Visual Art for the Visually Impaired: Infusing art instruction into early literacy This video is posted online with the following chapter markers: Chapter 1. Finding Time to Teach Art Chapter 2. Problems with Pre-Braille Activities Chapter 3. Essential Braille Skills & Concepts Chapter 4. Low Vision Students Chapter 5. Linking activities to experiences. Chapter 6. Integrating Drawing into Classroom Activities Chapter 7. Adapting Elementary Worksheets Chapter 8. Resources Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End. Transcript Start [Music] Fade up from black. Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI. [Music face out] Fade to black. Chapter 1. Finding Time to Teach Art [ Music ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired Content: Visual Arts for the Visually Impaired Infusing Art Experiences into Early Literacy November 8th, 2017 Scott Baltisberger, TSBVI VI Education Consultant baltisbergers@tsbvi.edu Description End: Scott: Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to this webinar, my name is Scott Baltisberger and I'm your facilitator today. With me here is my co-presenter Melvin. Melvin is wearing the T-shirt from the last-- the Austin studio tour, West Studio Tour and the school happened to take part in that last year. It was really exciting our art teacher Gretchen Bettes put that together and we were part of a city-wide studio tours. That was really exciting to see the art of blind and visually impaired kids getting out to the general public. Anyway, this is the webinar visual arts in our series visual arts for the visually impaired, this is infusing art experiences into early literacy. Thanks to everybody for being here. [ Slide end: ] A couple of things that I wanted to say. I'm sorry that I think I sent a mail out to a lot of colleagues and friends and didn't mention this is 3:00 Central Time. I think people out on the East Coast thought that we were maybe-- maybe might have been 3:00 Eastern Time, there may be people on the West Coast that are not signed in yet. I will try to be more specific about that next time. And anyway hopefully if anyone misses this, they will be able to see it. We do archive the webinars and you can access them that way. Anyway, this is our series about visual arts for the visually impaired. I've done three of these so far, hopefully they're getting. This one we're going to talk a little bit more about how to infuse art into early literacy. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Agenda Content: • How drawing supports developmente of literacy • Teaching young children to draw • Tactile • Low Vision • Integrating drawing into classroom activities • Adapting early elementary worksheets • Questions and Answers • Please Help! Description End: Let's just look-- this is our agenda. First we'll talk about how drawing can support development of literacy. Next we'll talk more specific about how to teach young children to draw both tactile for students who are Braille learners and also for low vision students. I want to talk about how to integrate drawing into classroom activity, sort of the how and why of that. Looking at a few examples of adapting early elementary worksheets. We will also have times for questions and comments and then I'm going to ask for everyone's help on a couple of things. [ Slide end: ] So before we jump into it, I do want to point out to everyone that this is an interactive webinar. If you do have some comments or questions, please write those into the chat room and I'll-- I'll respond to those. You can also talk with me directly, if you want to inmute your phone. I believe it's star 6 to do that. And you can hear your voice heard on the webinar. So let's look at-- let's get started with this. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Finding Time to Teach Art Content: Isn't teaching art the responsibility of the art teacher? When can I possibly find time to teach art? Description End: So finding time to teach art. And this is-- when I go out, so-- in my job, what I do is I travel around the state working with different teachers, different school systems and there's two things that I hear a lot from teachers and there are these two questions. Isn't teaching art-- when I bring up art. I go to talk to teachers about whether-- how they can include blind and visually impaired students to arts classes. It always comes up, people always want to know isn't teaching art the responsibility of the art teacher, when can I find time to teach art? These are very-- very-- the questions are very natural questions because, for one thing, TVI, teachers of the visually impaired, have a lot of responsibilities. It makes it hard to find time for even things that are considered essential like math and social studies and science. The other point to think about is that art is not-- at least in Texas, it's not a subject that is on the standardized testing. So it's frequently perceived as inessential and ancillary to the core courses. So a lot of times it's merely treated as an enrichment subject. It kind of gets pushed to the periphery of what we need to teach. [ Slide end: ] So many other things to address, that art we wait until when we can get to it or if we get to it. So those two questions come up a lot. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Who's Responsibility? Content: Content: General education teacher Access: Teacher for students with visual impairment Access should be for ALL subject areas. Consider rights of student for self-determination. Description End: I would like to look at each of those in turn. First of all, let's look at the first question, isn't art the responsibility of the art teacher? This is true that the-- it's not the role of the TVI to teach content of core courses, just as TVI wouldn't teach the ins and outs of trigonometry or medieval literatures, you shouldn't have to teach the subtleties of two point perspective or color theory, say. However, it is the role of the TVI to provide access and that access should be for all subject areas. The TVI is supposed to provide tools and skills that will enable them to participate in the general education curriculum. And so, for example, in the example of trigonometry, the TVI would need to teach, make sure that their student had knowledge of Nemeth code, able to use the talking calculator, they would need all of those things to access the content of trigonometry. In a medieval literature class, they would need to know-- they would need to have a facility in using and reading and creating Braille in order to participate in that class. So the same way, if you want-- it should be our role to provide blind and visually impaired students with the basic skills, the basic concepts in arts that will allow them to go into the art class and be taught the content by the art teacher. One thing that comes to mind to me a lot when I think about if we as TVIs make the decision of which subjects we're going to teach or which subject is going to provide access and which subjects we won't provide as much access, that's really taking it out of the student's hand. Really denying them for their right for self determination in deciding what they-- determination in deciding what they want to learn. Students should have opportunities to make their own choices. Perhaps 90% of students would not care to, you know, further pursue the arts, but for those that do, for those that is meaningful, it's very important that we give them that chance. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Where's the Time? Content: The fool's choice: "Should I sacrifice core courses to teach art?" The option: Do both at the same time! Infuse art into activities of early literacy. Description End: Okay. So the other question that comes up is-- is, you know, where-- where can I possibly find the time to do this. Caseloads are extremely high around the state. That's-- that's across the board. That's something that I see all of the time. So it becomes the idea of like [indiscernible] I have to teach math, I have to teach independent living skills, I have to teach access, so where will I find this? So I want to talk a little bit about the-- about the concept of the fool's choice. And this was something that I learned back when I was looking at mediation training. It's the idea that you have to always make an either/or choice. Either this or either that. It's all one way or all the other way. It's simply not true in a lot of the cases. If you start to look at it more the idea of like how can we do both? Then opportunities open up. So that's the idea. You can do both at the same time, you can do that by infusing art activities into early literacy. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Infusing Art into Literacy Content: Benefits: • Interdependent nature of learning • Early exposure and consistent ongoing practice Description End: You know, the research shows the benefits of it that really learning is interdependent. That is to say that, you know, we don't-- what you learn in math, what you learn in language arts, and what you learn in science and what you learn in mobility and what you learn in independent living skills, these aren't separate from each other. These aren't separated from one another by impenetrable walls. What you learn in one area lays foundations for skills development in other areas. This is certainly true with art. If you look at what the research shows about art, engaging in art programs, it shows that children are exposed to art-rich programming and education actually do better across the board. They actually do better in standardized testings in those core subjects like math, science, language arts, social studies. [ Slide end: ] Another thing to think about with-- with the idea of infusing art into literacy is that it really-- really-- it's a wonderful thing, a wonderful way to teach it. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Early Literacy is a Wonderful Place to Teach Art! Content: Literacy instruction is incessant during early grades. Early literacy instruction is heavily dependent on art activities such as drawing, coloring, and tracing. Description End: For one thing, literacy instruction is incessant in the early grades, pretty much from Pre-K through second, third grade, literacy is infused into everything they do. That is always happening. And the other part of that is that a lot of that early literacy is heavily dependent on art activities. So go into an early childhood classroom, early elementary classroom, you will see a lot of what they are doing is incorporating drawing, coloring, tracing, these types of activities. For our students, if they have access, if they have-- if they have-- if we provide them with adaptive skills for doing those things, they are more included in those activities and they are getting more instruction in literacy skills. So-- so let's look at how that plays out with students. Who use Braille as well as those who are considered low vision. Chapter 2. Problems with Pre-Braille Activities I want to talk about-- about problems that there might be with early Braille and-- and pre-Braille activities. [ Slide end: ] And if you can share my screen here a second -- [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: center graphic: cartoon character of a young zombie Description End: So this is-- this is-- the Halloween theme, this is the dead zone. So what I've found is what I see sometimes when I go out in the field and meet with teachers is that TVIs provide a lot of early learning opportunities in tactile exploration at the preschool level, a lot of times when it comes to teach Braille, those experiences aren't linked directly to literacy, to Braille. And so it's almost like there's two facets. There's the early concept learning and tactile development and then there's Braille. It creates a sort of zone that the ball gets dropped. So I see teachers that say "This student is cognitively capable, but they are not able to get Braille. I'm not sure why that is." And many times I find that it's that dead zone. So you can turn off the zombie now. I think everyone is sufficiently frightened. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: The Dead Zone! Content: • Not linking early tactile experiences with literacy • Need to develop hand skills BEFORE beginning braille • Need for active engagement of the learner. • Need to use symbols that have meaning and are easily accessible. Description End: So um ... there's sometimes an over-reliance in that. In looking at early literacy, there's sometimes an over-reliance on reading programs like Mangled, Fundamentals, Patterns, those programs tend to be very teacher centered, very teacher oriented in what they do. And what research shows that children perform better, they-- they are more engaged, they are more interested, they will engage for longer period of times when learning is centered on what their interests are. The other aspect of it is the need to develop those hand skills before beginning Braille. You know, the-- the process of learning to derive meaning from abstract symbols, you know, particularly in the case of Braille involves a lot of different skill areas. So there's-- there's a cognitive aspect, there's a-- there's an experiential aspect, there's a physical aspect to it, there's a social/emotional aspect to it. So those skills need to be really developed before you start trying to put your fingers-- before the child puts their fingers on a sheet of Braille and tries to identify letters and individual cells. It's just not possible to do that unless you have got well developed fine motor skills. So that really needs to happen and you can't stop working on fine motor skills and then start to do Braille. You have to keep doing them. Art-- by infusing art, you can do those things, you can keep working on those fine motor skills while you're bringing in the Braille. So it-- the other part of it to think about, to make more of a smooth, easy transition from using non-or preliterary uses of Braille is that symbols-- in order for children to understand symbols at an early age, they have to be loaded with meaning and they have to be easily accessible. Braille letters, print is-- print our Braille letter systems are very abstract, it's very difficult-- it's a lot of work for children to begin understanding that. [ Slide end: ] And it may take them a while. In the meantime, if you're-- if they're trying-- if you're trying to just teach letter identification, sound letter correspondence, it can be hard because the student is already needing to do a lot of work just to [indiscernible] find the Braille, focus on the individual Braille and to decode the system. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Skills and Concepts Essential to Early Literacy Content: • Hand and finger strength • Finger isolation, finger coordination • Spatial Relationships • Symbolic representation These will be practiced more often if activities are fun and varied. Description End: So these are some other skills that go along with this, the hand and finger strength, the finger isolation, spatial relationships, the symbolic representation. These will all be practiced more frequently by the child, perhaps if they are not so focused on growth memorization and-- rote memorization, tracking lines of Braille across the page. Chapter 3. Essential Braille Skills & Concepts So let's look at-- so-- so how do you start to teach Braille, how do you start to teach Braille as-- as infused or in literacy together? [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Scribbling Content: Important milestone in development of literacy. Awareness of potential for symbolic meaning in writing. Stages: • Pre-symbolic • Pre-schematic • Schematic Description End: One big way to do that is to look at the concept of scribbling. So scribbling is-- it is defined in the dictionary and sort of less than admiral terms by to cover with careless or worthless-- worthless writings or drawings. Another definition is: A note or other writing that has little or no meaning. I think that's interesting because it's-- both of those are patently untrue. There's a great deal of research that's indicating that scribbling is an important milestone in the development of print literacy and there's things coming out now that talk about the importance of it in Braille literacy. So let's just look at-- you know, what-- what is scribbling like, so with-- with-- what happened with scribbling, it's a system by which the child builds awareness of the potential for symbolic meaning in writing. And anyone who has been around young children, raised young children, knows that they get into this stage, these three stages-- these are the three stages they go through. There's a presymbolic page, a preschematic stage and a schematic stage. [ Slide end: ] So sighted children begin to make marks around the age of 12 to 18 months. There's no intention that the writings that they create will represent anything. [ Screen start: ] described by speaker So if I-- if you could share my screen now guys-- so-- so this may look familiar to a lot of you out there in the audience. So this is a typical scribble that you will see from a young child. Random marks on the paper. And there's no real intention from the child that this means anything. It's purely sort of a sensory motor experience. They are just creating marks, using their muscles and feeling the page in their hand and watching what it creates. It is sort of getting to that idea of cause and effect, you know, that if they do this, then this is created. What they will typically move into after this is-- is they begin to develop an awareness of the symbolic possibilities of scribbling and-- and they start to notice the images around them have meaning. So they begin to say, they may do the exact same image as this, they may say okay now this represents a cat. And then-- then they start to move into actually creating schematic images, where you have sort of a-- of a consistent way to represent something. That's when you will see this sort of thing, the stereotypical stick people. Or this thing, which is the-- you know, the sun with the rays around it. So this-- this process they go through build that idea that images have symbolism, that images have meaning. It's a very, very important precursor to developing literacy skills. [ Screen end: ] So let's look at you can go ahead and turn my screen off and-- let's talk about teaching scribbling to a very young student. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Teaching Scribbling Content: • Difficulty accessing incidental learning • Model scribbling and drawing with the brailler or tactile drawing board; model "looking" at graphics with hands • Co-active drawing and scribbling (shadowing) • Use brailler or raised line drawing kits • Avoid excessive complexity; focus on symbolism rather than representation Description End: So-- so an enormous amount of-- of-- of early childhood learning occurs through incidental learning. That is the student, the child just observes what is around them, just watches what is happening and they try to imitate that. Or they store that information for later recall. For a blind child, or a student with low vision, that can be very difficult to do. So for example in the idea of art, you know, kids in a preschool class will be watching each other drawing pictures. And they will be getting-- so that information will be motivating to them, we will give them ideas about what they can do. A blind student may not have that. So they have that difficulty. In that case, we need to teach that-- we need to teach scribbling to our blind students and low vision students explicitly, we need to sit down with them and teach them how to scribble. How do you do that? You do that by one way by scribbling yourself, by sitting down with the student, with your Braille machine, and letting them watch you do something scribbling. Not for any necessarily any point, but just for the pure joy of creating lines and-- and shapes on the paper. They could also-- so, you know, when they watch you, as you are doing the-- using the Braille writer, they can put their hands on your hands and watch you draw, they can put their hands on the paper as the images are being drawn and they get that information and they see that you are drawing and they can develop an interest in doing it themselves. The same way, if you want to show a student graphic, if you want to show them drawings, be real careful to look with your hands. Even if you yourself are not blind or with a visual impairment, make sure that they say, well, let's look at this and let the child see that your hands are also moving across the page to look at the images. I think that's real important for them to see that-- that this is the way things are done. That they have a model, particularly an adult model, show them that this is how we look at things. This is how we explore art. This is how we explore literacy. If we are doing the scribbling, I wanted to bring up one point. I'm talking mostly now about Braille in regards to literacy, but it's real important, an important factor of this, real helpful, can also be used with raised line drawing kits. I have done-- I will show a couple of these to you. This is the sensational blackboard. [ Slide end: ] Real nice. I did a whole webinar on these, which you can access. It's archived. This will show you, like, you know how to draw. Because this actually is a raised line drawing, the child can draw with this. This comes from Ann Cunningham up in Colorado. This is the American Printing House draftsman, also a real nice thing for creating images. The great thick about teaching scribbling on these, this is the Sewell raised line drawing kit, costs about $20. This is a real nice one. This is the intact sketch pad. So the nice thing about all of these is they work on -- they work on some skills, some fine motor skills that may not be so addressed with the Braille machine, like, you know, with the fine motor and particularly like wrist rotation and forearm rotation to draw with a stylus on a board, you need to do that. Not so much on the Braille machine. The Braille machine has a more limited number of movements that are done. So I wouldn't not teach with the tactile drawing board and only with the Braille machine or vice versa. The I would try to do a little bit of both. Now when you are doing-- when you are doing the scribbling, when you are working with the child, you avoid excessive complexity, focus on symbolism rather than representation. [ Screen start: ] described by speaker So here's like-- I will share my screen again. So here's what scribbling might look like for a Braille student. These are just random marks. That-- that they would do just to get the pure joy of making marks, the pure joy of drawing. When you talk about drawing pictures, when the child is ready to start talking about I want to draw a picture, if you want to demonstrate drawing a picture, don't try to recreate a detailed picture of a cat. You can just do a simple box like this. Of Braille cells, tell them this is not a representation of a cat, it's a symbol of a cat. I know sometimes there's talk about-- about how two dimensional images don't like look three dimensional images to someone who is blind or visually impaired. But the idea is we're teaching symbolic representation. Later on you might start to move to something more like this, a little more thematic. A little more-- more consistent representation. [ Screen end: ] So the Braille writer is a very beneficial thing to use for infusing art into literacy. It's familiar to the student. Should become very familiar to them. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Benefits of the Perkins Brailler Content: • Familiar to the student. • Like a pencil or crayon: Combines drawing and writing on same page with same tool. • Can color directly onto same page. • Reinforces same skills the child uses for reading and writing text. Description End: Like a pencil or a crayon, you can draw a picture and then you can write-- you can write, you can Braille on it. And you can color it. All with the same sheet of paper. It's kind of-- sort of analogous to what the sighted kids are doing with pencils and crayons. Again, using the Braille, because the young child is going to use the Perkins Brailler, or another Braille machine to do literacy, using those for art will reinforce the same skills for reading and for text. [ Slide end: ] Chapter 4. Low Vision Students So-- so let's look now a little bit at-- at low vision students. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Low Vision Students Content: • Also have difficulty access incidental learning • Model scribbling and drawing • Co-active scribbling • Increase contrast: • Use 20/20 p;ens or marker, soft-lead pencils, oil pastels • Muted color for paper for students with contrast issues • Model "looking" at graphics with low vision equipment Description End: The same thing-- low-vision students also have a lot of difficulty with access to information, access to [indiscernible] learning. Sometimes we don't think they do because they are visual learners, but they may also need for us to do modeling of scribbling and drawing and do co-active scribbling and drawing. [ Screen start: ] described by speaker Share my screen again, please, and I'll show you some things that I did a while back. Okay. So what I used to do I would show my low-vision students a target, then I would real simple schematic drawings and get them to try to recreate it. There's the bird. You know, here's a dinosaur, simple dinosaur. Here's her interpretation of it. And then-- the student is able to go on and create things on her own. These didn't have targets. That's a T-Rex and I believe a horse on the other side. So I have noticed money low-vision students don't draw. Maybe of my students when I was a TVI doesn't until I started teaching them how to do it. Then they are able to take part in classes much more. I want to talk back up a little bit here and talk about some materials for low-vision. Whoa, whoa, there we go. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Content: Description End: So because a student with low vision may have more difficulty seeing like your typical No. 2 pencil on a page, these are what are called soft lead pencils. Like your typical number 2 is called No. 2 because it's a 2 H pencil, these are 2 H or-- they leave a real thick, dark line. So soft lead pencils are something to use. These are called China markers, they are made for ceramicists to write on China, it's kind of waxy. They are a lot brighter, a lot more vibrant. A lot more contrast. These are oil pastels. Sometimes they can be nice. Sometimes crayons may not put out enough contrast. Oil pastels can leave a really vibrant, really rich color that are much easier for them to see. As a matter of fact I believe some of these may have been done with the oil pastels. Here's, you know, in the theme of-- of Thanksgiving, this child eventually was able to when they did a unit on Thanksgiving, everyone was doing their Thanksgiving drawing their pictures, she was able to draw there on the left is the Santa-- the-- not the Santa Maria. The Mayflower and I guess on the other side that was the church meeting house that the pilgrims were in. So let's look at our next slide. Chapter 5. Linking activities to experiences. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Linking Activities to Experiences Content: • Incidental learning affects awareness of environment. • Pair real-life, hands-on experiences with art activities • Experience books - incorporate drawing • Calendar systems - incorporate tracing • Collaboration with orientation and mobility specialist • Bonding and sharing Description End: Linking activities to experiences. So-- so the-- it's very, very important with blind children to make sure that what that-- that they have direct experience with the thing. If you're going to do an art activity, let's say if you want to draw a picture of say a cat, since we were using that earlier. You need to make sure that they have actually seen a cat, that they have actually touched a cat. They have some experience with a cat. Because otherwise you run the risk of them just simply parroting information. It's real helpful with young kids to take them out and do some sort of hands-on activity and then go back and incorporate that into whatever type of drawing literacy activity that you are doing. Now, those of you that are TVIs are in the-- are in the field of education of blind and visually impaired students, you may recognize this being very similar to what you do with an experience book. With an experience book, you go out and you explore the environment, you explore outdoors, you explore the classroom and you gather objects that you find and you bring those back and you create a book by, you know, pasting or coloring those objects or pasting or taping those objects into a book and then writing information about that. So the student has something directly that they have experienced and they can talk about. It's real nice what you can do with experience books you can also draw pictures. Once you've got the object and you can talk about it, you can do a picture, draw a tactile picture with your Braille writer or your tactile drawing board or with your low-vision equipment and then include some print or some Braille with that. The same way a lot of really young kids use calendar systemsfor those of you who are not in the world of education, calendar systems are where we use objects or tactile symbols to represent the events of a child's day. You want to move, typically your child moves from objects to symbols to Braille. So there's-- there's a steady move from one to the other. When you are doing the symbols, trying to move from objects to other things, it's a real nice activity to trace that, to put the object in the middle of a page and trace around it. So that's another way for art to be incorporated. It could be really good-- remember when you are doing that, though, if you are doing the tracing activity, it's not a one-time only thing. If you are going to trace that item, trace it every day for quite some period of time until the child is aware of it. Really has truly understood the connection between the drawings, tracing and the object. And other things looking at, the collaboration, orientation and mobility specialist can be a big help with this. Of course they are out of the classroom a lot, exploring the environment a lot with the student. They can incorporate-- a lot of what they do can be incorporated with what you as a TVI might be doing with them as well. It will also help the orientation and mobility specialist, I think at a very young age you can start working on mapping skills, drawing maps with the Perkins Brailler or demonstrating mapping-- drawing mapping skills for the student with the Perkins Brailler. That's a way to bring orientation and mobility into it. I think sometimes you have to think that-- that, you know, when we're-- when we're-- when we're-- when we're doing art and let's show a couple of pictures here, if you can share my computer again. [ Screen start: ] described by speaker You know, when you are doing art with a student, also, it's not free time. But it also doesn't have to be-- sometimes it can be nice just to kind of sit down and explore it together. I was talking earlier about the simplicity of the images. What you are trying to do. So these are ways, all of these are different ways of showing a thing. You know, any one of these objects could represent a cat. Or a dog. It's really up to the student to decide in the early stages. So you do a full square, you can do an empty square, you can do one that's outlined. The one in the middle, those are just the A, N, D and the letter Y cells combined together. Makes a nice little box. Of course the bottom is the full cell. Here's just some real simple images. That says dog and cat, the one on the left is a dog, the one on the right is a cat. I'm not sure what that is on the bottom. This is a boat. If you can see over there on the left, that has boat written under it and the thing on the right, the big thing on the right is land, it says. Underneath at the very bottom, you see it says fish, fish. So you can also represent things, if a student has enough literacy, they can represent in their compositions they can represent things purely by Braille, by labeling it or just by using the Braille. I have seen real need things where a kid has drawn a dog using all D's or the dog using the word dog repeated over and over. Kind of a neat thing to do. Here's a way of-- a blind student might represent a real common thing in classrooms here is draw a picture of this and label it. Here's a picture of my family. Over on the side there's David, in the middle is mom, the one just to the right is dad and then the shortest one over on the right is me. So this is kind of neat things because you can talk about, you know, relationships and spatial relationships and concepts of short and tall. You can get into just doing patterns, as well. That's fun to do. Chapter 6. Integrating Drawing into Classroom Activities I think let's go and talk a little bit more about how to integrate things in the classroom activities. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Integrating Drawing into Classroom Activities Content: • Lots of art in early elementary activities • Partner with classroom teacher • What drawing skill are being used in the classroom? • What type of art is being incorporated into assignments and worksheets? • What kind of art is used in centers? • Integration with classroom and peer learning Description End: Okay. Okay. There we go. Okay. So like I said earlier, there's a lot of art that goes on in early elementary classrooms. There's just lots and lots of it. And it can be real good. A lot of what they are doing, they are doing worksheets, handing out worksheets. A lot of those worksheets involve things like coloring, drawings, tracing, you know, connect the dots, that type of thing, those can be easily adapted for a student who is blind. They also do a lot of center based, they have a lot of centers. Many times in the centers there are art based activities. So it could be real good for you as the teacher for the visually impaired to go in and talk to the classroom teacher and ask them what skills are you using? What drawing skills do other kids use in the classroom? It can also be really helpful to you as a TVI to go into the classroom and just watch what the sighted kids are doing. Watch what kind of drawings they are creating. Watch what-- the type of imagery, what their focus is. That may give you some ideas about what to work on with your blind student. You want to have them on kind of the same developmental and conceptual level at their peers. You know, the thing about that, if that child is doing what the other children are doing, they are much more integrated into the culture of that classroom. So all of the kids are drawing pictures of a dog. And if your student is drawing a picture of a dog, they can compare with their friends, they can talk about it, they can share that information. Kids learn an awful lot from each other. Throughout life, but even at those early ages, we think we're teaching them most of what they know. But a lot of what they're learning, a lot of what they're picking up, a lot of what they're focused on are their peers. If you give them that access, it makes them more a part of that community. It makes them feel more like part of the community and makes their peer perceive them as part of their community. Also makes the teacher perceive them that way. If the teacher can see that student can do that, that teacher feels more ownership of that. Rather than simply waiting for the TVI to come in and do it with them or looking for a completely different activity for that student to do rather than drawing the picture. Chapter 7. Adapting Elementary Worksheets So let's go on to slide 16. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Notes on Adapting Worksheets Content: • Focus on pictorial symbolism rather than pictorial representation • Include all information on the print copy, these can provide lots of practice concepts of formatting. • Adaptations for blindness or low vision may require extra space so you may need multiple sheets. Description End: Because I want to go a little bit more into this worksheet thing. So when you are working on the worksheets, as I've tried to stress before, you know, it's more about the symbolism than the pictorial representation. If you are going to adapt a worksheet for a child, don't worry about if there's a picture of a tiger, don't worry-- [ Laughter ]-- don't feel bad because you can't draw a beautiful tactile image of a tiger. You don't need to do that. Just put an image and label it tiger so the child has it there. I'm not saying if you are a wonderful artist and you can create that, power to you, do it. But you don't have to be an amazing artist to encourage art among your students. What you do want to do is try to include all of that information that is on the print copy because that can provide a lot of practice and experience for the child in concepts of formatting. When I was a TVI, I would get worksheets and I would pull my child aside and work with them on them and teach them like oh, this is a connect the dots. Here's how this works. Oh, this is a matching, this is how this works. And when they got that format down, they understood and they could apply that to things in the classroom. Keep in mind that when you do an adaptation for a blind student or even for a low-vision student, you may need a lot more space. You may need a larger sheet of paper or you may need multiple sheets of paper to adapt the same worksheet. Let's look at a couple and maybe I can show you what I'm talking about. If you would share my screen, please. [ Screen start: ] described by speaker Okay. These are-- we'll go through this. These are just some examples of patterning that you can do with children. There's a whole webinar on this called drawing with your Perkins Brailler, if you want to go back and look at that. It's archived. Okay. Here you go. Here's a worksheet. Real typical, drawing to count. Draw the connect number of each item. Five a heart by it. Three with a star by it. A four, a moon, a one, a flower and a two a raindrop. You are supposed to go over it on the right side, on the right side of the-- of the row and draw five hearts or three stars or four moons, et cetera. So on the Braille copy, what you see on here on the right same thing, columns and there's number one and there's a shape, a Braille shape which is basically the and symbol and the letter Y symbol. It's got No. 2 and the symbol there the representation is two full cells and then for No. 3, there's a-- there's simply two dropped-- dropped Bs. So those can represent-- if you talk to the child about it, say okay these are pictures, this is not literary, this represents this. When the child goes over to the worksheet he can recreate the same symbols in his or her columns. If you notice this only goes to three where the print sheet-- has three rows, the print sheet has four. I would do the next two columns on another sheet. That will give a child a chance to practice-- practice Braille sheet numbering. Okay. Here's another one. Okay. Here's one about tallest, says circle the tallest. Three rows, one with three trees, the second row has three letters and the third row has three giraffes. You are supposed to circle the tallest image in each one. Again on the Braille sheet it has the place for the name to go, title tallest, the direction circle the tallest one in Braille and then it's got the three columns-- three rows, I'm sorry. It's got-- in this one, in the print copy it doesn't say tree, but I wrote the word tree in Braille. That way the student knows that these images-- are supposed to represent a tree. If this is given to the child in the classroom and the TVI is not there, they can say, oh, these are trees, I need to circle the tallest tree. The second one, three ladders, three one three giraffes. Those images look vaguely like ladders, trees or giraffes, the concept is looking at tall, tall and short. Really I could put anything there, I wanted to make and you each a little different than the other just to give the child some variety. Finally, here's a couple more. You will see this a lot, a lot of busy work that kids get. But they get it. So I think even, you know, children should be allowed to do even the busy work. Even the-- even the stuff that's, you know, we don't perceive as being directly related to any essential concepts. So this is, you know, draw the monster. And what you've got is a pair of monster feet and you are supposed to draw the top part of it. So on this one, there's simply two pairs of sort of schematic looking feet and they are labeled monster legs, so they are labeled leg, leg. The child in order to complete this work, again, he or she would just draw an image on top of that. The idea is that to complete this type of sheet, you draw an image up there. And they could do whatever they wanted to do. It could be a box, it could be a scribble, it could be whatever they want to do, as long as they get into it and they come up with their own schema for what it is. There's one more. You unshared too quickly, one more. [ Laughter ]. Okay. So there's another one. Ice cream dream. This is teaching symmetry. There's a half of an ice cream cone drawn, the child is supposed to draw the other half, like split down the middle, right? So the same thing, there's a Braille image down the middle of the page and then the child is supposed to recreate like do a mirror image on the other side of the page. Looks very vaguely like an ice cream cone, looks more like just two boxes on top of each other. But it is a real good exercise for a child to work with aligning their Braille machine, the embossing of their Braille machine with the image that's on the sheet of the handout. Okay. So we can unshare now. [ Screen end: ] Thank you. So again that's the idea. Focus on the symbolism, rather than that-- we looked at the worksheets. We looked-- low-vision I talked about that. Chapter 8. Resources [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Resources Description End: Resources. I just wanted to-- I just wanted to point out on the handout, if you go to the end of the handout, there are-- there's a bunch of resources on there. Like all of the low-vision equipment that I showed, the-- the-- the china markers and the oil pastels, there's where to buy those things. Also, there's some links, some articles about scribbling, about print scribbling and Braille scribbling that you might find interesting. There is one resource that I wanted to mention, that can be really nice. So this is-- if you are looking for a good book, a lot of you TVIs may already have this, "Beginning with Braille" it's Anna Swinson. She's got a whole chapter in here promoting literacy, reading and writing in Braille. She has really nice ideas, examples about how to incorporate Braille art and Braille literacy or tactile art and Braille literacy. So if you can get ahold of this book yeah, Anna Swinson beginning with Braille, really nice one. [ Slide end: ] So the-- in summary I want to say, you know, the TVI is not responsible for-- for teaching the entire content of skills of art classes. They are responsible for or should be responsible for teaching the-- the skills that will allow them access. You can incorporate basic art activities into early learning, early literacy activities. You don't have to separate art time out from literacy time. You can do both at the same time. In fact, that's what they do with print. A lot of time. When your student does have basic skills in place with art, they will-- then they will be able to move on, participate in class and they will be able to incorporate concepts that the classroom teacher is teaching to them. One last thing, I wanted to bring up, well, let me-- we have some time so I wanted to look at questions and comments from people. So you guys, again, send me-- write down on the chat if you've got something to say. Catherine Stowell says: Why has it never occurred to me to have my daughter draw the symbols in her AAC device? I don't know, Catherine. Maybe-- I don't know your daughter and I'm not sure what she's doing. But-- I think we need to think of children as children who are blind and visually impaired, first of all as children, having the same needs as other children and having the same-- having the same rights as other children that they should have the same access. And, you know, art is-- art is all around us, you know, we're completely surrounded by images. And not having access to the images, not having awareness of it, I think, is really isolating for persons who don't have vision or have low-vision. Michael Coleman says Scott are the Braille images on plastic sheets to be used with a drawing board? I'm not sure which Braille images. Are you talking about the Braille images that I showed? I think? You could do that. That's-- actually, that's a really good-- I'm really glad you brought that up, Mike. You could do the-- the image that I showed-- the reason they were in that format is this: It's real hard to show Braille on a video. So what I did is I did them on plastic sheets which are called Braille-on which are clear, then I attached them to a dark background card stock. The reason that I did that was that so they would show up on this webinar. However, what you're talking about, you could do Braille on a plastic sheet, which-- sorry to go off screen, but you know these-- the [indiscernible] drawing board comes with plastic sheets. You could put one of those sheets and put it in your Brailler, draw on it or write on it, put it back into the tactile drawing board and use the stylus-- the stylus-- oops. Sorry to go off screen again. And use your stylus to draw on to that image. So that would be a good way to do it. I know Michael is a friend of ours and he's been working-- he actually works on this, the intact sketch board, he's been coming up with a curriculum or I don't know if you call it a curriculum yet, Mike, but it's a way to-- to-- to encourage children to draw with the tactile drawing board. So it has lessons that you can use to teach children real simple-- simple-- ways to draw real simple images and how to build those images to create more symbolic, more representational images. If you get a chance to look into it, that's intact sketch board. That is in the handout. Beth says I know you talked about the perfect tiger-- [ Laughter ]-- I have students that are low-vision and need very concrete items as they do not know Braille. So-- so do you mean um ... I'm not sure, if you could get me a little more information on that. If you are looking at, you know, sometimes students who are very low vision, if you want to get the idea across to them about that drawing represents an image, tracing can be very good for that. If they are very low vision, you could use one of those tactile drawing pads, like I was just showing. That could be a real good way to do it. Another way can be to use just some of the markers that I showed that are really dark, like maybe the oil pastels. That will leave a really dark image. Okay. Let's see ... who else? Oh. Rodriguez, again, suggests using a-- draw very large using a marker. Yeah, you might with-- you might get out butcher paper, you know, the great big white sheets that they use to make things they hang up in the hallways in the schools to do banners, you might get a big sheet of that and get like a two by three foot thing and use that to draw with. You are not necessarily stuck with the, you know, the traditional eight and a half by 11 sheet to work in art. Rodriguez says also the tactile drawing board works well. I used it to teach symmetry. I did the first half-- yeah. She or he, I'm not sure, is talking about what Michael was talking about earlier about using a tactile drawing board to show half an image and recreate half of it. The one that I showed that-- the ice cream cone, that's the way to do it with the Braille machine. Again, it's not the [indiscernible] choice, it's not either the Brailler or the tactile drawing board. You can use both of them and use them to build different types of concepts and different types of motor skills. Rodriguez says-- Mr. Rodriguez says he is a he. Thanks for sharing that. [ Laughter ]. Any other comments that I missed while I was all wrapped up in my-- while I was pontificating about art? Keep the questions and comments coming guys, I really like it. It really helps me. Melvin, my co-host, Melvin, I like to have somebody here with me so I can have a better conversation. Melvin is a man of few words. Which is-- which is fine. No? Okay, Melvin. One last thing. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Please Share Your Experiences! Content: • As educators we can learn a lot from sharing our experiences with one another. • Photos • Videos • Lesson plans • Narratives • School consultation Description End: I wanted to ask you guys to please share your experiences. Can we just put that up on the whole screen. I want people to really see what this is. Like children, we as educators learn a lot from sharing with one another. I went through a college program and I learned a lot. But I learned much, much more by sharing with my fellow educators in the field of visual impairment and blindness. The-- the problem with art, for the blind and visually impaired, there's not a lot of information out there. I mean, I'm sort of becoming known as a repository or a "Expert" on this, which I am neither one of those, I'm just the guy that's been pursuing it. I think there's a lot of information out there. I think there's a lot of experience out there. And I would really like to, if you guys could share that with me, if you have photos of things that you are doing, if you have a video of a lesson, an art lesson that you are doing with a child, if you have lesson plans, even if you can just write a narrative about something that you are doing, that would be wonderful information that-- that we could share, you know, either through these webinars or through other means to get that information out to other people that are working with children who are blind and visually impaired, teachers, families, whoever-- whoever, social service agencies. The last thing is for those of you who are in Texas, we can do school consultation. If you have a student who is in art class or have a student who is having difficulty with early literacy, we at Texas School for the Blind outreach department, what we do as a large part of our job is go out to local schools around the state and work with you, collaborate with you, to find solutions for that issue. So I encourage people that might be encountering some issues around art, about inclusion in an art class or about using art to help bridge that gap, that dead zone between early experience in literacy. Give us a call, send us an email, ask us, we will come out and do a school consultation and work with you guys on that and that would be great. Let's go back to a couple more questions and comments because we have a few more minutes. [ Slide end: ] Rodriguez-- excuse me. I got too excited. Rodriguez, Mr. Rodriguez says, I have learned with a lot of trial and error, have been meaning to send images your way. Please do that! Please do that! I figured out who you are now. Please send those to me. You've got my email. Let me have 'em. I would love to share those at my next webinar. Carolyn Samson, do you have suggestions for students who are completely color blind and have no interest in coloring or scribbling? Some strategies? I would work on-- I would work on drawing, I would work on scribbling, tactile scribbling with early the Perkins Brailler or the tactile drawing board. And make that and-- color would be ancillary to that. Most of my blind students really like to color once they get into it. I think you need to again whatever the thing is that you are drawing are about or scribbling about, it needs to be paired with something that's important to the child. So if they are interested in ice cream cones, draw picks of ice cream cones. If they are interested in their dog, draw that. If you give me a call, if you email me, I'll be glad to talk with you a little more specifically because I don't have a lot of information about your student. We could maybe come up with something a little more specific if you-- if you email me and let me know. Ms.-- let's see, Beth wants to know where can I get "Learn to draw, draw to learn?" I think Michael already answered that for you. Should be coming out soon. Hopefully soon. We are waiting on you, Michael. Catherine Stowell, Carolyn try instruments that give other tactile sensation, pen that's make sound as you use them to mark on the paper, writing on textured paper or using scrap book texture, embossing mats underneath. Yes, if they are really into sort of getting that tactile information by scribbling across it, they might like that. Anything else? Any other information people want to share about what they are doing or-- or have something to ask about tactile art? Okay. Thank, again, everybody for showing up today. I really, really appreciate your interest in the subject. If you are interested in more of these webinars, just drop me a line and let me know that you want to be on my mailing list. That way I can email you and let you know when the next one is coming up. The next one we'll do in January, I think, or February. I think we're going to do one on -- on -- actually we're going to do it on theater arts. That will be an interesting one. Then I will do one on -- on art and multiply impaired, visually impaired and multiply impaired student, like in April or May. That one should be cool, too. Send me your email and let me know if you want to be on my mailing list, I will let you know directly. I will also include the time zone so that you know it's 3:00 Central Time, not 3:00 mountain, Pacific time, whatever the case may be. Thanks again, everybody. I really appreciate it and we'll see you next time. Melvin says bye. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired Content: Visual Arts for the Visually Impaired Infusing Art Experiences into Early Literacy Thanks for joining us! Scott Baltisberger, TSBVI VI Education Consultant baltisbergers@tsbvi.edu Description End: [End of webinar]. [Silence] Fade up from black. Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI. Fade to black.