Adaptations for Students with Visual Impairment and Other Special Needs.

Today's entry is mostly images I shot of my classroom on the way out the door this afternoon. The theme is adaptations for learners with visual impairment in addition to other special needs. I hope you enjoy them and maybe find a good idea among them.

When we moved to our new building in September one of our visually impaired students had trouble locating parts of the room. The orientation and mobility specialist recommended we mark the routes with tape.


Then I found neon duct tape at Walmart. The green line goes to PT the pink into our other classroom where speech therapy and life skills group are held. 8x10 inch black on white Mayer-Johnson symbols held up with the correct color neon duct tape marks each spot.

This particular student needed a way to mark his place at the table. Now he has a neon square in tape. It works well for him; he can see the tape a bit and can feel the tape as well. We have discovered that if we put a number of parts of a task inside the square he can locate them, complete the tasks and place them in a finished bin. This set up seems to be helping him with finding his plate on the table at meal times too.

This image is of a gait trainer with a one dollar basket attached with plastic cable ties. The bask holds the student's "business cards". The cards have a message that go something like this, "My name is so&so, I love passing you on my walk everyday. I want to let you know that I am legally blind. I can see lights and pretty ladies! I also want to let you know it takes me about 30-45 seconds to answer questions. If you have time to wait for me to answer please say hello!"

Bonus Photo:

Our field trip to Les Miserables is tomorrow! Here is a photo of our Les Mis window. We have a terrible view (a brick wall and a dumpster, and if you look down a nasty roof top) so decorating the windows makes life a little nicer for us!

Some Classroom Pictures

Our current unit for literature/history is on France. I teach in five thematic units a year. I tend to join English and history and do a separate Science unit. The time periods are the start of school to November first, November first to Christmas break, Christmas break to February break, February break to April break, April break to the end of school. This year we will study five countries. These are some of our France mobiles. The students made the flags and earn a picture symbol ornament to hang from it for each fact they learn. The last symbol they will earn will be the one for Les Miserable after we have finished reading the (adapted) book and seeing the musical. At the end of the unit they will take home a full mobile to hang in their rooms.

Here is our stars bulletin board where students can choose to have their best work displayed. The objects with the blue tops and handles are mugs and are part of our science unit on matter. They demonstrate the three stages of matter. The mug is a solid, the coffee a liquid and the steam a gas. Below that are some science quizzes and one students spelling score chart. You can also see our flip chart and the students work bins.

This is the timer I wrote about a few posts ago. Believe it or not the intervention has already been faded! He doesn't need it anymore. Today he looked at the clock at quarter of, put away his belongings, gathered his things, packed his bag, excused himself to use the rest room and was ready to leave early. I wish I had done this sooner. I wonder what else I can use it for? One of my paraprofessionals is going to try using this with her typically developing kindergartener at home.

And in honor of the Sox vs. Yankees series this weekend here is the sign the Sports Fan Club in my class made that hangs in our classroom window.