>> Carol Bittinger: Hi, my name is Carol Bittinger. I'm a Teacher of the Visually Impaired at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and I am going to share a little information about what you do with tactile symbols. David Wiley has a presentation on the Outreach website about tactile symbols, and where they came from and how to use them to create a calendar. But there's so much more that you can do with tactile symbols, then just calendars, and I just want to share some of that information to give you all some ideas. The first thing I'm going to talk about is actually calendars, just to show the variety of things you can do with tactile symbols within the structure of a schedule. For my new students, they start out with object symbols, and they might have them, first, with a 'now' and 'finished' basket, and then move to a 'slot box' to have their events laid out in front of them. And at first, it'll probably be objects. For example, I have here a child's playground symbols. It tells them they're going to go outside. Then they might have bathroom, home, eat -- whatever their daily schedule is. As they get to know their object symbols it becomes a good time to transition them into tactile symbols. A tactile symbol is really just like a picture for a child who has no vision or has low vision. This is like pairing it with a word, or taking a picture of this and putting it here, as well, but instead we're going to use a tactile picture for students who cannot see. So you might start off having, in your calendar box, where you just had your playground symbol, now you're going to also have the playground tactile symbol. And gradually you can move away from having the object at all, to where they just have a tactile symbol calendar in their slot boxes -- which is a familiar presentation. Once students have mastered a slot box with their tactile symbols, you can move to calendar strips. We like to use carpet, but you can use headline from automobiles, you can glue foam, or felt onto different objects to create something that's more left-to-right, if they're not ready for turning pages in a book. Or if you want to move onto more literacy concepts, such as the left-to-right, top-to-bottom, page turning, turning one page at a time, "Oops, we have to go backwards, cause we missed that symbol on the left!" Still work on all those pre-literacy concepts since tactile symbols will be their literacy medium, at least for a little while. So this calendar, for example has the day, and that this is her calendar, and this is her name, so she knows that it's hers and nobody else's. And she would just proceed left-to-right with her symbols, reading "I have breakfast"... "I'm going to go to the health center"‚ "Oh, I have music"‚"I will go to the concert!"‚ Whatever her daily events are, so she can know what is coming up for the day, in the same way that a calendar box is used. For some students who go beyond just their daily schedule and need more information about their week, you can use a weekly calendar. This highlights, for this child, her activities in PE, because that seems to be the thing that changes, and the part of the day that's the hardest for her. So if she can anticipate what she'll be doing in PE she's going to have a better day. So, we had Monday here. We already finished that one. But today was Tuesday. She had PE and PT at the same time with an obstacle course. But tomorrow and Wednesday, it's canceled. There'll be no PE. And I can tell that to her from Monday so she can anticipate that by Wednesday there's not going to be PE. And now the symbol told her instead of me. So it's the bad guy, which is a nice feature, as well. So students who may master a weekly calendar and may be ready to move onto larger type concepts, and again, tactile symbols can be used for this. This is a traditional APH calendar that you can get on 'Quota Funds', and we adapted it to include the tactile symbols for the days for a student who may be just transitioning to Braille. We could put Braille numbers up here, or tactile symbol numbers up here, but you'll see they're pretty big. But this gives them an idea of Sunday, and they can go down and find out how many Sundays are left. They can explore the numbers, and it gives them some more information; that time is longer than just a week. We can also take off the numbers, from all of it, and put up some of their tactile symbols, so that they can see‚ "Well, Wednesday, I'm going to a restaurant."‚ "On Thursday, I'm going to see Miss Tish and go to Speech."‚ And we can continue that way to give them information about a concert that's happening at the end of the month. Or they're going to see grandma on this Saturday. Just so they can more ideas and anticipate things that are happening in the future for them. On an even bigger scale, there are many elementary schools, classrooms that have a 'morning circle', or a group calendar. We call ours the 'News Update.' And that includes all kinds of things, from the month name to writing sentences. We have one in tactile symbols here that says, "Today is Tuesday, June 4th, 2013."‚ Which is more concepts about time, and most of them do have tactile symbols that go with them. We can also use symbols in a morning calendar routine. They might talk about the seasons, which all have symbols. Or they'll talk about the weather. Again there are symbols for all of those things. We have a tactile bear to dress, for his clothes, to see what he needs to wear to go to school. We can also make the days, of course, tactile. And there are symbols for yesterday, today, tomorrow -- all of those time concepts. And then, here is just counting how many days we've been in school. Of course, now it's almost the end of the year. But they can go through it that way, do some subtraction, work with money -- and all these things are tactile for them. They can touch them. There's a symbol. They know who's doing what. It's not a mystery and they can participate with their friends. Even friends who have sight can also use these symbols and get more information about them. So as we saw in the group calendar area, you can pair everything together, for every child to meet their needs. For example, this Wednesday has Wednesday in print for print readers. It has a Braille label on the top for a Braille reader and a tactile symbol. Each child, depending on their learning media, can still access the same piece of information, at the same time. Making them all be included in the same activity, which is a good benefit of it. And students don't really get distracted by tactile symbols. It's OK if the sighted child learns tactile symbols, cause then they can interact with their non-sighted friends. The other part is that tactile symbols are supposed to be a bridge to Braille. And so, at first, they might just have a tactile symbol on it's own, in their calendar. Such as this child. She just has the tactile symbols. But as they begin to learn Braille you can include a beginning letter. This one has the initial letter 'T' for 'Tish'. Or you can, once they're ready, put the whole word at the bottom. So this swimming symbol is paired with the word 'swimming pool'. In the same way that we paired, at first, we paired an object symbol with a tactile symbol. You can make that bridge by pairing a tactile symbol with Braille.  

>> Carol Bittinger: Another area where tactile symbols are very beneficial, aside from a calendar, is in communication. And while a calendar is an example of a way to communicate with your students to give them affirmation about their activities and expectations, tactile symbols can make that step even further. For example, when making choices students of course can make choices with object symbols but they can learn to do it with a tactile symbol. For example the choice might be 'keyboard' or 'toy.' And you can just make this very simply, whatever materials you have. But it gives them a chance to express their preferences, using a symbol. A child may be using symbols who can't talk, but they can do 'this,' to tell you, "I want the piano." We also use tactile symbols on any kind of augmentative communication device you may have. This one has nine slots on it. This is a Go Talk. And basically we just put the tactile symbols on there in the same way you might put a picture or a print word or a Braille word, for that matter. And that way the child can - if they're not quite ready to use their own language or need a language model - can use the device with the symbols they know to request things that they need, tell people directions. So for example, this one says, "Ms. Cathy, I want to jump.? And the voice is recorded in there by an adult who is their language model. [Teacher presses tactile symbol] >> Go Talk: Ms. Cathy. [Teacher presses a different tactile symbol] I want to jump! >>Bittinger: Or we use this, in our morning circle routine because, we encourage the kids to say hello to each other. So for this child he wasn't just ready to say ?Hi.? So he could say [Teacher presses tactile symbol] >> Device: Hi Whitney! >>Bittinger: And he could ask in Braille [Teacher presses button with Braille label], >> Device: How are you? >>Teacher: So it can be a combination of tactile symbols and Braille again. Whatever the child is ready for. This gives him a chance to talk to his peers even if he's not quite ready to use his own words. To move from even this, tactile symbols can be a prompt, a script for children to follow when completing an activity. One of my students makes trail mix and delivers it. He's not ready to just walk up to somebody and say "Hi," but now he has a reminder that that's the first thing he does. And he'll whisper, "Hi," and tell them he has trail mix, and say "Bye-bye". He couldn't do this on his own. He doesn't quite need an output device to say it for him. He just needs a reminder, and the tactile symbols serve as that way to remind him of what he's doing and what he needs to say to people.

>> Carol Bittinger: When children are beginning to read, one of the first things they notice is environmental print. Maybe they don’t know how to read yet, but they’re still going to say, "Oh, this is McDonalds," "that’s an HEB." Whatever it is, they’re going to notice it. For our students, they don’t have access to that environmental print. So our job is to put it there for them. It won’t be natural, but it will help them to learn that tactile symbols have a place in their world. For example, in a kitchen, you might label something with plates. Now, I have a picture here for a visual learner, the word, on the word is Braille. There’s also a tactile symbol. So a child can come over, "Oh, plates are in here," and find the handle. Or they might see a label somewhere else, like on a microwave. Again, this is the real object, so I don’t need a picture. I have a word, I have Braille and a tactile symbol. They will learn. "Oh, microwave." ‘This is a microwave. That’s what the symbol looks like. If I see it in a recipe, if I see it in the story I have the pairing between the object and the tactile symbol to know what that means." This can be done throughout your house, in the bathroom, in their bedroom, the drawers on their dresser to say which one has pants versus shirts. So that they can know the difference, learn the symbols; find things on their own. We want our kids to be as independent as possible, and tactile symbols can help them with that. They can also be used, just as an example, I have an APH book. They’re pretty wide. Gives a lot of space to put on a symbol. We just made this one up for Geraldine’s Blanket. It’s a piece of a blanket. So a child wants to read this story can find the symbol and they know that’s the book they’re looking for, or if it’s not. Similarly, a cubby could be labeled. This one I have all of my books about Easter. So that’s here. It’s the Easter symbol. If they’re looking for Easter books they know it’s in this bin. We could do the same thing with a toy. We could also label their CDs. Each CD in here has a different symbol, so they know, one, how to find the CDs that they want, and, two, where to put them back when they’re done. So everything’s not just laying everywhere. They can find that they want to listen to Kids Bop!, by the fuzzy, weird, prickly ball on here. And when they’re done, they can find that spot again and put it back. The whole idea is we need to help our kids be organized. We also need to expose them to symbols in their natural environment when they’re not going to occur otherwise. We have to put them there.

>> Carol Bittinger: Another way that tactile symbols can be used is in reading and writing. And this can be done at the same time as they're learning symbols in their calendars-- it doesn't have to be later-- whatever works for the child to makes sense. Our kids have so many experiences, so they need to be able to write about. Just as their sighted peers do, or their friends who can already read and write in Braille. This is their way-- to write a story and have it be in their own words. So, for example, this is a book that I wrote with my students. And it's their words. And it is about going to Zilker Park in November. So that's their title, and at the bottom it has it in braille-- if they're beginning to track braille or follow along, but they know that this is the same as this. And that gives them some more information. This page is all in braille, and we'll just see, that when we turn it, here are all the tactile symbols that this page has. So it says, 'On Wednesday, in November, Jacob, Miguel, Lauren, Whitney, Cathy, Carol, Carolina, and Amy got into the van and went to Zilker Park. And the story continues about feeding birds and falling off a train, or whatever happened that day. Whatever is most important to them. It could that they got a cut on their hand. It could be that they ate a hot dog. Whatever is-- what's important will be in their book, so that they can back and reread it-- on their own-- to family members-- to their friends and also be readers, just like everybody else. Um-- experience stories could also be that missing link that helps them understand what a symbol is. I've had students who don't get it on a calendar, but see their favorite song, their favorite person, whatever it could be-- in a book. And that means something to them. So they can go and share it with somebody else and show them, like, "This is, this is Run to the Hills, that's my favorite song!" And it's right there. And they get what a symbol is, just from having that one thing that means lot to them. In the same way, stories that children are reading in their classrooms can also be modified with tactile symbols, so that they can follow along with the pictures. Tactile symbols are a little ambiguous, because they can be pictures, they can be words, they can be phrases, but this also works to their advantage when you want to include them in a book. So, for example, I have here Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And at the bottom there's a symbol for Snow White, and this is her symbol for the seven dwarfs. These are made up, but a child will learn that that's what those mean. And they can be included throughout a story-- on all of the pages-- for example, "Snow White saw a cottage." So here's her house. And they'll remember what the story is based on the symbols that are included. It can be tougher in upper grades to include symbols in book that you're reading, but you can get the essence and included them in their stories when they're younger to give them the idea. Or for children who are at a lower level you can also include them in. For math textbooks in high school, maybe not as much. In another way-- tactile symbols-- if you don't have them included in this pictures in your book-- such as for Mr. Tickle-- I don't have symbols in this book. But what I do have are-- symbols that go along with it. They're not glued in, but I can have a symbol for the character, Mr. Tickle. And I can give this to a child so they know who I'm talking about. Or they can answer a 'who' question and give me that symbol. They have it there, in the same way that a child looking at the pictures in the book. These can be separate, but still included with the reading of the story. And then, they can have-- cards to put them in order, so they can retell the story on their own. And-- their job would be to figure out, "Which of these came first? Did Mr. Tickle see the Postman? Or did Mr. Tickle see the teacher?" And they can put them in order and retell the story using their symbols as a reminder of what happened and what the main events are. So it can be either way, either in the book or separate from the book-- just so you give them some more information about what's happening the story.

>> Carol Bittinger: Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. And when I think about beginning writing concepts, I think about letters and the letter sounds. And in a kindergarten classroom, for example, they might be making a letter book. Well, our students with their tactile symbols can do the exact same thing. So-- they would-- just like a child with a picture book or print book-- we can have a page for every letter in the alphabet. Um-- and expose them, first, to the real objects for these-- show them what the tactile symbols is and let them make a choice. What do they want on their 'A' page? An airplane? Animals? April? Apron? These are things they have concepts of that can go in their letter 'A' to remind them-- words that start with 'A', the letter sound of 'A', and just some words that go-- that are associated with it that they already know. And that can be done for every letter of the alphabet as it's introduced in their classroom or-- as a TVI, if you're pulling them aside to work on this kind of stuff. Giving them a way to show the letters and the words that they know-- in the same way that their friends are doing it in the classroom. Symbols can also be used to help with writing sentences, since they are people, places, things, all of the categories-- you can create a sentence using them. For example, in a speech class we have used this board. At the top it has the categories, "Who? Did what? What did they eat? Where? and When?" And underneath are some potential choices of, who maybe was with them, or what did they do. And they can pick from these to make sentences, or they can be cues to remember, "Well, Joey wasn't there. But Brenden was there!" And they can help to answer questions that way, with their categories. And having the information organized helps them to organize their brains to make a sentence. For example-- we might find out that "Brenden... walked... to Central Market... on Sunday." So we have all those symbols to make a sentence that the child can read back, because they're familiar-- they make sense to them-- maybe there's not braille, maybe there's one word with braille on there, but they're still reading! They can still write a sentence, read it back, share it with people to tell about what they did. This could be turned into an experience story, or it could just be left this way. It could be a note home to their parents to tell them about their week-- But it's all in symbols! And it's their work. And it's reading and writing. Each week we write letters to their families. And it's whatever was most important to them that week. Maybe it's "Their friend got a haircut!" Maybe it's that "We went and ate ice cream." Maybe it's that "PE was awesome this week! I really loved the obstacle course." Whatever it is, they can write it! This child uses braille and tactile symbols. So, his letter in braille says, "Dear mom and dad"-- something we're working on-- "We went to the park." And the best part for him, in braille says, "I had a picnic and I had one juice box." Maybe we don't have a symbol for juice box, but we're going to put it in braille and let him know that's another way to write. "And we played water games and had water balloons." Now, maybe that's not the most exciting thing to me, but that's what he wanted to say. And he gets to take this home and read it to his mom, and his dad, and his brother and his sister. He might even take it to his old school and show it to his friends. But he can read it, because he wrote it! For a child who's not ready to write in that way, they can also write letters using perhaps-- we use a talking photo album-- because we can adapt it-- you can put a picture in here, you can put a word-- For my children, we use tactile symbols. So this one says, "Dear mom,"-- and maybe he can't say it yet, but the photo album can say it. There's a button. We can record our voices. If we get his voice, we're real excited! But he'll just-- here-- when he goes home he can read [pressing button] >> Talking photo album: Dear mamacita. >> Bittinger: Dear mamacita. And tell her about his week-- with symbols that matter to him. He's just not quite ready to say it on his own, so we have voices that say it for him. But he's still telling about his week and sharing information with his family. Another-- this is kind of a reading and writing activity-- but it goes back to making the connection between a tactile symbol and braille. So... this book... is... a 'Who?' book. That background, again, asks who, or tells me who is doing it. And for him, people were the most important things, so we started there. And it says, "Who was in PE with me?" And we would give him some braille choices. "Was it, John?... or... Cathy?" So he knows PE, and maybe he doesn't quite know these two words yet, but he can think about PE-- think about that first letter-- "Ca, ca, ca"-- and then, go down and find that letter. So this shows a different kind of story-- a little bit of reading-- making that jump from tactile symbols to braille, in a different way. Many activities-- other similar writing activities can be done with tactile symbols. For my class, we go to a grocery store every week. So it would make sense that we would use tactile symbols for that. Maybe you don't go once a week, but there might be something else you can make a list of. Um, my students who are ready, I give them a huge array of tactile symbols. Some of these we would never eat for breakfast. Usually there are cookies on here and broccoli-- their favorite things! But they'll learn those symbols. And they can go through and look-- "Oh, I need some cereal." And they can put it on their list. Now you don't have to use an envelope, but this works-- I can put their money in the back of it. However you want to make their list of the things that they need from here. They might say, "Oh... I don't need any oatmeal," and put that one to the side. But they can continue to look at all of their choices, think about what they want, think about what they need, and create a list on their own from those options.

>>Carol Bittinger: Tactile symbols also help in the area of mathematics. Now they won't go up to Calculus or probably even Algebra, but for basic addition, subtraction, measurements, time concepts like we saw before-- months, years, weeks in a calendar-- all of those things can be expressed using tactile symbols. So here I have an array of tactile symbols. They go from zero, 1, 2, 3, up to 9. And if you wanted to make a bigger number, you can just combine them-- at least that's what I do. So now I have one, two-- the number 12. Covers about the basics you can do with tactile symbols, or that exists right now. The sky's the limit, create some more! So we have the numbers. There are plus, minus, times, equals, divided-by-- four of those basic number equations. You can combine them together to write number sentences and complete math problems. Ideally though, you're going to want to make that switch to Nemeth Code in order to teach those concepts in a written way. But for a beginning, we have the tactile symbol numbers. And for one of my students, I just created a book-- very basic. How many objects are on the page? '3!' So she would look-- maybe I would give her all 9 choices, but probably not. We'd probably start with 2 or 3 choices; and she would pick the one that says 3. I will admit that these numbers have been the hardest thing for any of my students to learn. They are so similar. Using the same materials on the same background, it can be difficult to distinguish how many are on there, to remember the configurations. But it's worth a shot! There are also-- for example in a recipe you might see, in context, a fraction-- this one says one fourth, it has a line in the middle and some glue dots. And then, there is a measurement 'cups.' So there are tactile symbols for cups, teaspoons, tablespoons-- those things you might see a recipe. And a recipe is a good way to introduce numbers and counting and all those kinds of things, because it's functional and most -- most students-- enjoy cooking. Beyond just the numbers themselves are the different other concepts that are included in math. For example, one that seems to be tested a lot is graphing. And you can make a graph in any way you want to-- can make it look similar to what their sighted peers are seeing. For us, we made a graph for voting. My kids love to vote and express their opinions. And we would do it on restaurant day, which is the label of this axis, Restaurants. And they had their choices: sandwich shop, Central Market, or a Mexican restaurant. And they could vote. And whoever, wherever they wanted to go, they would put their name there. And then we could count, "Oh, how many for the sandwich shop?" There are 3 people, 3 votes. Or we could read the number 3, if their ready to do that. And this way they can express all the things that they're seeing. They don't have to remember in their head, "I think he said I want go to..." Nope, that's right here! And this is a practical way to introduce them to the idea of taking a vote and the idea of a graph, cause it organizes all their information. Another graph-- this one as of course has the x-y axis-- this one is just a straight-line graph. And we do this every morning during our morning calendar. We've just been tabulating, you know, what kinds of weather we have, which one happens the most. And since Spring Break, cloudy has clearly won! We can't even put any more on there, we've had to overlap them even. Windy? Not so much. They can count are there, they could go over and see, "Oh, well this one has more stars." "This one has more..." Even just doing it tactually without counting. They can see how long it is, how short it is. And see whether-- we have cloudy, windy, sunny, rainy are the things that we are charting. We can chart anything. Whatever we want. But this is a clear way to show them visually, for visual learners, and tactually for our kiddos-- a line graph and the comparison between them. I guess technically it's more of a bar graph. You could turn it this way and have it be a bar graph. But that's another kind of graph. And in the science area we see some other kinds of graphs that make more sense for science, as far as the experiments that we do.

>> Carol Bittinger: As in all of these areas, they all overlap each other. So, our math concepts will bend into science. There's going to be reading and writing in science. So they all go together. So we're just going to look some science related activities using tactile symbols. The first one is a very crudely made Venn diagram. But it shows them on this side-- We have the things that sink. In the middle, you know, "Oh, these two touch each other here. That's weird!" This one means, "Well maybe it sank and then-- or it floated and then it sank cause it got too wet." Or, "We didn't really know what happened to it." And then here I have a symbol for floating. So... our lotion! It sank. The cookie? Well, it stayed up there, but then it got soggy and so it sank. So what is that? And then, the spoon floated. It's a way to give them an idea that, you know-- things are one category or maybe they're in the middle, and we don't know, but we can show it on a graph. Or we can just use a two column graph. Which is what my students typically use in a science experiment. We don't usually talk about three categories at once. It's a little bit too much! But with two, same idea-- The things that sank. The things that floated that we looked at. Or we could use people's names and say, 
'Well, Brianna, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think it's going to sink, or do you think it's going to float?" And we can record our predictions in the same way as we can record our results. When we have all of our results, we can write a story-- bringing us back to... Um, the English reading and writing. So we have all of our answers-- what we found out in our science experiment. Well, let's make it into a book. We did one about candy, cause that's pretty motivating for most kids. So... Sink or float, Candy And then, you can see we used a real object here, and that's ok. Well our Kit Kat, it floated. And we would have had that recorded in the chart. And now we can turn it into a book. So they can remember what they did and they can remember that concept of sinking and floating.  We've also used symbols-- this one I have a print copy and... a tactile symbol, braille copy. We were taking about chickens and different stages they go through-- their life cycle. And their job-- I'll show you the tactile symbol one... Um, this is life of a chicken-- their job was-- they had all of these cards and they had to put them in order. And maybe this isn't technically a tactile symbol, but it's still a tactile drawing-- it's representation-- so for this one, this was our egg. And that came first. And then we'd eventually get to more symbolic-- our chick-- this is the baby chicken in the egg-- and grow up-- and we have a hen in a nest. So we can represent those things from the book that people are seeing pictures of, in a tactile form. Maybe not a tactile symbol, but it's still tactilely using the same information. You can also read about animals or plants, whatever the topic may be, by taking a book and making it more tactilely-- you can summarize it-- you can include all the words-- whatever makes sense for your student. So, this one was about, Our Friend the Sheep. So we have our symbol for sheep, and just all the things that he does. There's the mama, and the dad, and the baby sheep. Or, "What do they like to eat?" This is our eat background. Here's their food. We probably wouldn't want to eat dried corn and hay, but, hey, a sheep likes it! It's gonna be in their book! They don't necessarily know all of this information, but they have a picture to summarize it. "Oh, on this page they're going to talk about what sheep eat. And I know what that is, because I have a symbol." Those are just some different ways to use the same symbols, the same math concepts-- writing-- in a science activity.

>> Carol Bittinger: A lot of the things that we have seen have been work. But tactile symbols don’t have to be work. They can be fun too. So use them in games. For example, Go Fish! Easy enough. Just need two symbols of each one. And throw them in a bucket, pass them out to all the kids and, "Do you have choice time?" "No, go fish!" Then you get another one. Same rules, but just using them with something that’s accessible to them. Pictures? Not so much. But, they can play this game with their friends too, even if their friends are print or picture readers. They can still see these if they have vision. Go Fish!, Old Maid, War using those numbers, teaching them bigger, smaller, higher, lower, all that kinds of things. And they can learn the rules of these games with something that’s familiar to them before they move on to using them in Braille or some other medium that will work for them. So, Old Maid, Go Fish!. Another game that is, maybe, less fun, but gives them some context is anything with sorting. You can sort symbols by their backgrounds categories, places versus people, trying to figure out which one doesn’t belong. I have three symbols; Saturday, Sunday, Restaurant. "Well, which one doesn’t belong?" The restaurant. It’s not the same category. So you can play those games with them. This one was designed for the child who is working on jobs, and, "Why do I need money?" "What are the things I have to spend my money on?" So we made her a game, if you will, for sorting the things ‘that she needs’ and the ‘things that she wants,’ because that can be hard. Now, "I really need that CD." Well, not so much, but I probably do need a house to live in or an apartment. So that becomes a need. Candy? Well, you know, food is nice, but candy, that is more of a want. That gives her a way to sort things out, to look at symbols, talk about the items, which she should see in her real environment, first. And then sort them and share what her understanding is of needs and wants. Not as much fun as Go Fish! but still, to them, a game. 

>> Carol Bittinger: So we've seen a lot of different ways to use tactile symbols; in the calendars, reading, writing, math, science, in your environment... in games, pretty much-- the main idea is that you can use tactile symbols anywhere! If you have a print word, if you have a picture, if you have a braille word, or you would put those in the environment, then you should use a tactile symbol, too, for your students. It gives them structure, predictability, helps them find things that their looking for, it gives them a way to access their environment-- to share their thoughts with their friends, Reading, Writing; all of those kinds of stuff. And our kids should not be exempt from doing that. They're capable, and this just gives them that medium that they need in order to do all of those things. The examples that you saw were all from the Texas School for Blind's symbol system. And you can look up the way to make those symbols, and the things that are needed, on the web site-- if you just type into the search engine on TSBVI's website-- you can find the tactile symbols there. You don't have to use them. You can make individualized for your student's needs. If there isn't a symbol, make one up! You have a lot of license for freedom where tactile symbols are concerned, if you're giving your students the support that they need. I had a girl this year that came to us knowing objects, but not being ready for braille. So we presented her with tactile symbols. On Friday, she wrote her letter home, using her tactile symbols, to say, "Dear grandma, I went to a restaurant. I ate lunch." And that was huge for her-- just two sentences! She brought it home and showed her grandma, and said, "Grandma, look. I can read!" She called her teachers and said, "I can read!" And they cried, because they never thought she would be a reader-- they didn't think she was ready yet. But tactile symbols allowed her to be a reader. And if you ask her now, she's a reader! And she's using tactile symbols. It's a great opportunity to help build their world and their confidence, and help them to see-- to express themselves-- to access the world that maybe just wasn't accessible to them before. Tactile symbols can be that missing link.