IRIS Instructional Accommodations by Gayla Farmer by Gayla Farmer

Challenge

gfarmer3 — 2023-12-04 06:23:26 UTC

1. The challenge video was about a teacher, Ms. Milton, who finds out she is getting twins in her class that are both visually impaired. One is blind, the other has low visual ability. She doesn’t know how to accommodate them so that they can do the same hands-on activities that the other students will be doing. She has to find out information about the two students and their disabilities. She needs to create a social environment for them to feel like they belong and she needs to make assignments that all her students can do.

Initial Thoughts

gfarmer3 — 2023-12-04 06:23:43 UTC

Ms. Milton needs to read thier IEP's for each student. She needs to talk with her special Education team and parents to see what she can do. She needs to deifferntiate her lesson plans so that they include both Evan and Emily. She needs to work closely with the aide so that both children feel welcome and included. Ms. Milton needs to have a conversation about Evan and Emily with the rest of her class before they come in. She needs to set the example of how to include them and make them feel welcome.

Perspectives and Resources

gfarmer3 — 2023-12-04 06:24:20 UTC

The movie At First Sight with Val Kilmer who plays Virgil and Mira Sorvino who plays Amy is a story about a blind man. At the beginning of the movie, it shows Virgil in a small town living with his sister. He is blind and has been since he was three years old. He lives with his sister Jenny, who takes care of him. Virgil is independent and works as a massage therapist. The character of Amy is one of his clients and falls in love with him. When she first sees him, he is skating on ice with a hockey stick. She finds out he is blind. She starts to fall in love with him. She spends the night at his house. She moves the chair into his house and he ends up tripping over it. He cut his foot on the chair. Jenny yells at Amy and tells her not to move anything because it would be unsafe for him to move around. Amy suggested that Virgil have surgery on his eyes to fix the cataracts and possibly get his eyesight back. He was not receptive to this idea, and neither was his sister. Eventually Virgil agreed to having the surgery. The surgery was experimental and there were no guarantees that it would work. After the surgery the bandages were removed. He could see a little bit, but the bright lights were painful and the blurriness was awful for him. The Doctor thought it was a huge success for getting any vision at all. Virgil’s Vision was not great. He began to visit a vision therapist. The Therapist told him that his eyes were playing tricks on him and that he would have to practice seeing things for what they were. Amy was fine at first but seemed annoyed at him for all he didn’t know. You take a blind adult who hasn’t seen anything since he was three and put him into a world of sight, He doesn’t know how to read, so filling out job applications would be very difficult without help. His sister was used to him being blind and was against the surgery. The people in the small town where he grew up treated Virgil as if he didn’t have blindness. When he moved to the big city when he was able to see, treated him like a spectacle. This put a strain on his relationship with Amy. His cataract disease started coming back so he left Amy and decided to go back to living with his sister. He needed that independence and moved out to be on his own. He got a service dog to help him navigate streets and worked with blind children. He ended up back with Amy and was successful as a blind man. Growing up with blindness, Virgil used compensatory skills to lead a normal life. Being able to see for that short time, I fell like those skills may have been skewed.

a. The photo is of the moon. The moon is white dirt with big, huge creators on the top. There are no plants of any kind.

b. The sky is black, and the moon is white. There is a guy standing on the moon. He is wearing a big clothing called a suit. It is bulky and looks like a really big Jacket. It has a huge helmet that covers the guy’s whole head. He has to wear this because there is no air to breathe on the moon. This suit and helmet help keep his air in so he can breathe.

c. The guy is called an astronaut. This guy’s name is Neal Armstrong. He was the first person to ever step foot onto the moon. The earth has one moon that goes in a circle around it.

I put this blindfold on during the night. I shut off all the lights to make it completely dark. I have a couple of stairs in my house that go up to the kitchen and I was worried about falling. When I started walking around my house my first instinct was to feel for the wall. My thought was that if I kept my hand on the wall, I could find my way around my house. It worked for a minute but as soon as I walked into my living room I ran into the couch and almost fell. It was scary and it made my heart race. I felt around the couch to the other end and found my table with my remotes on it, I kept walking to find the wall again and followed it around until I reached my stairs. I kept my hand on the wall and found each step to walk up. It felt weird and I had the sensation that I was going to fall backwards. I counted the steps and knew when I reached the top. Once at the top, I walked straight until I bumped into the kitchen table. I walked around the table until I felt I was near the cabinet with the cups in it. I opened one of the cabinets and felt at what was inside. I felt the plates and bowls. I closed that one and felt for the door to the next one. I reached in and felt the cups. I took one out and tied to find the sink. I found it and tried to fill up my cup with water. I was unsuccessful at first but then had to hold the cup with both hands to feel where the water was. It overfilled the cup. I didn’t want to walk with the cup so I just placed in the sink. I tried to fill around the wall until I came to a light switch. I felt light switch and turned it on. I took off the blindfold. The challenges I faced was the stairs were hard to walk up and not knowing exactly where things were in my house. Some insight I have is that if I knew how many steps there were to get to each item, I would have been able to count them as I walked so I wouldn’t have almost fallen when I bumped into the couch. Another challenge was filling up the cup. Some insight would be that maybe have water already measured out so that I could have just poured it in my cup. I would use the tool of making sure my students were vision impaired knew the step count to the main areas of the classroom.. I would also make sure the room wasn’t cluttered so that the pathways would be clear for those students.

Wrap Up

gfarmer3 — 2023-12-04 06:25:16 UTC

My initial thoughts were Ms. Milton needs to read their IEPs for each student. She needs to talk with her special Education team and parents to see what she can do. She needs to differentiate her lesson plans so that they include both Evan and Emily. She needs to collaborate closely with the aide so that both children feel welcome and included. Ms. Milton needs to have a conversation about Evan and Emily with the rest of her class before they come in. She needs to set an example of how to include them and make them feel welcome. I would add that she needs to arrange her room to accommodate both students. She needs to work closely with the O&M specialist as well as the TVI specialist. She needs to have materials for visual, hearing, and tactile accommodation. She needs to have these materials available. She needs to have high expectations of all students. She needs to remember that Emily and her brother are just like their peers.

Assessment

gfarmer3 — 2023-12-04 06:25:43 UTC

1. Three resources you should use to determine the visual and academic ability of a student with a visual impairment would be the IEP, The parents or legal guardians, and the O &M specialist, and the TVI specialist.

2.It is important to keep high expectations for all students not just those with visual disabilities. All students understand what is being said to them. It is important not to dumb down what is said and don’t expect less because they are just like everyone else of their age group. They should be treated respectfully.

3.Four things you should do when communicating with a student with a visual disability would be, Ask them if they need assistance and wait for them to take your arm. Talk in a normal voice, inform them of schedule changes or room changes, and tell students if something is being handed to them or placed on their desk.

4.The three types of accommodations for materials that were presented were visual, hearing and tactile.

Evan (1) tactile Three dimensional models of objects

(2) hearing Descriptive videos

Emily (1) visual Large, printed material (2) hearing Books on audio tape

5. I would include rulers that are tactile and have raised dots and braille numbers on them to help with measuring the three-dimensional geometric shapes. I would describe the shape and tell what the shape is as the student holds the shape in their hand. I would to hand in hand to demonstrate how to measure the size of the shape. I would take spoken answers that they say, and I would write them down.

6. Listen to this audio version “Fish is Fish.” When you are finished, jot down notes about what you think was happening in the video. I think that these two creatures in a pond started out together and one left the pond to go see the world. A world that the others couldn’t see. The one who left the pond came back to describe what he saw to the other so that they would know what it was like. The one described a bird but only basic things about it. He also described a cow and a person with limited details. The one who didn’t leave the pond took the information given to them and made up their own versions of a bird, cow and human. Next, watch the video. Why do you think it is important to provide descriptions of videos for your students with visual impairments? It is important to provide descriptions of videos for students with visual impairments because in their mind they have certain images that they have and if you only give a few details, they will incorporate them into an image that they already have in their brain. Just like the fish only knew what a fish and a tadpole/frog looked like. So he imagined the bird, cow, and human like a fish.