Location
Pattillo Student Center, 2nd Floor
Start Date
29-4-2015 10:00 AM
End Date
29-4-2015 4:00 PM
Description
Body awareness, spatial awareness, and positional language, are essential elements of orientation and mobility (O&M). Typically developing students usually learn these concepts and skills incidentally as they interact with various environments. Students with visual impairments and/or multiple disabilities must be deliberately taught these concepts using research-based strategies. Routine-based learning, integration of music, picture and tactile communication, and physical and verbal guidance have been shown to enhance learning by students with visual impairments and/or multiple disabilities. When these strategies are incorporated into individually designed structured movement routines (SMRs), students are more likely to anticipate movements and connect language to corresponding O&M concepts. This session presents an App in development that incorporates universal design for learning principles to improve O&M for these children. The session will provide information on a single subject study currently being designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the App when used by itinerant teachers with this population. Teachers of students with visual impairments and O&M specialists are finding more of their caseloads consisting of students with visual impairments and/or multiple disabilities. The study will show that individualized SMRs can be used to successfully improve students' O&M skills.
Teaching Body Awareness to Students with Visual Impairments and Additional Disabilities
Pattillo Student Center, 2nd Floor
Body awareness, spatial awareness, and positional language, are essential elements of orientation and mobility (O&M). Typically developing students usually learn these concepts and skills incidentally as they interact with various environments. Students with visual impairments and/or multiple disabilities must be deliberately taught these concepts using research-based strategies. Routine-based learning, integration of music, picture and tactile communication, and physical and verbal guidance have been shown to enhance learning by students with visual impairments and/or multiple disabilities. When these strategies are incorporated into individually designed structured movement routines (SMRs), students are more likely to anticipate movements and connect language to corresponding O&M concepts. This session presents an App in development that incorporates universal design for learning principles to improve O&M for these children. The session will provide information on a single subject study currently being designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the App when used by itinerant teachers with this population. Teachers of students with visual impairments and O&M specialists are finding more of their caseloads consisting of students with visual impairments and/or multiple disabilities. The study will show that individualized SMRs can be used to successfully improve students' O&M skills.