Pedalling and Paddling- Narbethong Special School This video is posted online with the following chapter markers: Chapter 1. Pedalling... the beginning Chapter 2. On the Bike/Trike Chapter 3. Questions Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End. Transcript Start Fade up from black. Chapter 1. Pedalling... the beginning Sheralyn Hastie: We’re going to talk a little bit about pedalling first and I must say in all of my physical education work, there was no biking. So, it was very early days of Active Learning here, probably in the early 1990s, when I worked with the physiotherapist very closely, Margaret Storey, and we were putting together a gross motor program for our students who were walking students. I did wonder what we would include in that program and what we wouldn’t include in it and I began to think would these blind children benefit from riding bikes? Is it something that a blind person does? So, one afternoon down at Taxis, I confronted Tom McMahon, who was our blind music specialist at the time. I said to Tom, knowing full well at the time that on the weekend he cleaned leaves out of gutters, and fixed his children’s bikes, I said, “Tom, do you bike ride?” He said “Yes, I do.” He said, “I like riding a bike, but I like to ride in a paddock with a fence.” The other experience or thoughts I had on blind people riding bikes came from Lilli herself and I don’t have a very accurate memory of what she said, but I know she told the story of herself and her blind brother cycling together through Denmark. She said that he was on his bike and she was on hers and the assistance that she gave was that she held onto his handlebars. So, I don’t think that they were in a paddock. I think they were out and about. So, Margaret and I decided to get bikes that were around the school and put our children on them, and it was not terribly successful in the beginning because our children had grown somewhat and the bikes possibly came from the preschool area and we just thought that the children didn’t look quite right on what we had. Margaret came in one day and she said, “I have it!” She said, “I know exactly what we need. We need similar bikes to the preschool, but we need them much stronger and much bigger, so that our children can do the same.” And that was the beginning of the program. The program really belongs to the physiotherapist, Margaret Storey. It was her idea, she went to Tempo, she looked at designs, and from that we had our very first Rabbit Bike. And, as you can see, we didn’t put pedals underneath. We put the pedals at the front. We gave it a good strong wheelbase. We had it made sufficiently that it would grow with the child. The distance between the seat and the floor could be changed and the distance between the seat and the handlebars could be changed, so that it wouldn’t just fit one student in the class. It would fit quite a few. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Picture of a small trike Description End: We had looked at biking in other settings. We had looked at bikes in other special schools and they were not doing this sort of work with their students. Frequently their students were put on bikes with wheels underneath and if they couldn’t maintain that position, they used Velcro to keep their feet on. And if their hands slid off of handles here, they Velcroed them together. And if they couldn’t keep themselves upright, they supported them and Velcroed them into position and then of course the child couldn’t go anywhere, so they decided they would need a bar that would stick in the back of the bike and the teacher pushed the bike around. I didn’t think that was quite the way that Lilli’s brother or Tom McMahon rode their bikes. So we went perhaps to the very beginning, hoping that the children would learn it, if they were blind or visually impaired, just the same as a sighted child might do. So, that’s the beginning. You can see, of course, as the children grew, over the years, we had to look at different sizes of wheels, but we stayed with the same methodology. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Trike with larger wheels Description End: [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling Content: Observations • Do blind and vision impaired adults cycle? • Biking in other settings • An Active Learning approach Description End: So really what we wanted to do was that we wanted to use an Active Learning approach when we’d gathered our information and we had thought through our problems, and then we began and the children taught us the rest. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling Content: • Which bike? • Which area? Description End: We know about the bike, but we decided to look at what kind of an area would be put the young bikers in? And we realized that in a home with a child that has begun to walk and begins on a bike, you probably have them fairly close at hand in the family room, so we decided to put our bikers into quite small spaces. It was particularly reinforced too because our blind children were not great users of space, so we guessed that they would not be using very large spaces initially, that they would need a small space, even like you would put a very small child in a family room or a kitchen. So that’s where we began. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: mages of three different size bikes (small wheels, larger wheels, and student holding handlebars) Description End: There are our bikes. We have some bigger wheels and some intermediate wheels, so for the moment we’ll stay with those bikes. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling... the Beginning Content: • Standing and walking, no steering • Sitting on the seat for a short time • Sitting on the seat, straightening the legs… going backwards a small distance • Sitting on the seat, going forwards • Going forwards and backwards Description End: This was the beginning. In the beginning you can only use what you already know and our children were mostly, but not all, walking children. When we put them on the bike, they simply held on and they walked because that’s what they had already done. So sitting on the bike wasn’t even their first move. Standing and walking with it, which gave us great vision of our own children in the kitchens where you have the solid front, there is no steering. Because the brain at this stage cannot work on steering and arms and legs at the same time. So this is very steady and the child walks with the bike. If you want to change direction you have to go [move the whole body] like that. You’ve probably all seen that happen with a very young child. [Indiscernible] Yes, definitely, and we’ve had hemiplegic children. Our children who go onto bikes have sitting balance. I took a punt at talking more about it and I saw the slides, I thought I’d better not. The children who come to me have fairly well got sitting balance. We can talk more about that later and I think that John has brought up some of the things that we use to get sitting balance. We use Lilli’s Essef Board, we use bolster swings sitting side on. We can sit them on the edge of the Ball Forest, which may or may not mean anything to you at the moment, but there are many ways. Rockers. People downstairs do a marvelous job on sitting balance and that would be what I would do, whether the child was 6 or 16, because you want that, as a person you want to have sitting balance. Some children have not been walking children. Some children have had hemiplegia and they have been excellent bike riders and good users of space. So, I suppose I’m talking about a small group that had sitting balance, but were heading towards walking and most of them were, but not all. How ‘bout that? Chapter 2. On the Bike/Trike After they walk for awhile, they decide to sit and they sit for a very short time. When they sit for a short time, they start to extend their legs. In the beginning when you’re sitting on a bike, you’ve got flexion in the hip and in the ankle and the obvious thing to do is to extend your legs. And when you do that, your first direction has got to be backwards. And that’s what you must always expect. Children go backwards first. You need to know that because if you’ve got a beginner, you’re not going to set up and you know that they’re going to go for a small, small ride -- very small, you know, half a meter. You must set it up so there’s going to be a very good auditory interaction at half a meter, so, you know, I probably wouldn’t use a chair. I’d probably use the wall, or I’d use something along the ground that gave very good auditory feedback, so that when the knees and ankles (unintelligible)... So that they continue going backwards that half meter. Sooner or later after going backwards, they do come to go forwards. They’ve got their feet planted on the floor and they’re hanging on and they pull, and coming from extension back into flexion, you’ve got forward movement. And that’s the beginning of going forwards and backwards, just a little way. Not very far. So, the interest in that area has got to be either in the walls, in front or behind, or it’s got to be on the ground, otherwise why do it? You know, it’s got to be interesting and exciting. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling... moving and steering Content: • Going forwards, beginning to steer • Going forwards, getting stuck • Getting stuck and unstuck • 3 point turns, tight spaces • Traveling further, turning corners, U turns, crashing • Going around large objects • Going between 2 objects, doorways, gates • Aiming at objects, including people! • Going fast Description End: At this stage really you can’t expect any steering. They are only able to move legs. But sooner or later, they begin to go forwards a little bit more and at this stage we begin to put them perhaps -- you came through the corridor upstairs -- They might become a corridor worker and we put them in a space where they can go a little further before they contact with something. Somewhere along the line, in their forward exploration, they begin to get stuck. Our children when we put them in the corridor outside, always get stuck on the side. It just always happens because their steering is not great and they wander a bit and they hit the sides, and these wheels go into the gutters and then they can’t move any more. Then they have some really creative stuff to figure because it’s not that we’re going to go up initially and pull them out of that stuck position because what we want to occur is a lot more steering and the beginning of 3 point turns and going around objects to occur. If they are very, very stuck, I have been known to go up and give them the label, “You’re stuck. You’re stuck. Go backwards.” Give them the look and tell them what it is. “Go backwards. Now go forwards.” And you’ll find if you do that a few times, they can get it themselves. Interestingly enough, some of the boys get it so fast, so fast. They fling that steering around and off they go. So getting stuck and unstuck happens quite early, after going backwards and forwards. Sooner or later they arrive in a very small space and they can figure 3 point turns. Not always is it the boys that do it well, but often. I would say they just simply know. It’s in the genes. If you go back this way and turn it that way, if you go forwards and you turn it that way, you’re underway. They start to travel further. They start to find corners. Now they’ve got their steering, they can do both. Legs and arms, and they start to go around corners. They start to do U turns. They start to feel -- even the blind begin to feel -- where spaces are, and where blank walls are, so that they are steering close to walls now, and not actually becoming stuck. So, they’re going around large objects, moving around them. I don’t know how the blind do it -- I don’t know whether it’s pressure on their face, whether they’re using some kind of echo that I don’t know about, but they definitely can tell when there’s a wall and when there’s a space, so that they can make a turn down a corridor to go this way or that, or outside here into the leaf wall. It didn’t always have a gate, so that the bike riders would come down this corridor and just know when the leaf wall was there. They were blind students. Going between two objects is quite an event because you have a width and, if you’re blind, you don’t know this width and you don’t necessarily know the width of your gate or your door, so a lot of children spend time practicing going through doorways or through gateways and getting the angles right, positioning their bike. It’s quite something and they will need a long time to figure how that happens. The next thing that happens after going between two objects, you find one day that they suddenly ram you. And you think, “I’m sorry I was in the road” and you move aside, and when it happens a second time and you move again, and it happens time number 3, then you know for sure that they’ve got you in their sights. And this is not the time for behavior management programs, this is the time for you to put more obstacles for them to charge at and remove yourself because going between two things and aiming at things is very definitely in their developmental list and I have not had too many that have by-passed it. After that, are they pedalling? No, they’re not pedalling, but they are going fast. They’re looking at speed. Their feet are on the floor and they’re seeing if they can go there quickly, around corners quickly. Can they fling themselves through a 3 point turn quickly, so they definitely look at speed. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling... using space Content: • Riding over different terrains • Mapping the areas • Using the haptic sense: long grass, gutters, up slopes • Stairs • Controlled stopping using the feet, especially on steep hills Description End: When they’ve gotten through all of these little hurdles, we take them downstairs because there’s more to be had and we’ve got their different terrains, which means that haptically, you have to be a little more inventive. You have to think a little bit more about how it is to go over the grass, followed by the cement, followed by the rough stones, and what’s the outcome of all of that. There’s also larger areas to map, which may or may not suit the spatial development of the child. Going up slopes needs a great deal of effort and it’s not necessarily there until it’s learned. So, you need to provide slopes, you need to provide thick grass. We have definitely gone down after the rain to find what it’s like to go through the mud and that’s been some of our best and most fun biking days. To go from bitumen [asphalt] to cement to grass, to know that if you’re staying on the bitumen and you head off onto the grass, that you have gone off the path, that you’re not on it any more. And definitely to start looking at slopes -- just going down small slopes and what happens then. I put in stairs because on the second floor down, yeah, but it’s true that children, when you say “Stop! Don’t go near the stairs”, there is no concept, even if you said it a million times. “If you take your bike down the stairs, you will cry.” It doesn’t mean terribly much to them, because it’s never happened to them and they usually want to keep going down the stairs. So, what we do now is engineer it and we have to have an accident, so that the concept is there and there’s a set of 3 stairs on level one, where I have, on more than one or two or three occasions, got the mats; you see if you’re blind and you’re coming along a corridor and you find an open space, you will turn into it because you think it’s another corridor. Just because I say “that’s stairs”, that’s meaningless. So we have matted them up and let them go down and let them fall off. It’s a terrible event and I can assure you that if you yell, “Stop! There’s stairs” after the terrible event, they definitely will put their feet down. It is much safer to do it that way, except I did have one student who was very smart and got his bike down successfully, so that was a complete failure. But most of them don’t. Most of them fall off and most of them cry and I say to them then, “If you go down those stairs, you will cry.” And they have had that experience and they know, don’t. So, be aware of that because either you gate them all off, and in our case, they’re not all gated off. Going down steep hills is my acid test for having learned pretty much everything there is: speed, stopping, turning, riding and falling off, stairs, going up steep slopes, going through thick grass, going across rocky stuff. Going down slopes I think is the acid test. And it does take some time for those children to learn controlling the bike on a steep slope -- not a small slope, start with those -- but on a steep slope, putting your feet down and controlling it. And we do have a slope -- an upward slope and a downward slope on our bride to Stone’s Corner and I have taken students there and watched them to see if they could independently go up that bridge without getting hooked on the wire at the sides (it’s fairly narrow), blind or not blind, and then reach the top and control their bike, such that there’s not a complete disaster on the Stone’s Corner end of it. And I have had students, and you’ll see them bike riding on bigger bikes in a minute, that can do that, and when I know that that can happen, I say then, “You can use your pedals. Start pedalling.” And sometimes -- well, I have a student in my class who is almost there, not quite, and sometimes I say to him, “Put your feet on the pedals” and he yells back, “No!” because he’s not interested. He’s still working on some other skills. So, pedalling yes, if you want to. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Using Pedals... if you want to Description End: Use pedals if you want to. Having looked at normal sighted children in care centers, I have noted that they use both for a very, very long time. A little bit of pedalling and a fair bit of feet on the ground. Still spinning, still going fast, still testing new skills, still steering, all that. But of course at some stage we need to move them to a bike -- we move from this stage to a three-wheeler bike and that bike has pedals underneath which cannot be avoided. So, the skills that they’ve learned without pedals need then to transfer to pedals. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling Content: Pictures of toddlers on small trikes Description End: These I grabbed from the archive. These are a couple of pictures of our very early, early, early learners. Tasha, on the left, is not walking yet. Certainly not at that stage at the top left, and she was able to sit, go forwards and backwards. You can see the difference in floor surfaces there for her, but she knows that anyway because when we walk along there, or ride along there, we talk about “now you’re on the bubbles” we call it. “Now you’re on the bubbles, and now you’re on the cement.” So she can go backwards and forwards there, looking at the differences between the two and it matches with O & M. The one of her down is a much later -- the bottom one. She is now almost (but not quite) walking and after having… [“Sheralyn, would you recommend that…” unintelligible question from audience] Either. Do both. Do both. I think when you’re going to pedals, I have found that they don’t like it with their feet. You know, it really does make it more comfortable and if you may be going downstairs on terrain, you know, it’s a bit tough to ask them to go over the big rocks and their feet are bare, so just… But up in these areas, yeah, I think bare feet’s good. Why not? Why not do bare feet? The funny thing was when Tasha recently got on a bike -- she has gone from being a sitter now to a walker -- she went backwards in her biking to walking in it. I noted her even today. Her walking’s improving and she’s gone now to be a walker on the bike. So perhaps we’ll get her sitting down again in the future. KD (?) was at that stage was also -- and still is actually -- an early user of the bike. Steering must come earlier for a child with sight, I think, than for a child without sight. And here I think you can see that he’s not avoiding anything. His forward movement is straight into whatever’s in front of him. There’s not much steering happening there. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling Content: Pictures of young girl on trike Description End: The next level up: we’ve gone downstairs and you can see Reegan’s a hemiplegic child with a vision impairment and she can’t walk, but she’s a very, very good user of space on a bike and it has been -- or was -- extremely good (she’s sick at the moment) for her left hand side because she really improved in the use of her left hand and left foot in doing that. It was just because she needed to. There was a reason and it was urgent that she had more force or more turn or whatever and she just made that side work. You can see that she’s interested… what she found is difference in very small things to us -- probably we wouldn’t even notice it if it was happening with our own children at home -- but here we can see she’s found different levels and figures how is it that I get this bike from this position up here because that’s where I’m heading. You know, there’s all sorts of interesting things to do. Down here on the bottom is sort of learning a bit of a route -- she can already walk that. I would think that in a couple of years, hopefully, she would be able to ride what she can now walk because she has some sight. There’s probably quite a dark picture of Reegan in the left hand corner just sort of going over what’s it like to ride on grass? How much effort do I need in my legs and feet to do that one against on the cement patch? You know? It’s probably comparing concepts. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling Content: Pictures of TJ on trike Description End: Here’s TJ. He’s now… he’s a path worker and he’s on the path to the difficult bridge that goes from Narbethong to Stone’s Corner. And you see, he’s not got really good steering yet. He’s come off the path and he’s found himself on the dirt. But if you can see the second one clearly, he’s turned the wheel and he thinks he knows where the path was. TJ has been blind from birth, so, you know, he has to work very hard in his orientation and mobility skills to stay on a path and he does it with his cane. So he’s coming back onto the path and he’s made it -- he’s made the right turn, however -- yes, the paths is not very wide. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling Content: Picture of TJ off the path on his trike Description End: So he’s overshot. So he’s still got a lot to learn, but however he goes back onto the path, and in the top one, you can see there’s a bit of a gradient before the bridge starts. You can see by how he’s hanging on to that handlebars and how he’s planted two legs equivalently, that he is just guiding it down the small little gradient there. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Pedalling Content: Pictures of TJ; on the path, going up the bridge. Description End: He has learned to go between two things, so he’s managed to get his bike between the two rails at the front and -- it’s difficult for you to see there, I know, but the look on his face as he pushes with fairly skinny legs, okay -- up the slope. Anyway, that’s where he’s heading. He’s heading to keep on a path, to go between things, to use his haptic sense to go upwards because at the other end is the very steep downward one, which we know he cannot yet do. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Remeber... Content: • Choose the bike and area to suit the child’s level of development not chronological age • Active Learning is the best method; the child learns by doing • The adult’s role is to facilitate the learning: e.g. putting the child on the bike, changing the position of the bike, providing doorways, gates, grass, obstacles, paths, etc. and to talk to the child about what he has been doing Description End: Okay. Choose your bike and area according to developmental level and to the level of the child’s knowledge about space. If I don’t talk about developmental levels, I know I will get an email from Lilli. Do not look at the child’s gross motor level only because children have sometimes higher gross motor levels and lower fine motor levels, but sometimes it’s reversed with a very high fine motor level and a lower [gross motor]. What you must look at are their emotional level to find out exactly where they sit and so then, you’ll know whether they’re old enough or young enough and you can slot it in where they are. Now that sounds a bit funny. Active Learning is the best method. It’s the method that we found was the best. Don’t push the child around. I did have videos from Andro (?) in New York... came with a video of him working with his teacher in a New York center when he was quite young and she used a similar bike and every time his hand slid off, she put his hand back on. Every time his feet slid off, she put his feet back on and she pushed him round and round and round and he came to our classroom and he stood on one of those bikes and he stood and walked. So, I really don’t think it’s a good method at all. I think you need to give them the bike. Give them the area suited to their level and let them go. The adult’s role is to provide the environments. Get the equipment and provide the environments and then let them go. I think now we’ve got three videos, I hope. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Picture, Two boys riding bikes on covered pavement and asphalt driveway. Description End: Let’s have a look. These were just taken at the beginning of this week. This is where our junior students ended up. These are all very blind students and when I saw this I was very thankful that I didn’t go or that Margaret and I didn’t go down the pathway of strapping hands and strapping feet and getting a pusher behind to get a result because you can see that these children -- although they’re working at different levels -- they’re very independent. How do we go back, John? [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Picture, Two boys riding bikes on covered pavement and asphalt driveway. Description End: This child here has only come back to the school and is learning this area with his cane. So you can see he’s checking out between the bitumen and the cement, and he thinks, “I think I know that area. I’ve done with my cane.” And he goes back and he re-checks… Yes, it has a bell, which is delightful. And so you can see that the children are doing the same on the bigger bikes as on the younger bikes. They’re doing similar to what they’re working on with their canes. Let’s go to the next one. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Girl riding three-wheeler bike on pavement Description End: Melissa Perkins was always a gung-ho rider. She used to ride everywhere on one of these and you can see that she really does know the route. She is also blind, so take a look. (31:19) She goes one way, I think, and decides no, there’s someone there. I’ll take the other route. Try this with your bike and a blindfold [riding backwards]. “No, can’t go that way, so, I know this area really well, so I’ll just take my bike around this way.” That’s pretty good for a blind student. And she goes around. I think they’re only short videos. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Girl riding behind building on asphalt driveway Description End: [Indiscernible] She’s getting balance as well. Yeah, that’s good. And that’s the next move, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s great. Really good. So she’s nearly up to Tom McMahon. She doesn’t even need the paddock. She’s past Tom! [laughter] We should get Tom back. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Young man riding large three-wheel bike Description End: Okay, this is Henry. Just have a look at how he judges where he is and avoids a collision. How he does it, I don’t know. It’s a short one. How does he know it’s there? Description Start: Content: Young man riding large three-wheel bike Description End:: Yes, he thinks, “I think there is something. I should not go there anymore and I’ll do a U-turn and head off in a different direction.” And that’s pretty good for a very blind student from birth. Okay. So you can see that this progression, there’s a whole heap to learn. It has nothing to do with you or I. Nothing to do with us pushing. It does require the right bike. It does require huge patience from us. I will tell you one last story. It was when Lilli Nielsen came here she worked with children in my classroom and we were gathering the students to go in and she was going to look at the activities that we were doing. Ashley Cooke had been riding her bike and she was a blind student who could ride from the end classroom down the corridor and she could fling herself into the space of the lift -- because there was no gate there at that stage -- very accurately. I’m saying without error. When we found her, she was lined up with one of these bikes at the lift door and she was at the button of the lift. And she was standing there pushing the button to make the doors open, sitting down and trying to get her bike in the lift, but unfortunately, there was the width of the bike, there was the position of the button, and there was the position of the door, and there was the timing of pressing a button, sitting back down, going back, going forwards, and getting through the opening door before it did that [closed]. And when we got… Lilli came with me to the lift door and we -- I started to bring Ashley away and she was horrified. She said, “No, no, no, no!” She said, “Look at what she’s learning.” And we stood on this wall facing the lift for, I think, half an hour while Ashley Cooke pushed the button, and trialed, and re-trialed because she had to coordinate so much and she couldn’t see it. So, I learned then that you do have to wait a very long time. You have to give it to them frequently -- give the children the opportunities frequently, but you do have to wait and you have to try and understand, or get inside the child’s head to see what it is they’re learning and not dismiss it as something that’s unimportant. Because if they’re busy, they are definitely working on something and I learned a lot from Lilli that day. I learned just how long you do have to wait. Chapter 3. Questions So, I think that’s probably it for pedalling. Any questions? Audience: Have you ever tried balance bikes? [Indiscernible] Sheralyn: Yes, bought balance bikes. I know. I’m waiting for the report from my grandchildren in Melbourne. My first thing was that they started it too early. Are they able to get all of these skills on the balance bike? And if that’s happening, that’s okay. It’s a skill that we did up here [Sheralyn reaches over head to illustrate.] And they have slotted it in down here. Whether it works, I don’t know. I’ll have to watch it. What do you think? Audience: The kids are enjoying it. [unintelligible] They have very low vision or are blind, but they are enjoying it. Some of the kids I’ve had who have low vision, they seem to stumble when they come off the three-wheeler going onto a two-wheeler with training wheels. They don’t like it at all. So I’m just interested to… Sheralyn: See if it will bridge the gap. Yeah. I can’t help you. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. I just know that they are about, so I think you should experiment with it and see if it works for you. Audience: One of them has no pedals. It just has two wheels and is not as adjustable. And the others have another version which has everything. It’s very light. It’s got two wheels and it’s got pedals you can put on later. Yes, that sounds quite good… Yes, it’s definitely worth looking at. Definitely. I would look at what are they working at on it? If they’re working on their balance, and they’re not getting the rest, which you need to have to be independent, then maybe you can swap over. Do both. If they’re using it and they’re getting all of those skills that you’ve seen here, then go with it. But I would definitely watch that you’ve got all your skills or you’ve then gone leaping up, as the other schools did, with their, you know... then you will not get what we saw on the video. You won’t get independence then, or you’ll get errors because there’s concepts that are missing. So that’s for you to come and present next year. I haven’t had enough practice with it. Yeah, just keeping going with it and see. I would watch carefully to see if you’re getting the list of skills coming through and ticking them off: Is he doing that? Yes. Is he doing that? Yes, he’s doing that. Because we didn’t dream up the list. The children showed it to us over and over. We’ve learned it so many times, you know, I don’t even have to have a checklist. So they did do that. It was from them. Anything else? Audience: I’m working with younger ages. The bike riding is supposed to be excellent for those children who are quite confident blind children, when the fact that they bump into something… they explore those small spaces backwards and forwards. Sheralyn: Yes, and our children do do mapping. I think it’s a great thing, whether you put them on a wheelie stool and they map with the wheelie stool, or they map with their cane, or they map with their bike, or they map with pushing a shopping trolley or whatever. Just use all of it. Because everything must come together in the end. So that’s how Melissa Perkins uses her space so well as a blind student and it’s the same for Ashley Cooke on the Horizons video where she goes from the classroom down the corridor, flings herself in, pushes the button, goes back and gets herself into the lift. Audience: ...the kids who are physically able to walk, but haven’t been walking… but if you put them on a bike, they may be able to explore… Sheralyn: Yes, and not too big a space because I have found always that those children who are blind who do not understand using space. The ones where you have to go and get them and take them, seldom, seldom get on a bike and start going through doorways. They are usually small, but still useful user of space on a bike. So it sort of does tie up somewhat. Not always has it been the same, you know. There’s a child with hemiplegia who can’t walk from this room to that room, but boy, it didn’t take her long on a bike. So, it’s not 100% certain, but, having said that, with blindness and space, I would think there’s a strong link there. TJ, who is on the pathway and going up, he could walk happily with his cane, all over the oval, just everywhere, you know. And he’s happy to actually go on a walk from the park back to school over bridges with his cane independently, you know with a little bit of calling from the adult to come in this direction. And now here’s the gate. So, you know he’s getting there with his spatial knowledge. Audience: [indiscernible] Sheralyn: Yeah, in another way a walker would do that, you see. Yes, and I suppose your walker can have some steering as well, and you might be looking at that. So, use it all. Use everything, so that the concepts are starting to come together. [indiscernible] Sheralyn: Yep. We can stop with it. [applause] Fade to black.