the ability to vary the level of instruction depending on student mastery. You do not have to use all the worksheets in a cluster, if you know the child knows those contractions already. Or you can go back and re-visit a section if you find the child has forgotten certain contractions.

This is something that I love. Duxbury allows for transcription based on cluster mastery to facilitate independence. I will show that in a moment, and it allows for review clusters as needed.

I think this is ingenious. Duxbury has incorporated a feature allowing translation using cluster levels. This allows children to use textbooks or recreational reading encountering only familiar contractions, and I have used this with web Braille or Bookshare or Reading A to Z materials, or anything that you can enter into Duxbury. What you can do is you actually can go in and enter in the material, and then for older versions of Duxbury, once you enter the material in there, typed it in, you can select document, select translation tables, select the contractions, and select the Texas School for the Blind cluster. What this does, say a child is at cluster 25. All contractions that they have learned through cluster 25 will be included. If they have not hit the contraction for T-I-O- N, they are not going to include it. They will spell it out. For me, I found this has allowed students to use materials in the classroom without my presence and where they’re able to use it successfully and independently. Page 8 of 19 ______I’ve been able to take files that were textbooks online and be able to just use the contractions a child has learned thus far and be able to put the materials in the classroom they have been able to participate with their peers and not been frustrated by not knowing the contractions they’re encountering. This also has been very helpful for children taking materials home. They are only encountering the contractions that they know so they are able to be more successful in their independent reading. I only do this for certain period of time, probably until the child reaches around two- thirds to three-quarters of the Braille code. At that point, I find, they have enough information, especially if they have their sight words down, their tactual sight words, that they really can figure out using context what a Braille contraction is that they are encountering that they don’t know. Until they reach that two-thirds to three-quarters mark of the Braille code, I feel like it has worked well to only use the contractions that they know so far.

Here is something that is motivating anytime you have a child doing a craft activity. In this case, this young boy created a book box. He decorated it with all sorts of feathers and glitter, and he had print letters on there too. This is a child who is a print/Braille reader and what we did was we made the book box and I talked to him about what a special place this would be to hold the books that he learned and he could keep it at home and as we learned new books, he could add to it.

I wrote a letter to the family that we put in the book box explaining its purpose and how they can use it and how he could read to his siblings or his parents or his friends, and all the books that were in there would be books that he could read independently. As you can see by the books there, they incorporated both print and Braille. These are leveled readers from the Reading A-Z website. You do have to have a membership for it, but it is relatively reasonable and oftentimes school districts have memberships.

I would print out the book onto actual Braille paper, that way he had the pictures. And then I would Braille on it, usually the contractions I knew he knew, at this point he was only in first grade, and he would read the book with me in school several times so that he was fluent with the text, he knew it, he could read it and be successful. And then he would take it home, read it with his family, and put it in his book box. He kept his book box in his room under his bed. It was a very special thing for him and very motivating.

As I mentioned before, Braille notetakers can be very motivating. They provide the auditory feedback and reinforcement of Braille writing. Ease of editing, building fluency by re-reading materials, and encouraging peer and teacher interactions. We oftentimes will connect the Braille Note up to the CCTV allowing the classroom teacher or peers to see what the child is writing in real-time and provide feedback for them as their editing their work. Some possible lessons for students might be writing commands, basic editing, basic reading commands, cursor navigation or basic spellchecker features.

For that child where you saw the book box, we actually created a large print list of commands as he started to learn the commands for the Braille Note that he could easily Page 9 of 19 ______refer to as he wrote on the Braille Note, to help him both in creating documents and to be able to go to the top of the document or the bottom of the document.

Here are some other activities. Braille students own writing and have him/her read it back. My student would go with his family skiing in the wintertime and I remember him being in first grade and writing to me, and I asked him to write me something about his weekend and he wrote about skiing at Loon Mountain. I wrote back to him, tell me some other things you do at Loon Mountain. He wrote back to me other things he would do with his family, like go on the chair lift and have hot chocolate with his family after skiing all day. What would happen is he would write to me and I would be able to write back to him and he could read my writing. If he spelled a word wrong, like mountain, he could see how I wrote back to him using that same word and notice the difference and how he had written mountain and I had written Mountain. So he could start picking up on some of the Braille contractions and be able to see as he was writing, how I would write something using spaces and punctuation.

I think here, also, is a great picture of an example of how technology has changed things. This child here is in second grade. Has one of these boards, it’s the Velcro board from the American Printing House for the Blind. They were talking about line segments. Actually use the letter squares that are from APH Word Playhouse. We put them on there and he was doing this in class and I took photos of him and texted them to his mom. That was her preferred way of communicating with me. So we texted the pictures and now she knew exactly how he would be using at home that night for his homework. You can use text or e-mail with parents if that works better for them and is easier. We have permission to use photographs. This was a great way for her to see how he would use the materials.

Here is another idea - Word study ideas. On the left is a flip-book that I bought that had large print letters in it and I put Braille letter overlays on those letters. You flip the book pages and you can make a real word or a nonsense word, which the kids always seem to enjoy. And a variation of this is actually on the right side, using the Velcro board and the Word Playhouse letters. You can use those to create different words, change a letter out, create a new word. That is working with children on understanding how letters and sound symbol correspondence works and how you can change a word using those Braille and print letters to do that.

We know in first grade classrooms and often in second grade classrooms, they have word walls. Our students cannot see that from the desk, so it is a great idea to be able to create a word wall that you can add to and make it a book. I bound across the top Braille paper and I had printed on there the words from the word wall and then I brailled right over them for the student. He kept this in his desk and he could pull it out and each letter had a page or two pages, and he could look through there and use that as he was writing. It had classmate’s names, Dolch words, and it had the Braille and large print for him. And another student’s classroom, they use the Wilson trick words and they put them on a ring, so we took them and did large print on one side, cut the upper right corner and on the backside put the word in both contracted and un-contracted Braille. Page 10 of 19 ______

For a preschool student I had, they would do a recipe each week. We actually used paper and different textures to create the recipe. And then we had Braille on there. Sometimes we would use Boardmaker pictures as well. This was a child who became a Braille reader but really had some vision and wanted to use it, so we were figuring out ways to incorporate that as well.

This is the use of a slant board for a student who was actually, I think in first grade at the time. We used every opportunity and every space available. This slant board has several paperclips on it to hold Braille papers on there. You can see that we added a large print editing checklist on the bottom left-hand corner. We had some math words that, at the time, were also the spelling words, as well as a date in the upper right-hand corner. These are all attached and you can easily put Braille labels on top of them so he has the large print and the Braille available to him.

Sometimes people say, what if the child is looking at the Braille? It does happen with some of our students. There was a teacher in Fairfax, Virginia that shared with us a photo of this young boy. The boy picked a photo of a cardinal, of a bird, and they put it on his slant board and he would read to the bird as he read his Braille. On the right- hand side is a snack tray, or a tray that you would use if you were sitting in bed and having breakfast in bed, there is a little curtain that is over it. The child can put their hands in there be able to read the Braille and the teacher would sit on the other side and see what they were reading. I have also heard of a teacher who uses Christmas lights in the classroom and they dim the classroom lights and have the Christmas lights hanging so the child could not see the Braille dots as easily, but it was great lighting in there and kind of a fun thing to do. There are several ways you can help children if they are trying to look at the Braille.

I oftentimes show students who have enough vision what the Braille cell looks like. I’ll draw it on the white board and show them the letter or the contraction they’re learning, and give them the opportunity to use their vision as well, as they’re learning the Braille. We talked about assessment a little while ago, and I think assessment is very important as we make plans and provide instruction for students. Over the years I've ended up coming up with a timeline that works for me. For running records, I usually do this every 6-8 weeks for students. Oftentimes, for classroom teachers, once or twice in there so they get an idea of how the student is doing with their running records and their fluency.

I am looking at accuracy and their fluency and reading rate. I think it is great to videotape students when you are doing this; once in the fall, once in the wintertime, and once in the spring, to document progress. I would encourage you to do that, obviously with permission from families. I think it is really helpful to see, especially when you have a student at the end of the first grade who is reading and is not fluent in Braille, but you see how fluent they are a year later, and it can help you to see how beneficial it has been and how it takes time and practice to become a more fluent reader. Page 11 of 19 ______I also document sight words, and that is in both Braille and print. I look at that three times a year. If you go to the Mrs. Perkins Dolch Words website, if you Google Mrs. Perkins Dolch words, you’ll find there are assessments, PowerPoints you can use with large print readers, or print out cards that are large print. I have used those with students and I document how they're doing in the fall, in winter, and in springtime, with their sight words both in braille and print.

Braille contractions. Again, three or four times a year I'm looking at that, mostly at the beginning of the year and end of the year, and midyear, once or twice. I want to see how they're doing, how many more contractions have they learned, how much more of the Braille code have they learned how to read and to write.

And then there are the general education assessments as well, which are typically three times a year, to determine reading level and fluency as compared to peers. That might be DIBELS, that might be DRA; there are a variety of tools I've seen in the schools that are used for that.

How do I manage all this? I mentioned that I use the task sheets in the binder. It is really an assessment binder. I include leveled reading and running records, sight words, a checklist to see how they're doing. I include assessments on Braille contractions, writing samples from fall and winter and spring, both for Braille and print, reference materials for Braille code, and I also might include in there a leveled reading chart to know what level they expect students to be at in at different grades. Fountas and Pinnell is a great resource for a reading level chart.

I also keep the task sheets in there, and then, not in the binder, I do make audio and video recordings several times during the year.

As handouts, I included the Dolch list that I came up with. There are many different assessments out there, but I did was a variation on this where I did all the words for each level and then I made a checklist for reading, writing the contracted Braille form of that word and writing the un-contracted form of that word. Then I would calculate, on the right-hand side, for September, January, and June the percentages of this Dolch word list of what level they were at and how many they knew. I think it is really important. You will see many different ones; there’s the Zeno list, the Dolch list, but the Dolch list, they say, represents about 75% of the words that we read and the rest of them are uncontrolled vocabulary. A lot of the Dolch words are what children encounter, so if we have them recognizing these sight words in printed and in Braille, and we know that they know them, we’re going to see greater fluency for them.

We’re going to see a couple of videos now of a student that actually has an Optic Glioma that sits on his Optic Chiasm and has resulted in field restriction and also acuity. It had been unstable. It was at about 20/400 at the time that I shared some of this information on the chart and his learning media assessment indicated Braille as his primary and print as his secondary. It had shifted. Initially he was print as his primary and Braille as his secondary, and then he experienced more vision loss and moved to Page 12 of 19 ______Braille as his primary. It was important to keep doing assessments for him when his vision changed and to make sure that we were on track.

You can see from this chart that when he was in the spring of first grade, his large print was about a 36-point. He was reading about 53 words per minute and the Hasbrouck- Tindal reading fluency chart, which many classroom teachers use as data, had 53-111 words per minute for sighted peers. His Braille reading rate was 29 words per minute.

He had a change in his vision and, in the fall of second grade, lost more vision and shifted to Braille as his primary medium. It took a lot of instruction but we got him to, in the winter second grade, 67 words per minute. Peers were reading at 72-125 words per minute in print.

The winter of third grade, he continued reading Braille as his primary medium, using some print for pictures and science and some math concepts. His Braille, at this point, was at 97 words per minute and his peers were 92-146 words per minute. So he was fitting in at the lower end of where his peers are reading, but great for a Braille reader in third grade. In the spring of fourth grade, as a Braille reader, he reached 130 words per minute. His peers were reading at 150-200 words per minute and I think he is well on his way to 150 words per minute in the next year and a half to two years as he gets towards middle school.

Now we will watch a video of him reading large print at the end of first grade. We will watch a little bit of this. Be looking for his fluency, you will be able to see as he is reading, hopefully the audio will work for this, how close he is and how he has to move the material under the CCTV in order to read it.

[Video playing] Kevin's big brother got a new wagon. He used it to carry his newspapers. So you were right.

Pretty laborious but he does it. He gets it done. He is really excited to learn what happened with the story. Prior to reading, I actually did a walkthrough of the pictures in the book and I also made sure that I knew what to tell him and what not to tell him. I did not want to give away information that would come up in the questions that he would be asked. I did the visual walkthrough with him, he was familiar with it and then he was able to read the book without wanting to stop and look at the pictures as well.

We will look at another one. This one will be him at the end of first grade with the Braille DRA and he is a level 16 here. You will see how slow it is. You will hear me tell him some words; it is almost painful when you watch it. Just watch and you will see how he is reading as a first grade in Braille.

[Video playing] Animal homes are everywhere. You can find them in…

So you can see that he is reading the braille but it is slow; there are contractions he does not know. He does not get overly frustrated, but it is difficult for him. Page 13 of 19 ______

Let's look now but the next video. This is him in second grade in the winter when he reaches 67 words per minute. We had a change of vision, we increased his Braille instruction time, and it paid off. Watch his hand movements as he is reading and you will see this scooting thing which he continues to do. I will explain that in a minute.

[Video playing] The little pond he called home. It had lots of green grass around it. There was little fish for him to…

So, much more proficient. He is really able to read much more fluently. That creeping that he does with his hands; we worked a lot on reading with the right hand, then reading with the left hand, and then both together. At this point he is not doing the scissors movement, he is keeping his hands together, but that right-hand creeps along. We tried many things to get rid of it but I have to tell you, he is still doing that and he’s reading 130 words per minute, so clearly it’s working for him. And I think that’s what happens; kids do have their own style as they're reading.

We will move into motivation. In order to motivate kids, you really have to look at goal setting for the teacher, the student, and the family. When my student was in first grade, he wanted to read just right books in Braille. That is what he told me when we were talking about what he wanted to do for his goal for his IEP meeting. I shared his thoughts and his thought was I want to read just right books in Braille because that was what he was doing in print.

His family, when his vision changed, I remember talking to his dad and his dad said at the beginning of second grade, about a month into school, he wanted to know when he would be able to read Harry Potter books. While that was not an immediate thing he would be able to do, I understood that that was a goal for the family. That is what his peers were doing. How could we get him there? I will tell you, by the end of second grade, that is where he was; where he was able to do it with his mom and dad reading and he was reading too. It was important for me to know what the family’s goal was, and also what my goals were for him.

Have the student document progress. Let them give you input; let them hear video clips of themselves, audio clips to hear how they're reading has improved. Reward progress. On the next slide, I will go to it real quick right here, you can use the APH board, where you can do the hundreds board where you have the Velcro pieces. You can actually use those along with these stars. And what I would do is every 10th worksheet, they would reach a star. I did that is a motivator. If they reach 10 worksheets and they got to the point of the star on the chart, we would do something fun - a craft activity, we would go on a scavenger hunt in the school using a Braille list of things we would find. Maybe when we reach 100 worksheets, we would do something really exciting where we go into the community and go to a restaurant where the menu is in Braille. Something to really motivate them and get them excited. Page 14 of 19 ______It is important to facilitate a braille reading mentor. Have an adult who is a braille reader so your student gets to meet them and the family has an opportunity to meet someone who is a proficient braille reader. Find real-life uses for braille whenever possible. If you’re going on a field trip, print out some of the information in braille so the child has it. Go to a restaurant and have the menu brailled so the child can use it in a functional meaningful way. Participate in the Braille challenge. Invite sighted peers to learn about braille as well. You can do an in-service and maybe use the BrailleBug.org website.

In terms of working with families, have them come in and observe you in the classroom. You might do home visits to show them how a homework session might look. Or you might go over with them how they can download a book from Bookshare or a downloadable talking book onto their book port. Share articles with them. I think they always find it interesting to read articles about people who are successful who are blind and visually impaired, or students who are blind and visually impaired doing exciting things. So it is nice to share those with the student and with the family.

I also came up with, a couple of years ago, the idea of Mission Possible. Every month I would write a little letter to the family and include links to things like the Braille Institute to sign up for free braille books, to join a list-serve, or go to the Perkins website and find out about videos they could watch that might be interesting. Each month I would send a Mission Possible to the family. I found it was very successful when they could automatically link on it and it led them to a site to sign up for something or to watch it. I dropped off for a couple months and a parent said to me when are you going to send those Mission Possibles again? I knew it was valuable to them. They told me they kept them on a file on their desktop so they could go back and revisit them. They could easily send it out to their partner or to other family members to see as well.

The website Paths to Literacy has some incredible resources around dual media or braille learners. This is a National Federation of the Blind publication that is called Integrating Print and Braille: A Recipe for Literacy. I think it has a lot of interesting information and helpful information for families and for teachers of the visually impaired that I encourage you to check it out.

This is Beck with his family and they have been very open to his learning braille as well as print. I think sometimes we meet families where it is difficult for them for a variety of reasons and in order to help them move beyond resistance, you really need to develop trust with them and help them understand why braille is important in addition to print, and why it would benefit their child. I think that takes time to develop, but I think if they see the interest that you have in the child and the excitement you have around this, it is very helpful for them.

So often people see braille as a last resort. It is not a last resort; it opens doors for families and for children. I think it is important to share resources with families to demonstrate the value braille to them. And meet the student and family where they are. You have to negotiate and compromise with families. They may not fully be on board, but there are ways to work with them to find out what their needs or concerns are and Page 15 of 19 ______be able to talk about them in an open and honest way, so you can help them to see the value of braille.

In terms of expectations, we want to integrate braille in meaningful and purposeful ways. I think you can bring it into the classroom, into to the general education curriculum, through short, tailored, and specific assignments. If the child is primarily a print reader, you might choose to have the vocabulary list in braille for them. You might choose to have them write their homework in braille, or their homework list, or to have their schedule available to them in braille, or to write notes or get teacher feedback in braille; short, concise pieces of information for braille for them so that they can use those materials in a successful way.

Consider the short-term and long-term expectations. It might be hard for you or for them to really see the benefits in the immediate, but really long-term is what we're looking at for the children. How this will benefit them long-term, when three years from now the volume of reading as increased substantially and print reading might not be as efficient as reading in braille when you have to read two chapters of a novel each night. Utilize technology. If we use technology to benefit our students and help districts to understand how braille notetakers or how braille production software and hardware is important for helping a child to be successful and access the curriculum, we’re going to have greater success for students.

What does a child's workspace look like? I threw these in for fun. For a younger child, they would have a desk that just has bare materials in it. Not the print books for us to look at, but print materials and braille materials that are purposeful for them. Braille paper that is easily accessible for them. On this child's desk, they actually have a large print editing checklist on there, as well as a braille overlay on it on the right-hand side. Their braille writer is right there, I think this one might have the Velcro on it that I use to help them know how where to finger placement on the Braille writer, which can be helpful for younger children.

For an older child, this child now has two desks in an L-shaped configuration. He has a velcroed basket on his desk that holds pencils, or glue sticks, as well as his magnifier. On the other desk, he’s got his brailler and braille paper, as well as text books in his desk that he is using, those current volumes. In the back is a bookcase that each subject has a different shelf and he has braille textbooks on there, as well as additional paper or map tools. On the very top are two trays. One tray is where he places materials to be transcribed, like his homework, and another tray where if he gets paper or the classroom teacher or specialist has a paper that needs to be adapted, they place it there for me to pick up.

The CCTV, as I mentioned, can be great in hooking up the Braille Note, as this child is doing with his teacher. He has written a report and he is now reviewing with a teacher who is going over it with him in real-time and editing with him. We are running out of time so I’m almost at the end here. This really shows this young man participating with his peers. We adapted the game Apples to Apples for him. There’s only one word on Page 16 of 19 ______each of those cards, so it was a great way for him to participate with his peers. He’d hold his cards beneath the table and read them. He had the corners cut off and the other cards had a hole-punch in them, so he knew which card was which card. He was participating with his peers and that was one of the most popular games that they played in indoor recess.

In conclusion, our role as a teacher of the visually impaired is to teach our students the skills needed to become a successful and as independent as possible. To that end, braille is a tool that often best serves dual media learners not in the immediate, but in the long-term journey of academics and life. Thank you very much. I hope you found some of this helpful to you as you work with your students or your children. I think we might have time for questions.

[SITTEN] We do. I am invisible and that is the best part. We do have some questions coming in. We can stay and take as many as we can. On your end, on the audience end, you cannot see the questions so it may not appear that anyone is asking any.

To go back to Emi, the student you were showing us at the beginning. Just to reiterate, working with her, were those leveled readers that she was reading?

[SPITZ] Yes, they were leveled readers. They were appropriate for her based on reading assessment that was conducted with her classroom teacher.

[SITTEN] For student like Emi, whose condition is not progressive, what would you expect to see in the words per minute rate for print versus braille at the end of reading intervention?

[SPITZ] It is tricky. We do not have a lot of data that’s out there. I think if there are any Ph.D students looking for research projects, it’s really around braille literacy rates, there is not a lot of information and what we have is older. I do look at what the peers are reading and they are not going to read exactly at the same level. The student, Beck, was a kid who did have support at home and was reading a large amount of braille materials. I think that helped him to be more successful.

You really want to look at the progress that is happening and consult with the classroom teacher. I think the most important thing is; are they fluent? Are they able to comprehend the text even if they are not reading at the same rate as their peers? Are they showing progress? I will say in regard to the braille notetakers, that the scroll feature that is on the Braille Note Apex can be very helpful with students. Another student, who I did not mention in this presentation who I worked with, actually increased her reading rate by about 15 words per minute because every day we would spend 5-10 minutes reading with the scroll feature, just a recreational book. It really helped to get her fingers moving across the braille text. That is another way you can help a student to increase their braille rate. Page 17 of 19 ______[SITTEN] Thanks. One more about Emi’s readers. Were those in braille and then converted or were they dual to start with?

[SPITZ] The leveled readers she was using were actually a combination of Reading A- Z, the website, and then also the classroom teacher had leveled readers. I would take them and put them into braille using the Braille Fundamentals. It has been several years since I taught her, but as I said, once the children reach around 66-75% of the braille code, I generally have it in all contracted braille. If they have not reached that level, then I'm putting things just into the contractions they know using the Duxbury program with the TSBVI clusters.

[SITTEN] Jennifer asked a question about assessments and if there is a longer answer this, just let us know, but she asked if you have ever used the NRMA specifically, because she has a parent who's been asking about that. Can you comment on that?

[SPITZ] I do not know that assessment, I’m not familiar with it. I would love if you could send information to Jennifer, just to let me know what it is. So Jennifer, if you are still on, if you want to send a follow-up, we can look into it further off-line.

[SITTEN] It seems like many of your recommendations are for younger learners. Beck was a little bit older, getting into that school age. This question is about motivation recommendations for that middle school kid who is a candidate to be a dual learner but maybe is resistant to braille because of fear of stigma or because they are still struggling with their fear about losing their usable vision. What motivations are working for that group?

[SPITZ] I do not have much experience with middle schoolers, I really only had two that I have worked with that were children who were print/braille readers. I think that is challenging. I think that is when it is really important to go to the family, go to the student and understand what the fears and the concerns are, and to work with staff. You are not on an island. It is really hard being an itinerant vision teacher and we’re going in and working with the student and leaving. I think it is really important to reach out to the team and see what other resources are available to the student, especially if there is a psychosocial aspect going on in terms of the child losing the vision. There is a lot going on for kids. I have had experiences where children are saying they could not see things that they could see or vice versa, because they were trying in their own way to deal with their vision loss.

I do not have a whole lot to offer you, except to say look at the motivation for the child. Have them meet other students or adults who have been in similar situations with them. I have also heard from TVIs – there’s one TVI who, in agreement with the parent, had a reward system with the student that they put in place where he knew that, for a certain period of time, he would be working on braille and that was their focus. They decided rewards based on motivation for him. I think you have to figure out what motivates that student and how you're going to be able to get it done. Make it a pleasant experience and help them to see the value in it. Page 18 of 19 ______

[SITTEN] I really appreciated your suggestion of reading partners, particularly within their own age group or at their own reading level. Is having another dual media reader important or is there value in having a partner who might be a braille exclusive reader or maybe a print exclusive reader?

[SPITZ] Having any braille reader is great, both for teachers to see also. I think general education teachers, or team members, oftentimes have never met somebody who is blind or visually impaired until your student walks in the door. I think it is very helpful if you have them coming into the classroom, a friend or an acquaintance that you know who is a braille reader, to come in and to be the role model. I have had people I know who are braille readers come in, talk to the class, have lunch with the teachers and then meet with the child one-on-one as well, in order to be able to hit all the bases and be a role model. I don't think it has to be exclusively print/braille, it would be great to find somebody who is a dual media learner, if you have a dual media student.

[SITTEN] Jennifer writes back and says it is called the National Reading Media Assessment. She gave us the website so we will look into that. A lot of you're asking about how much this material would be available after the next minute and all of it. Usually by the next business day, we have this recording available to you. Those of you who registered will get a note from us tomorrow with a link to this recording, as well as to a PDF version of Anne’s presentation.

One of you has asked about a transcript. We do not have a transcript, although closed captioning is captured in this recording, so you will get the audio, as well as the captioning. That can help.

Charlotte writes we will also have the link on Paths to Literacy. Thank you, Charlotte, and thanks to plugging Paths to Literacy. There are a lot of resources there. We have also done some other webinars in the past year, year and half, about other kinds of literacy opportunities, particularly with kids with multiple disabilities and other ways that you can involve the rest of the team, the para staff, so when you see all of those things together and thinking about dual media, there are some great ideas that we have all shared.

I will take this one last question, which is, how important is it to prevent the student from looking at the braille?

[SPITZ] I think it depends on how much of a problem you're seeing it as. If the child is constantly looking at the braille, I think it is a problem because we are trying to get them to tactually learn it. I do allow children to look at the braille, to look at the braille contraction and actual braille cell. You might use the sling sell that they have from APH, you may write it on the whiteboard. The child might choose to write it on the braille writer and then look at it. That is okay. I think there's a place for that. I think it is important that we do not just ignore that that’s a means for the student to learn braille. But we also want to make sure that they're using their fingers to work on it. I do have Page 19 of 19 ______one student right now who is braille/print reader and she knows that at one point she will have to stop looking and look at me and read to me so her hands are going across and she's looking up as she is reading to me. Every once in a while, she will want to look down and I will give her the opportunity to do that.

[SITTEN] I am afraid we are over time. I am going cut this off. There are a couple of questions that came in. We will address them off-line. We will put the answers back into the handouts. There has been a request to see a sample of Mission possible if you're willing to share that. As we close Anne, where can people find you?

[SPITZ] On the very first slide, I have my e-mail address on there. You can e-mail me at my private e-mail address if they're interested in talking further.

[SITTEN] One quick programming note, we do not have a webinar in October but to make it up to you, we are having 4 in November. Plan accordingly. I know we will. You will see more information coming out about those webinars in the next couple of weeks.

Thank you everybody for attending. Thank you, Anne, again for this fascinating topic. On behalf of the eLearning team, my partner Phuong, Dr. Mary Zatta, and myself, have a great afternoon.

Thank you.