[Pibe-division] Advice Wanted

[Stewart & Deborah Prost]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Deborah and I am an experienced teacher of blind children.  However, I have a situation where I need some new ideas.  I have a third-grade student on my caseload who has some vision, but is unable to read print efficiently.  Last year he had a low vision evaluation, and the doctor said that if he read print, the letters should be 1/2 to 1 inch in height.  His mom found that this corresponds to 55 point font.  I had been teaching him Braille before this, so this confirmed my opinion that Braille would be his main reading medium.  When I started working with this student in first grade, he was very tactually defensive and didn't want to touch the Braille paper.  I tried a lot of things, including having him read Braille on construction paper and on my BrailleNote.  He has made a great deal of progress considering where he was when I started working with him.  However, I need advice because he will NOT use both hands to read Braille unless I keep reminding him, and this slows him down.  Last year, I finally was able to convince his mom to have him use Braille books in the classroom this year.  Since he is slow with reading, the assistant in the classroom reads things to him, or sometimes I find out that he is using some print books.  I've told the teacher & TA the importance of his using Braille all the time, as well as the need for him to read using both hands.  The thing that really concerns me is that the school had benchmark testing this week.  The student used Braille, but took a LONG time to read the tests because he kept losing his place.  When I work with him, he reads slowly but seems to keep his place better than what I was told occurred with the benchmark tests.  

I would like advice on two issues.  The main one is that I need any different methods that people know in order to motivate this student to use both hands when reading and increase speed, WHETHER I AM WITH HIM OR NOT!  I want him to read independently and efficiently by.  The other issue is that I see students at 5 schools, so can't be with this student all the time.  I want to know for sure that he's using Braille all the time in class.  In the past, he has been able to manipulate the assistant, saying he couldn't read the Braille or didn't want to.  The TA this year is better about that than the one that was there last year, but even she tells me that he takes so long to do tasks in Braille.  I work with him on all the things that are time consuming for him in class; sometimes he does a lot better for me than he does in class and sometimes not.  

I don't know if this is relevant to all this or not, but we just found out that the student has been diagnosed with ADD.  

Thanks for any help that any of you may have.  I really want to do the RIGHT thing for this student, and for him to become an efficient, independent Braille reader.

Deborah
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