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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hi Everyone,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Deborah</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>