How to Teach a Visually Impaired Child
Teaching visually impaired children is like teaching any other group of children: Learn the appropriate strategies and each child can learn successfully. Adapt the learning environment so that each child can be successful, especially the visually impaired child.
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Things You'll Need
- Photocopier with enlarging capabilities
- Markers
- Poster board
- Chart paper
- Whiteboard
- Audio recorder
- CDs or tapes
Instructions
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Adapt the Classroom
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Make it easy for the visually impaired child to get around. Leave lots of space between desks or tables and keep classroom furniture in the same places.
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Think about your posters. Too many posters will just turn into a blur for a visually impaired child. Choose the most important ones, such as academic reminders, and leave lots of space between them. Use a contrasting background color for their borders.
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Write with dark colors. Use dark markers on class charts, posters and whiteboards to make the letters easier to see.
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Keep the visually impaired student in front. Keep his or her desk nearest to where you usually teach. If you have students sit on the floor in front of you, make sure the visually impaired student is consistently in front of you.
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Increase illumination and contrast while reducing glare. Keep the room well-lit. Pair dark colors with light colors. Reduce glare by avoiding all-white backgrounds and/or using filters on the lights.
Adapt Your Teaching Style
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Emphasize the auditory experience. Talk your way through everything you are doing and through what anyone else is doing. Use words that describe your actions as you solve a math problem.
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Record experiences. Record important lessons and stories so that the visually impaired child can listen to them again.
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Enlarge your activities. When you make copies of worksheets, diagrams and other work make sure to enlarge them enough to make them easy to see.
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Use concrete examples. Don't just talk about rocks--bring some in and pass them around. Encourage touch and active participation as much as possible.
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Remove clutter from the work space. Don't split your whiteboard, with social studies info on one side and homework info on the other. Only put one subject on the board or the chart at a time.
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Maintain your high expectations. While you will need to adapt certain things for your visually impaired student, you should still have the same academic and behavioral expectations for her as you do for your other students.
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Tips & Warnings
Use the student, parents and former teachers as a resource. They might have suggestions about what works at home or what has worked in the past.
Don't let the visual impairment become the elephant in your classroom. Talk to the students about it in a matter-of-fact way and encourage them to work with your visually impaired student.
Resources
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Comments
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this will help me help my son, he is frustrated with tiny examples in his math book in first grade!--publishers get a clue, visually impaired does not mean mentally impaired....
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very rellevent tips.
