[blindkid] Elementary math question

[Mark Feliz]

I too am congenitally blind. A brailled numberline is great for
braille readers. It is just as concrete as her peers'. It is very
important to expose your daughter to tactile representations of many
math concepts as well as to use the full kinesthetic approach. The
alternate techniques used by a blind student may not always follow an
exact replication of his peers' handout. There are ways for your
daughter to setup various types of graphs using excel and JAWS once
she tactually understands the concepts. Braille pro Tractors, compass
on paper layed over a screen... are important tools.
Mark Feliz

On 10/2/13, Marianne Denning <marianne at denningweb.com> wrote:
> I am a congenitally blind adult who is also a teacher of blind and
> visually impaired students.  I believe the number line is excellent.
> It may take someone specificly teaching your daughter how to use it
> but once she learns it will go well.  You should not exclude her from
> any part of the math program. I have a student in fifth grade this
> year and we are modifying some things but he is expected to complete
> all of the lessons.  Does the TVI work with your student on math
> skills other than the abacus?
>
> On 10/2/13, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Brandon,
>>
>> I'm a congenitally blind adult and I normally don't find visual stuff
>> that useful, but I remember the number line helping me a lot,
>> especially with understanding the concept of negative numbers.
>> When I learned fractions I understood the numerator being on the left
>> and the denominator being on the right (of the slash) rather than top
>> and bottom as sighted people see it.
>> Arielle
>>
>> On 10/2/13, Debby B <bwbddl at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> One thing that REALLY helped Winona was when we convinced the school to
>>> pull
>>> out the MathWindow. We were able to set things up, for example
>>> fractions.
>>> Once we set them up vertically it was like the light bulbs came on!
>>>
>>>
>>> Debby
>>> bwbddl at yahoo.com
>>>
>>> ~"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can
>>> read."~Mark Twain
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>  From: b&s <lanesims at gmail.com>
>>> To: blindkid at nfbnet.org
>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 7:27 AM
>>> Subject: [blindkid] Elementary math question
>>>
>>>
>>> Emilia is now in 4th grade. I have been going in occasionally to
>>> help/observe during gen ed math time. I have always understood that the
>>> teaching of math (and all subjects for that matter) is vision centric.
>>> This
>>> is just a fact of life and I've been under the impression that teaching
>>> a
>>> blind kid is just a matter of tweaking the same information that is
>>> taught
>>> to the sighted kids. However, What struck me yesterday was the
>>> possibility
>>> that entire portions of the math curriculum may be fundamentally
>>> dependent
>>> on a visual approach, so that the issue becomes one, not of
>>> transcribing,
>>> but of truly translating the concepts to an entirely different
>>> language….and
>>> possibly even throwing out portions of the curriculum. This came up
>>> while
>>> thinking about number lines. Number lines figure heavily in the teaching
>>> and
>>> testing at this level. Emilia has a brailled number line at school that
>>> does
>>> a reasonable job of transcribing the visual information. She can read
>>> the
>>>  number line and mimic what other kids are doing with some effort. My
>>> question is whether a brailled number line is really useful to a
>>> congenitally blind student to help with understanding the underlying
>>> concepts?….or does it just make us sighted folk feel good about seeing
>>> the
>>> blind kid do the same thing the sighted kids are doing? Is she really
>>> learning the material?
>>>
>>> Unless I'm missing something, the abacus seems to cover the same
>>> territory
>>> and more as the number line. I don't even know how to approach the
>>> notion
>>> of
>>> the hundreds chart, which again, is available in braille, but is it
>>> really
>>> useful? If the answer is no, then there is the question of how to
>>> approach
>>> the issue of class participation, when everyone else is using these
>>> tools
>>> and concepts.
>>>
>>> I plan to talk to a couple of congenitally blind adult friends to get
>>> their
>>> perspective on this stuff. Any enlightenment from parents and others
>>> here
>>> would be great also.
>>>
>>> Thanks, Brandon
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>>
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>
>
> --
> Marianne Denning, TVI, MA
> Teacher of students who are blind or visually impaired
> (513) 607-6053
>
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