TSBVI Coffee Hour: Literacy Considerations for Individuals with CVI: Part 2 Ð 10-4-21

>>Kaycee Bennett: hello, everyone. Welcome. We're going to wait just a moment to get started with everybody filler in here. As always, while you're waiting feel free to put in the chat with your chat set to "everyone" and let us know where you're watching from today We'll wait just a moment. From Houston, Nacagdoches, Tucson, Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee. More Houston, Round Rock. Austin. Friendswood. Kentucky, Belton, North Carolina, Phoenix area, northeast Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, New York. Awesome. Welcome. Welcome, everyone. I'll get us started with some announcements. Thank you for being here today with us for Coffee Hour. If you have questions or comments while our presenter is speaking today, please put that in the chat box. And make sure that your chat is set to "everyone" so we can all see your questions and comments. Your microphones and cameras are automatically muted so you don't need to werery about that. The handout for today's session will be shared in the chat for media viewing and will also be available for later viewing along with the recording of this and past Coffee Hour sessions shared through the link of our Coffee Hour page. Once you're on that page you will see a link toward the top that says visit the new TSBVI archives. That is a link and will take you to the recordings, handout, transcripts and chat information. To on sane your CEUs for today you will respond to the evaluation that will be e-mailed to you from our registration website called ESC Works. You will enter the code given at the end of today's session and the certificate will automatically generate upon completion of that evaluation. There's no opening code. Only a closing code. And it will be given at the end of today's presentation. We'll stop around 3:55 to give you your code and share some closing announcements with you. I'm happy to introduce today's presenter to you, Judy Endicott. 

>>Judy Endicott: Thank you, Kaycee. Thank you for this opportunity and thank you, everyone, for joining today. I'm going to share my screen with you. Get us started. Okay. Here we go. So, thanks for joining me for Part 2 of "Literacy Considerations for Individuals with CVI." In part 1 which we had in May, I think, or June, I introduced myself and explained that I am a retired special education teacher and reading specialist. And I am now in a position of talking about CVI and literacy and teaching of course on Perkins E-Learning platform. Knowing nothing about CVI 12 years ago my mission to help my grandson has turned me into quite the research geek in the area of CVI and the current evidence-based research on literacy instruction. My perspective that I share today as I've mentioned in other presentations is based upon the application of effective research-based interventions customized to give my grandson visual access to literacy instruction. Keep in mind, please, that there is no literacy research to date that studies the population of learners with CVI. Work in the experts of both the fields of literacy and cortico visual impairment is the basis of what I have shared, I have  merely made the connections. What is important for you to know is my work has been made for my verbal 12-year-old grandson who is in Phase 3. So you see here Christine Roman-Lantzy's work on the top is the foundation of my work. I've learned from many, but not -- the images on the screen are some of the places that I've learned information from, but not limited to these images are parents of other individuals with CVI, individuals with CVI themselves, members of the pediatric cord call visual impairment Society, I see a few on the call today, Perkins webinars and classes and CVI. So many of these excellent resources are listed in the resource list that you're going to be supplied with and there have been some additions for this Part 2 today. So in Part 1 I shared this representation of what I believe needs to be considered and included in literacy programs for individuals with CVI. The big box on the left is CVI-specific. That starts with complete assessments using a functional vision assessment, using the CVI range by Roman-Lantzy, a learning media assessment with the sensory balance and approach to learning media planning for students with CVI and additional assessments that you see listed there that are important for your individual. The CVI overlay, which I'll show you in just a minute, is part of the CVI-specific programming, as is the Core Instruction, the learning condition and strategies using salient feature, comparative thought and mediated learning. Combine we'd that are balance tasks and environment complexity, the work of Matthew Tie tjen and includes a CVI schedule. The middle box includes a structured literacy program where supplemental programs to target student needs based upon the science of reading. There is now science to guide the practice of reading instruction. That science of reading should be part of all literacy programs for all individuals. And that includes explicit systematic instruction in the five core areas identified in the National Reading Panel Report, phonemic awareness, phonic, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and the addition of spelling and writing. They were not part of the original 2000 panel report but they are an important part of structured literacy. So when you combine those two, it is my thinking that you end up with a structured literacy program that is based on the science of reading and is visually accessible and instructionally appropriate for the learner with CVI. To do this we begin with the CVI overlay. The CVI visual and behavioral characteristics on the left there, the Roman-Lantzy characteristics identified using a CVI range, that knowledge of these visual and behavioral characteristics combined with the core instruction, balanced task and environments and CVI schedule, which includes the need for attending to visual breaks, that must guide instruction in each core area. So in thinking about CVI literacy this way, it becomes quite apparent that there is no one program, no one intervention, or approach that fits all. So today's content will include addressing the questions asked by participants in Part 1 and includes some video demonstrations done with my grandson this past summer. So, how to address nonverbal students. Well, here are the sources that have helped me think about literacy for nonverbal individuals with CVI. I have no experience teaching nonverbal students to read. I do believe that the parents' wishes and expectations for their child's literacy must be considered in all planning. The information I share today is based on literacy research with verbal individuals, some with and some without reading difficulties. It will help you understand what constitutes a solid literacy program that you then must adapt for an individual who is nonverbal. For that work, I suggest you turn to the experts, the experienced experts, that you see here. So the next question that I received was, when to consider Braille instruction. The vision of individuals with CVI is expected to progress from Phase I to Phase III through a systematic teaching approach based on understanding the characteristics of CVI. Therefore, a primary goal for instruction of students with CVI is the intentional use of vision for meaningful and rewarding activities. This facilitates improvements in functional vision even when vision is not the lead sense. So the authors of "Sensory Balance" continue by identifying a very limited number of situations where Braille would be a lead media for literacy. And in their work, cruciferous sell and Jennifer Willis state that Braille is not an appropriate literacy modality for a learner with CVI in the absence of additional, significant, or degenerative ocular visual impairments. The learning media assessment that is currently used is for ocular visual impairment. And because sensory balance is a CVI-specific supplement to the learning media, I suggest you strongly consider its use. The specific focus of Russell and Willis' work will assist teams evaluating learners with complex communication needs. So the next two questions I'm putting together, the top one, adapting core reading instruction for students with CVI, and comprehension, what about students who are reading but not understanding. The IEP team needs to consider and make decisions on the following... and this isn't just limited to these. These are just some for consideration right now. The parent's literacy goals for the individual, the  current assessment information and we need a plan for supporting classroom instruction and remediating specific student needs. It is my belief that individuals with CVI will most likely need intensive literacy interventions. That is that Tier 3 that you see here in the image. Due to their unique brain-based visual impairments and possible co-occurring conditions, individuals with CVI will most likely be at risk for literacy difficulties. They've been exposed to less print, less visual information, and therefore have less robust concept development, vocabulary, and knowledge. And it's highly likely their rate of learning will be different from their age-appropriate peers. So an individual's core reading instructional program must be scrutinized by the team. And the learner's unique visual behavioral and academic strengths and needs must be assessed and the team must determine how those needs can be met. There is no program out there. All need to be adapted. So for all instruction, and that includes for each task, strategy, and intervention, the mediator must ask, is this task and setting appropriate for this student? Can background knowledge be built so that the learner can understand the new learning? What needs to be modified and what accommodations need to be in place for the learner to have full access to the learning task and environment? What will be the lead modality, and what will be supporting literacy media for each different activity? What visual information is needed for learning? How and when will progress be monitored so instructional adjustments can be made? So I think it's important to share with you when we're talking about comprehension needs this simple view of reading. I shared this and the next screen in Part 1. This is a formula based on the view that reading has two basic components, word recognition, which is decoding, and comprehension. This work of Gough and Tunmer is supported and validated by research. So if there is a weakness in one or both of these areas, comprehension will be compromised. Another widely recognized and very influential presentation of reading development the Scarborough's reading rope model. Here the two basic components of reading are represented as two strands. It's a more detailed breakdown of the domains of skilled reading and it shows you how many components there are that go into skilled reading. The upper strand, language comprehension, is composed of the substrands, background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. The lower strand, word recognition, is made up of the substrands, phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words. So the skills and abilities from each strand re-enforce one another and both big strands weave together to produce a skilled reader. And we know this doesn't happen overnight. It requires lots of practice, lots of deliberate instruction. A problem in any of the areas must be addressed. So you've seen all the subskills that go into making a skilled reader. Poor reading comprehension has multiple causes. Most often is inadequate decoding followed by poor vocabulary. And other potential disrupters of skillful comprehension are syntax, which is the structure of word order in phrases, clauses, and sentences, working memory, making inferences, monitoring of comprehension, domain knowledge, text structure, and the ability to sustain attention. So with so many possible disrupters of comp premention you can see high thorough assessments are necessary. And for the student with CVI, don't assume it's a comprehension problem until fluent decoding and vocabulary have been ruled out. Be watchful for signs of visual overload, cognitive overload, and sensory overload. Because all will have an impact on the student's comprehension of the material. Our core areas of focus will be vocabulary and comprehension. And I'm going to briefly touch on the most common disrupter of comprehension which is inadequate decoding, especially for beginning readers. I share with you the findings of the National Reading Panel, phoneme awareness helps children learn how to read and spell. The ability to read words in text accurately and fluently is highly related to successful reading comprehension. And, if I haven't mentioned it enough, if students have needs in either area, they must be addressed. Tonemic awareness decoding and sight words is another very large subject for another time. So turning to the vocabulary research, we all know that vocabulary can be learned directly and indirectly. Most individuals learn vocabulary indirectly, through their reading and their listening. Well, we know that's a red flag for our learners with CVI because they're going to either have missing, incomplete, or even inaccurate visual images due to the inability to see the targets and the ability to interpret targets both near and far. So this puts them at risk of learning vocabulary directly and having a picture in their head to go with the words they hear or read. Research tells us, and these bullets are going to be especially important for the learner with CVI, that direct vocabulary instruction leads to gains in reading comprehension, that we need to explicitly teach individuals individual words and vocabulary strategies and teaching specific words from the text before instruction reduces cognitive load when reading and facilitates word learning and comprehension. And active engagement is effective the vocabulary learning. So you can see our activities here in the time of COVID, and so we Velcrod some of the organs. These are images of my work helping him supplement and pre-teach vocabulary and content on a unit of study in school, the human body. So I tried to do some activities with him and move his learning along, and you can see how we moved from the very large image to the smaller green body where he could move the labels of the organs. And then we created a Google slide deck with the important vocabulary information in a very reduced complex presentation. So whenever I get anything ready for him I always ask myself how I can -- how can I make this meaningful, interactive, and visually accessible for him. And woven throughout all tasks are salient visual features for novel targets and we use comparative language all the time. And I always start by question, what do you see. That gives me a place to begin. Continue with research on vocabulary, vocabulary can be learned incidentally in the context of storybook reading and facilitates word learning and comprehension. Well, we can't just leave that alone as is. We need to supplement that for our learner with CVI. And repetition, richness of content, and multiple exposures and motivation are important. So you may have guessed that these images are supporting the book "James and Giant Peach" and this is an example of how I tried to make content critical to his understanding of the text, make it accessible to him. So these screenshots accompanied each chapter. I kept the same sequence. I kept it very predictable. And in planning ahead for each chapter, I selected core vocabulary, those words that were critical to his understanding of the text, the images that he needed to be able to visualize in order to understand the actions that he would hear in the words. The insects obviously are an important component of the story and you can see here we were introducing the glowworm with a realistic image and then we had the other image of the glowworm to compare the two. And we included that comparative language with the closest thing that he had experienced with, was the lightning bug. And the landscape pictures were to extend his visual library of the understanding of the word "landscape." You can see where I had two colors and that was our word work that was done in -- oh writing the context of the words of the story. So any content can be supplemented with these type of interventions that are specifically geared to your learner's CVI needs. So here's more. And we could have gone to a dictionary to find the meaning of spike as you see at the top here, which I would have read to him and he would not have had anything to attach it to without these images. And I wanted to extend the multiple meaning of the images of spike. So my goal here was, given the images as we talked about the word, make connections to what he knows, we used salient features and comparative language. And we could have used the addition of 3D items for additional sensory information. We also had a great discussion of pointing out the connection that the illustrator, why he decided to draw Aunt Spiker the way he did and connect it to the shape of the spike. It was very interesting. The word on oh picture on the right is when we took the vocabulary word that was of high interest to him when he heard it and we made it into a decoding, splitting it into syllables, so that's what we do with that kind of word that he likes to hear and say over again. So with the CVI overlay in place, the following are especially important for the learner with CVI. You have to determine what the learning goal is and whether the student is to listen to or read the text. You need to provide previously taught images for the student to look at while listening to the text. Notice I said previously taught because you don't want to put a brand new novel image from on the of a student when they're listening to a text assuming that it's going to help them interpret what they hear as they look at it. Some find that they can't look and listen at the same time. So again, you have to know your learner. Do think alouds of how you determine word meaning in context. Encourage learners to ask questions about unknown words or confusing parts when listening or reading. Respond to the questions. Stop, define the word, use those salient features if needed, provide a synonym, connect the novel word to the learner. And when you find unknowns for this learner, prepare images with salient visual features so that you can review them at another time. With the CVI overlay in place, additional vocabulary options for consideration are, teach the students how to use electronic dictionaries with voice output. That's especially useful for letting them check the pronunciation of a word. Use Siri and other electronic supports to enhance and extend meaning. Use videos, podcasts, and audiobook content to support the content of what this individual's reading or listening to. Structure practice opportunities so that they can use words orally, they can use them in their writing, their listening activities and provide adapted text for reading practice. And if you haven't gotten this message yet, be mindful of the huge influence vocabulary knowledge has on listening and reading comprehension. So how I select vocabulary words, I select them first because of the usefulness and their importance. Also for the intentional use of applying and practicing decoding and word building activities. I select words with multiple meanings, I'd you mattic expressions, unknown words that the student identifies, and student selected words. You saw Ramshackle. This was one that River brought home. He heard it at school one day and we maid it into a decoding opportunity to draw his attention at how powerful it is to read a long word by staking it syllable by syllable. So moving into comprehension, the National Reading Panel report and subsequent structured literacy research consistently show that explicit, direct comprehension instruction tells readers why and when they should use strategies, what strategies to use, and how to use them. And evidence-based comprehension strategies that improve comprehension and are supported by research include the following... comprehension monitoring, question generating, question answering, story structure, use of semantic and graphic organizers, and summarization. I'm going to share a little bit of information about each one, with the exception of summarization, just for time purposes. Cooperative learning is also on the list. And because it's been effect Ily used to teach comprehension strategies in content areas. And as you can well imagine, multiple strategies are often used together, so the students can see flexibility in their use as the strategy is needed. Do not expect students to know what strategies to use where. That's what they're learning. Recommendations for comprehension instruction by the teacher,/mediator. I need to clarify when I talk about comprehension of text that that's including what is read by the student and the text where the learner's auditory modality is the primary media for learning new information. So when instructing comprehension you need to begin with assessing the cognitive demands of the text. What does the student's background information, what is that, with regards to the concepts that are in the text. What is their vocabulary knowledge and do they have the visual schemes to support novel information. You need to preview, plan, and prepare vocabulary and concepts in the text for instruction. And when instructing, inform the learner of the learning goal. Plan a multi-day commitment to the content, break tasks into smaller steps, with planned visual breaks. And this powerful instructional sequence of I do, where the mediator/teacher directly, explicitly demonstrates. We do is when it's prompted and mediated practice. And the you do part, when the student applies what they've learned with efforts monitors. Reteaching, remediating, all of that is done as needed. Structure opportunities for repeated and extended meaningful practice, incorporate additional sensory channels when appropriate, and express is itly teach how sentences relate to each other. You would be surprised how many individuals really, they can understand at the sentence level but when you start connecting sentences together, then they don't see the relationship from one idea to the next. So the first comprehension strategy of monitoring comprehension. This is that meta cognitive thinking about your own thinking, where the reader learns how to be aware of his or her understanding of the text during reading or listening. This is where the reader learns what to do to fix up what doesn't make sense. So overlay additions for this strategy include demonstrate how you think about the ideas in the text when reading orally. Increase your interactions with the reader to assess comprehension of text. Increase demonstrations of fix up strategies for word errors or comprehension errors. And do this deliberately. Deliberately stage something where you pretend you don't understand something and you, out loud, explain how you would do a fix-up strategy, what you would do as the reader. If the reader is doing the read -- if the individual is doing the reading, don't talk. And if you're using a chart or a graphic organizer, all the text must be customized to meet the learner's visual needs. Repeat the "we do" part of the lessons  in a variety of texts over an extented period of time. So the next comprehension strategy is using graphic and semantic organizers. And the Mariner effect of these graphic organizers appears to be the improvement of the reader's memory for the content that has been read. Graphic organizers, as you well know, includes maps, frames, diagrams, graphs, charts. And semantic organizers are those word and concept webs. They are helpful in providing a mental map of the content. They do help organize information. They can be so helpful to many learners, but a potential huge flag -- huge red flag for individuals with visual impairments is that they may just be another additional, complex array of information. So you really need to know what the learning goal is and what the content is to be learned, and then figure out the best way to facilitate that. And if it's using a graphic organizer, then use one that's non-complex. Choose or create ones that will be used consistently for reading and writing. You want that mental map, that framework to be established by the learner so you need to use the same visual presentation. Teach the structure using familiar content and explicitly teach words that are found on graphic organizers. Now, if you don't use a graphic organizer for content, then determine what other media will assist the individual when learning content. So here are samples of ones you can find both on the Internet and some samples of ones that I have designed that have no extraneous information. Remember, the visual battery is used up when the learner has to visually search for what to look at and also whatnot to pay attention to. That takes a lot of energy. So you can see how I customized, for example, the right side cause and effect, main idea, because the boxes of the main idea in the bottom middle, they just wouldn't work, I know, for my grandson. The far left diagram is an attempt to explain to him the diagram concept, therefore we used very well-known information. Also we made a notebook of the graphic organizers that he uses and they're at school so they can be used consistently with him. Comprehension strategy, story structure. Well, a story map, also called a story grammar, is a graphic organizer for narrative stories. Narrative stories make up the bulk of text used at the elementary level. The purposes they provide, that thinking framework, that visual map, that skeleton of the story content. It facilitates comprehension and they help recall of content. It helps the reader/listener and the writer/dictator focus on the relevant story information. It's useful as a guide for oral retelling of content and for composing stories. So the bottom left you can see, after James and the giant peach, after reading one or two chapters, we would put that information down. He would narrate and I would type, and our discussions of the main event of two chapters tended to be very interesting because he got a clear sense of what were details and how maybe we could construct the main idea for that much text. We also used the same story map structure before he composes any stories. Again, I'm his scribe. He does the thinking but he has this story map -- he has all the components in his head. Question generating is the next comprehension strategy. And this overlaps with the metacognitive strategy of comprehension monitoring. Because it teaches students how to ask their own questions. You know, the ones beyond what's this about? The goal is to increase active reading and listening. KWL, many of you are familiar with, what I know, what I want to know, what I learned, sometimes in a chart, sometimes it's just an oral activity. That activates background knowledge. And the 5Ws, what, when, where, why, and who. Both of these are useful ways to involve the reader in setting his or her own purpose for listening and reading. Question answering is a strategy where the reader answers questions posed by the teacher and is given feedback on the correctness. It is intended to aid students in learning to answer questions while reading and thus learn more from text. So we all have experienced the typical questions asked after you read something. Well, keep in mind, why is this a useful comprehension strategy? Well, questions asked during and after reading or listening are intended to focus that attention on the important content. Questions are intended to improve learning from the content by giving readers a purpose for reading. Questions are intended to help the reader or listener review and relate content to what they know. So in evidence-based strategy, one I found very helpful in teaching students explicitly how to find answers to questions asked about text is QAR, question-answer relationship. The work of Raphael. Her strategy helps learners understand how the question is related to where to find the answers. My addition to the images that you're going to see are the images and the gestures, because those are intended to help make thinking visible using different and possibly additional modalities. The chart sensory balance by phase is taken directly by sensory balance, an approach to learning media planning for students with CVI. It shifts the learning modalities in the three phases. My grandson, as I mentioned, is in Phase III. Vision and reading skills continue to improve. His level of auditory comprehension is a great level but he is unable to questioned to at this level. With all of his cover overlay in place. So for him to learn content from grade level text his auditory modality must take the lead. His QAR relationship strategy helps readers learn how to think about typical text questions and, as a result, build that mental model of where to find the answers which help them comprehend the text they're reading or listening to. And as mentioned, the pictures and gestures are my additions. He doesn't see the two images on the left. Those are for your information. And they show you the types of questions that come up with this strategy. The video is the first explicit instruction of this strategy using text he has read. All previous use of this strategy has been with questions asked about the text he has listened do and the use of the labels right there, author, plus the use of gestures when locating the answers. Let me share this with you now. River, we're going to go back to this story that you started with the title. What is it again? 

>>Take cover. 

>>What word did you add to the tight until. 

>>Immediately. 

>>With a whole stream of exclamation points. Okay. So this is a nonfiction story which we know means not oh don't advance the screen yet oh. That means this is made up of facts. Okay? This isn't a make-believe story. It tells us information. Now, we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about how to find answers to questions about what you have read. So, we're going to advance our work here to the first question. Now, before you read it. 

>>What? What storms are mentioned in part uno. 

>>Part one, good. Now, that is what I want you to think about to be able to answer when we finish reading our part. Okay? What part are we reading? Check your question again. 

>>What storms are part one. 

>>Okay. 

>>Judy Endicott: So we went on to read the two slides in part one to answer that question. When he identified the answers, we highlighted the right there word. This video demonstrates my explicit corrective need back. Okay. So River, there was one kind of storm that was mentioned that you didn't mention but it is right there in our story. 

>>Tornado. 

>>Tornadoes. So can you point to it? That's one of the storms. It's right there. You can point to the words in the text. 

>>Judy Endicott: We had an additional video that went on to explain that this really was a putting it together, which means that you find information on one page or slide, in this case, and information on another page or slide, and you put those together. But they're still right there so you can point to them. In this demonstration of author and me you will see the images I crow ated to use with this explicit teaching of the strategy. The label really is the important learning. The images, if not used, can be replaced with gestures. 

>>Okay. So we're on question number three. It's in "Author and Me" question. River, would you read the question, please? 

>>Author and me. 

>>Okay. That means the reader is going put information from the reader's head -- let's go back to this for a second -- the reader's head with something that's in the text. So read your question, please. 

>>Do you think the author would take cover during a hailstorm? 

>>Okay. Well-done. So that's the question that you're going to think about as I read the next to you. Do you think the author would take cover during a hailstorm? 

>>Judy Endicott: So you heard me tell River that he was to listen to find the answers to the author and me question. His visual fatigue was becoming very apparent. I do know his signals. So we deliberately switched to his auditory modality taking the lead role in acquiring the information that was asked in this question. The last type of question is on my own. 

>>River, our last question is called an "on my own" question. Would you read it, please? Question 4. Go ahead. 

>>We did Question 4. 

>>Read it please. 

>>Question 4, what does it say right there? 

>>On my own. 

>>Oh. 

>>Read the question, please. 

>>Do you think the author gave im -- important information in "Take Cover" . 

>>"Take Cover" was the title of piece, right? 

>>The name of the story. 

>>Go to another picture here. "on my own" means just information, it's asking for your opinion. Do you think the author gave important information? 

>>Yeah. 

>>Can you share one piece of important information that that author gave you about hailstorms? 

>>Yeah. 

>>What kind of information did you learn? 

>>They were the size of baseballs. 

>>The pieces of hail? 

>>Yeah. 

>>Okay. Did it give you more important information? 

>>Yeah. 

>>Okay. That is an "on my own" question. So that we know came right from your head. You don't have to go back and look through this text. 

>>The hair came right from your head? 

>>So there you get some flavor of my grandson's wonderful personality. But -- and you can see why with his reading of the question, why we switched to him listening to the text. You have a glimpse of the QAR questions and how I put them in the text he was reading and then listening to. We do continue to follow the learning sequence of I do, you do, we do in order to help River build this mental model of where to find the answers to comprehension questions that are asked. It's important for him to read the question before he either listens or reads the rest of the information. And his lead modality will depend on the text difficulty and his visual battery. So this very full page I'm not going to have the time to go through with you. You will see that they are some ideas to support listening comprehension, CVI-specific. I've done a real condensed version of comprehension strategies, tried to answer the questions that were posed and hopefully have given you some ideas of how you can take your learner's specific needs and customize learning tasks and core -- core program information so that it benefits your learner. So just a couple of final thoughts. I feel it's so imperative that we collaborate as a team and work to provide instruction that meets the full range of learning needs of individuals with CVI. I do hope my work inspires you and your team to continue to learn more about CVI and literacy. Cortical Visual Impairment is presently underreported, underdiagnosissed and undertreated. It has been referred to as a national health crisis. We all need to keep learning. Our individuals with CVI deserve nothing less. Thank you for joining me today. Now I will stop sharing and let Kaycee take back the screen here. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: Thank you so much. 

>>Judy Endicott: You're so welcome. Let's see what we're doing here. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: I asked if anybody has questions, to put those in chat. 

>>Judy Endicott: Oops. That's not what I want. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: None have come in yet. 

>>Judy Endicott: I know I really threw a lot of information. That's the problem, there's just so much to both topics, that to crunch it down is quite the challenge. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: We do have one quick question come in. 

>>Judy Endicott: Okay. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: What links did you find between students with dyslexia and those with CVI? 

>>Judy Endicott: Working with students with dyslexia was of main interest before I retired. So I kind of  gobbled up all the information I could find. I find a direct correlation, and this is the nonmedical, non-brain, you know, I'm a student of learning about the brain and reading and dyslexia and CVI but please don't consider me any kind of resource. But I find it fascinating how dyslexic students use a different part of their brain to compensate for what is not very efficiently working, and I find that very similar to what I see happening with my grandson. When you look at the work of Stanisla us sand they talk about the parts of the brain for the speediest type of literacy work, where the damage is in the brain is going to determine exactly the pathways that are being used but there are ways -- there are pathways that compensate. And so I find learn learners with CVI, at least my limited knowledge, and what I know about students with dyslexia, I find it extremely close in the way that they learn how to compensate for what -- whatever is going on in the brain or whatever channels are blocked or damaged. Sally Sawiches' work, I highly consider getting ahold of the you want to learn from dyslexia. I think her reference is in that list of resources. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: Perfect. Another question. Did you use bubble words with your grandson? 

>>Judy Endicott: Yes, we started that way. And the Roman-Lantzy method of bubble words is design to draw that visual attention when needed to the shape of the letter or the word, whatever the specific learning is, to use that as that entrance. But also you need to use the letter sounds, those are the ways to -- when you come across a new word that you do not know, you do not know the shape of, you need to have a method of unlocking the word of figuring it out. And the research is very clear about sounds and symbols and the connection and the need for learning those. So it all works together. The bubbing words are -- you know, the color enhancement is dropped as not needed. So you need to -- we use some -- in one of my presentations I showed how we use it a lot for word parts because there is now working in -- with the endings, the prefixes and suffixes and we're working to distinguish letter pattern, spelling patterns as we refer to them, spelling pattern. So color is used and sometimes that is the bubble shape. Again, it all depends on what works and what you need to do for your learner. I wish there was, you know, a list of try step one, two, and three and it will all be -- so you have to be, you know, you have to investigate, you have to research, you have to find out from other learners and you have to, you know, you have to customize it for your particular student's needs. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: When in the classroom does the team make these accommodations, like the organizers and the text being put on the computer? They seem like great options. Is that something the school does when he's in school? 

>>Judy Endicott: That varies tremendously. That is a school-by school, team-by-team. Again, it's what gives the student access to literacy. So there really shouldn't be any question of should it be done or can it be done, it's who is going to do it. Because my grandson, you open a book at grade-appropriate level, he cannot benefit from the any of the words on the page. None. Because of the way they are. And then you throw in illustrations or whatever, you know, we talked about all the text features and things like that, there's just no way. So without those major accommodations, it's not going to happen. And it's not a case of can or should, it's a case of, you know, he needs access to that material. That's that free and appropriate education that needs to be there for him. So yeah. That's no easy answer, but that is something that must be in place. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: We've got kind of a technical question. Someone said that they saw a video at Perkins CVI and it had a student who was in Phase III with scrolling text, letter to letter. Do you know how they do that? Do you know anything about that technology? 

>>Judy Endicott: I do not. Technology is not my strength. I would imagine there would be something there you could reach out to. I would suggest connecting on CVI Now, ask that question. Somebody will be able to direct you. I know there are -- there are ways to do that. It's just nothing that ever worked well for my grandson so we never pursued it. But don't dismiss any ideas. You really have to be open to trying things and seeing the effect of them. See the results. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: Those are all of the questions. There are a lot of people saying thank you and that they learned a lot and appreciate these resources. 

>>Judy Endicott: Good. 

>>Kaycee Bennett: One more time, I think that is everything. 

>>Judy Endicott: Kaycee, everyone needs to know I'm open to any questions that come in laid later if they will send them through you and you can forward them to me. I'll do my best. You know, my goal is to help as many other learners what I do with River, that means nothing as far as guaranteeing it would work with anybody else. But -- so that's -- but I'm willing to share or put people in the direction that they need. That's what happened -- that's how we started. We knew nothing. We knew nothing. And there's a great CVI support community. If you're out there and you're a parent, connect with those spots that you see on the resource list. CVI-S is a wonderful parent organization. There are a couple of moms on here that are from that organization. So we're all just continuing to learn so we can do the best we can.