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Struggling Braille Readers Can Improve Their Tactile Skills with these 10 Tips

Try these approaches when teaching emerging braille students.

New readers with visual impairments will have the tactile skills you’ll want your readers to have in order to comprehend your information. The great news is that you may no longer have to teach all of your students these important tactile skills to your students, but even if you are no longer teaching these skills, there are also other things your students will need to know in order to be well informed.

Mix Things Up

Sometimes we can learn more when things are suddenly an unexpectedly out of place. While we train our students’ learning through wired patterns, sometimes an effective technique can be to mix things up with their things labelled with another symbol. “We can sometimes actually learn very well when we are put out of place, in a spot that is uncommon to us and where we need to restore normalcy,” explains educator Kathy Redford of Academized and OxEssays.

Expand the Details In Calendar Listings

For deaf and blind students, information is essential, so it’s not just where they’re going but also who they’re going with. Adding a WHO category within the reading sector of the daily calendar helps increase that student’s knowledge of their schedule. This simple addition of information can help drastically decrease the stress being felt by a student, who is unsure about their upcoming schedule. 

Categorize Things

There are endless ways that you can sort and categorize tactile name symbols. The possibilities of creating different categories are endless and the more specific you can make your categories, the better you will be able to narrow the results for your visually impaired readers.

Employing Name Symbols Within The Cueing System

Sometimes students will find the need to rely on someone else if they are in need of a verbal or physical prompt – but, if that person is unavailable, how will the student get the cue they are in need of? There are different symbols that a student can employ to create the response they need, regardless of whether that person they rely on is not there.

Be More Active

Get more active participation with your readers by asking more pertinent questions. You can even ask your students to listen to your questions and find the tactile response to that question, that they can physically point to. There are ways that you can elicit tactile participation with the questions you’re asking – like ‘Touch the name of the person who loves David Bowie.”

Be More Phonemically Aware

There are things you won’t even realize when you don’t have to deal with the visual impairment. But when you are able to have that phonemical awareness, you can begin to get a limited sense of the understanding you will need to begin to understand that impairment. “Oftentimes you don’t even realize certain things, even the smallest things, because you don’t know they are even there. But when you see what is required of your students, it’s a mind expanding experience,” explains Thomas Alba, a data analyst at Bigassignments and State Of Writing.

Have a Good Understanding of Your Pronouns

Starting to understand and read your own tactile name symbol and pronouns means you understand that the name symbols can mean different things. And, there are certain sensitivities that should be taken into account when dealing with these meanings and pronouns.

Be More Socially Cooperative with Communication

Take a look at peer communication in a more social way, where you are mapping things out in a tactile manner that lets your students easily see things and identify people within your given table. When your students need to, they can reference this map to determine where they are and where they need to situate themselves.

So, when you’re interacting with new readers who are dealing with visual impairments you’ll have to take into account the tactile skills your readers will need to comprehend in order to understand the information you’re trying to get across. If you begin to implement some of these strategies, you’ll find that you won’t need to enforce the previous skills in your students, as they will be able to employ other skills in order to better inform themselves more easily. Employ these 10 tips to help your braille readers improve their tactile skills.

 

By ChloeBennet

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