Vision Resource

Course Content

Expanded Core Curriculum

Compensatory Academic Skills

Organization

Many of the techniques and strategies addressed in compensatory skills are typically learned by children without visual disabilities through casual observation or incidental learning.

Organization is especially important for people who are unable to casually look around and quickly find objects. Instead, materials must be organized in a consistent manner that allows the student with a visual impairment to locate desired items easily. Students must receive specific instruction in effective organization strategies.

Specific instruction in this area may include:

• • Creation and use of study binders

  • Online organizational tools like Google Calendar, to-do lists, and reminder apps

  • Homework help, and techniques for getting support from home

Study Skills

Many note-taking and studying activities, such as highlighting, underlining, and outlining, are very visual and thus difficult for these students to access effectively. Therefore, they must learn strategies for taking notes in their own learning media.

This course will teach students about the visual organization of textbooks: titles, chapter and section headings, sidebars, tables of contents, and indexes. This knowledge empowers students to quickly locate desired information and work at a pace competitive with peers.

Sensory Efficiency

Sensory Efficiency skills help students use the senses, including any functional vision, hearing, touch, smell (olfactory), and taste (gustatory). Some sensory efficiency skills covered in this course include:

• • Listening skills - lectures, screen-readers, audio descriptions

  • Visual efficiency skills - to maximize the use of remaining vision. This includes techniques such as eccentric viewing, blur interpretation, and the use of optical devices.

  • Touch - By honing tactile skills and sensitivity, students improve their braille reading skills (if needed) and increase their ability to distinguish subtle texture changes and differences. Practice with tactile efficiency enhances a student's ability to explore and interpret the environment.

Concept Development

Another crucial component of compensatory skills in the expanded core curriculum is concept development. Students who are fully-sighted tend to learn from whole-to-part, meaning that they can see the big picture and then examine details. However, many students who are blind or visually impaired must learn from part-to-whole, as they only experience discrete parts of an object, one at a time, and then piece those parts together. Without instruction in appropriate systematic search strategies, random or unsystematic exploration results in an incomplete understanding of concepts.

Objects that are impossible to touch, i.e. cellular structures, fire, or space must also be taught to students with visual impairments in safe and accessible ways. For example, students who are fully-sighted typically learn about cellular structures and anatomy by using microscopes and looking at textbook illustrations. However, unless these concepts are explained using real objects, concrete models, or tactile graphics, a student who is blind or visually impaired will have difficulty accessing this information. Therefore, these students must learn about concepts through direct experiences, real objects, models, tactile graphics, reading, and discussion using an organized process of systematic exploration.

Spatial Understanding

Students who have a solid understanding of spatial concepts and how objects in the environment are related to their own bodies will be able to follow directions and travel independently in home, school, and playground environments. For older students, these foundational concepts empower safe and independent community travel.

Spatial understanding is also critical for classroom tasks in all areas of the common core curricula, from reading fundamentals of left to right and top to bottom, to math and science use of spatial and linear equations, arrays, grids, geometry, tables, graphs, and charts used to display data. In addition, geography, social studies, and history require the use of maps, timelines, and graphical displays of information.

Orientation & Mobility

People who are blind or visually impaired must learn to orient to their surroundings and move independently and safely across a variety of environments with the use of remaining senses, learned travel skills and techniques, and mobility tools. An orientation and mobility (O&M) specialist provides training and instruction in these competencies.

High school students in this course will receive additional training, both embedded in the course, and individually, as needed, from a certified O&M instructor to increase independence in this area. Skills taught in this course may include:

• • Street crossings

  • Sidewalk and parking lot safety

  • Effective cane use

  • Public transit

  • Route planning

  • Grocery and other shopping

Social Skills

Well-developed social interaction skills are critical for developing positive self-esteem, building relationships, and ultimately for acceptance into society. Inherent in social interaction are the verbal or signed expressive and receptive language skills required to carry on a conversation. Understanding and using nonverbal communication skills—the nuances of facial expressions and body language—are also critical social skills used to convey different emotions and feelings. Many students with vision impairment need systematic and purposeful instruction in order to improve social skills.

Independent Living

While some of these skills are addressed briefly in the general education core curriculum, children with visual impairments have limited opportunities to observe adults and peers engaging in these activities. Independent living skills, (ILS), are critical for all students to live safely and independently as adults.

ILS instruction in this course may include:

• • Cooking and food preparation

  • Measurement

  • Laundry

  • Mending skills

  • Personal Hygiene

  • Identifying and managing money

  • Time management

Recreation and Leisure

Knowledge of recreation, fitness, and leisure provides critical supports to a wide range of student capacities in the areas of social interaction, orientation and mobility, independent living, and self-determination. Developing recreation, fitness, and leisure skills can have far reaching positive effects on the lives of people with visual impairments.

Participating in recreation, fitness, and leisure helps youths with visual impairments develop social, career, and problem solving skills. Engaging in this ECC area also increases self-esteem, self-determination, and overall health. Students who are challenged and achieve goals they thought might be impossible, or too difficult, develop confidence which positively impacts all areas of their lives.

Recreation & Leisure instruction in this course may include:

• • Adapted board and card games

  • Introduction to goal ball and beeper baseball

  • Fitness activities

  • Summer camp for blind students information

  • Support with participation in campus activities and clubs

Sensory Efficiency

Sensory efficiency addresses the use of residual vision, hearing, and other senses to enable or enhance access to the environment. Sensory efficiency also involves learning how to use any remaining vision; for example, students with low vision need instruction in how, and when, to use residual vision.

• • Using optical aids

  • Using touch and vision to identify personal items

  • Using sense of smell to know when nearing the school cafeteria

Assistive Technology

Assistive technology (AT) refers to the special devices and software that people with disabilities can use to access the environment and gain information. There are many options for students with vision impairments in the area of AT. In this course, students will explore and learn to use AT options matched to their individual needs.

AT does not only refer to complex high-tech electronic systems. Many useful solutions are decidedly low-tech. Assistive technology can be as simple as a book stand to hold a textbook at a comfortable position so a student with a visual impairment does not have to bend over the desk to read. It can be as complex as a computer system with screen reading and voice recognition software for students who have difficulty both seeing the screen and using the keyboard. Most students need a range of both low- and high-tech devices.

Career Education

Career education skills enable students who are visually impaired to move toward working as an adult, including:

• • Exploring and expressing preferences about work roles

  • Assuming work responsibilities at home and school

  • Understanding concepts of reward for work

  • Participating in job experiences

  • Learning about jobs and adult work roles at a developmentally appropriate level

Self-Determination

Self-determination involves the student identifying his or her own interests, values, motivations, as well as a personal understanding of his or her own abilities and limitations. The skills leading to enhanced self-determination, including goal setting, problem solving, and decision making, allow students to assume greater responsibility and control of their lives from early developmental milestones throughout the high school transition years into postsecondary education and careers.

Specific skill areas covered in this course include:

• • Knowledge of the student’s vision impairment and it’s impact on education and employment needs

  • Self-advocacy in the classroom and beyond

  • Understanding areas of strength, and identifying compensatory skills or strategies to address areas of need

  • Personal goal setting