TSBVI Coffee Hour: 
Active Learning and Orientation & Mobility
02/22/2021

>> Bennett: Hello, everybody. Welcome. We hope you're all thawed out. We're glad you're able to be with us today. We will wait just a couple of minutes as everybody comes in before we get started. While you're waiting, feel free to set your chat from all panelists to all panelists and attendees. That's the dropdown menu next to where it says "To" in your chat menu. Then you can change your chat setting from all panelists to all panelists and attendees so we can see what you're writing. Linda's here from El Paso. We've got Arkansas, buffalo, New York. Pennsylvania's got more snow today. Thank goodness our snow is gone here. And it's like 70 outside now. El Paso, Mansfield, Nashville, Albuquerque, Missouri, Illinois, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Canada, California, London. St. Louis, Australia, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina. Idaho, Iowa. Kathy shared we were in three layers before, now we're in shorts and flip-flops. That's us. 

>> Hurst: Oh, patty's here. Great, Patty. 

>> Bennett: Yay! Connecticut, Florida, Columbus. Awesome. We're so happy to have all of you here from all over the place. Oh, Karen's here from Utah. Glad you're here, Karen. Awesome. I'm going to go ahead and get us started with a few announcements before we turn it over. If you have a question or a comment during the time that our presenters are talking, please post that in the chat box and make sure that your chat, again, is set to all panelists and attendees. Your microphones and cameras are automatically muted, so you don't need to worry about that. The handout for today's session will be shared in the chat for immediate viewing and will also be available for later viewing, along with the recording of this and past coffee hour sessions shared through a link on our coffee hour page, TSBVI/edu/coffeehour. Once you're on the page, you'll scroll down to the archives. That's a link, and it will take you to the recordings, handouts, transcripts and chat information. To obtain your CEUs, you'll respond to the evaluation that will be e-mailed to you from our registration website, ESC Works. You'll enter the code given at the end of today's session and the CEU 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 the presentation at about 3:55 to give you your code and announcements. I am happy to present today's presenters to her, Kate Hurst and Chris Tabb. 

>> Tabb: Thank you, I'm Chris Tabb at TSBVI. And Kate? 

>> Hurst: I'm Kate Hurst, I'm with the outreach program, though I'm partially retired, spend a whole lot of time in the last number of years focusing on active learning and the active learning online modules. So I'm glad that you're here today. I'm excited that O & Ms are interested in knowing more, so let's get going. We have lots to cover. So first of all, and I recognize that I'm preaching to the choir, but I'm going to preach a little bit anyway, just to remind us all of why it is so important when we're working with students with significant disabilities that we get these children moving. The main reasons that come to my mind, and you may have others that you -- that you think of, please feel free to share those in the chat, but,ing one, we want to improve their health. We know that being active is important to having good health, so we want to get these kids moving as much as possible. And these are children who face many additional disabilities, they may have gastrointestinal type of problems, seizure disorders, respiratory problems, all sorts of things, so getting them moving is going to improve their overall health. It's certainly also going to improve the quality of their life. You know, when you can move and you have some control over where you go in life and who you interact with, life just gets better. Also, for all of us, our ability to learn and to make sense of the world is directly tied with our ability to move and interact with the world and people in the world and other things in the world. And so getting these children up and moving is critical to their learning and their development in all areas. If you can move, especially for these kiddos who don't have great communication, especially to begin with, this is where communication begins. You know, we see this in infants and toddlers that their movement is the way they communicate with others about what their needs are. So this is really important, but if we think, on the other end of the deal where we've got kids that are leaving out of high school who may still be functioning at a, you know, six-month-old level, their ability to move is probably going to be -- make the difference in the kind of life they experience if they go into some type of group home setting. The more they can engage others, the better response they're going to get and the better treatment they're going to get. And then finally for these children, movement is going to be a way that a lot of them make choices and become self-determined. So getting all of our students, and I know as O & Ms you believe in the power of movement, we want to get them moving, and these children deserve to move probably more than anybody else. They really need to focus on that. So let's go to the next slide. And just to back this up since, you know, I'm just who I am, I thought I would include this quote from neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert, and I think it's such a great quote to get us started on. He says, we have a brain for one reason and one reason only -- that's to produce adaptable and complex movements. Movement is the only way we have of affecting the world around us... I believe that to understand movement is to understand the whole brain. And, therefore, it is important to remember when you're studying memory, cognition, sensory processing, they're there for a reason, and that reason is action. So one of the things that I think first drew me to active learning and continues to draw me to active learning is that I do believe that everything these children hope to learn is only going to be as good as the quality of their movements that we can get going with them. So I believe active learning works and movement is there. So what is your role as an orientation and mobility specialist? Well, you know that you have two models that are typically used. One is consultation to the staff and to the family, and the other is to provide direct service to the student. And I'm going to advocate that you use both -- that these students need both consultation to staff and family and also direct service from you in differing proportions at differing times. I think initially when a student comes in, you've got to spend a lot of time observing to help the team and collaborate on assessment and the program design and implementation, to set up a way to do progress reporting, all of those sorts of things. Also I think for both the staff and the family who may not know anything about active learning, you can be a great source to guide them to an understanding of what active learning can do and how to do it in an appropriate way. And you may be the person who does some demonstration of an activity using an active learning approach and active learning equipment, and then gradually role-release it to other staff members, or maybe go into the home and show the family how to use different things. The other thing is, is that I know you O & Ms, you're really good with pipes and glue and strings and cords and all sorts of things, you can be very helpful in the creation of a lot of these active learning environments. And we're going to look at a lot of these as the day goes on. But I also think that these students really do need to have direct service from you. Again, maybe a lot initially, and then as things get up and running, less time with direct service. But I think that other than you and the PT and the O & M, no one is as qualified to really look at a child's movement and think about ways to support that movement to get better and to think about what comes next. Also, I think that you have a really important role in documenting and reporting progress for students that no one else is going to be able to do quite in the same way. So I just want to encourage you with that. 

>> Tabb: And just for those that are new to active learning or new to the field of orientation mobility, many of the students are going to be looking at today, and that might be in this active learning category are not going to be your textbook students with street crossings and traveling through the school to get to places independently, at least initially. And so what you're really doing is you're creating environments for them to learn those precursor skills, things that many children learned as infants and toddlers at home, you might be working with a 20-year-old to still develop those same basic movement skills, and our role in helping them to have an environment that encourages that learning is what value we can bring to the table for these students. 

>> Hurst: Well said, Chris. It is so important. So let's move on and see what's next. Oops, we jumped. Can we back up one. Okay. I wanted to share with you a couple of different links. These are in your handout, so you can get to these easily, but, you know, one of the things that we ran up against frequently when we first started talking about active learning is, well, you know, active learning is great and all, but we can't use it because we have to teach the general curriculum. Well, I'm here to tell you that active learning is an approach, it's not a piece of equipment only, though we use some specialized equipment as well. But it's an approach, and it's a total approach that can be used to teach any content. And that includes the general curriculum. There are -- these pages on the active learning space website that can kind of guide you through, if you've never thought about how to do that, showing you how to use an active learning approach to teach general curriculum content, how to write IEP goals and all of those things, so I want to encourage you to take a look at that. But as an O & M, you also have a responsibility for teaching the expanded core curriculum areas, and we also have content on the active learning space that can help guide you or help you think about using active learning approach in teaching expanded core curriculum. And let me just say that I think for these kiddos that active learning is a tremendous approach to use in both assessment and programming around expanded core curriculum content, because it has things that specifically look at sensory processing, so there's one on auditory, there's one on captive tactile, there's one on visual use, all these things are a part of the functional scheme assessment developed by Lily, and it gives you such detailed look at the child that you can really do an assessment at a level that most assessment tools will not go that far down. They do not go down to the level of birth, and this is how far you're going to need to go with some of these kids, because they -- when you first get them, they may not be able to move their body much at all. So you need to be able to think, how do I work on expanded core curriculum areas, for example, with a child whose body is very tight, their hands are fisted, they're unable to hold their head up or sit independently, they can't roll, they can't move. This will help you to have some ideas how to approach that. 

>> Tabb: And Kate, you mentioned LILY, for those that are not aware, Lily is Dr. Lily Nielson, we'll be covering more of her resources, they're available through the active learning space website. For those that aren't aware of thingses like the functional scheme and the FELA curriculum, those are some of the things that Dr. Lily Nielson has provided to the field. 

>> Hurst: Thank you, Chris. I forget from time to time because I spend so much time thinking about this that there are a lot of you that maybe have not explored active learning at all. So thanks for reminding me, Chris, to talk about some of the basics, too. So what I would like to do now is we wanted to try to make this a little bit more interactive than us just being talking heads. And so what I want to do first is I want to show you this video of a science lesson and what I think is a great O & M lesson as well, and I want you to watch it and while you're watching it, just think about -- and if you feel like it, throw into the chat, some of the O & M skills you see this child practicing, and then also if we're thinking about the expanded core curriculum, what sensory efficiency skills might you see this child practicing or working on. So if we can show the video right now... [Video playing.] 

>> Hurst: Okay. So, boy, you guys really got it. Everything y'all were putting in the chat, I'm like, yes, you know what I'm talking about. There was so much there in terms of mental mapping, I loved that one. That was the first thing I noticed when I saw this video for the first time is this child has learned a route. She knows what's coming up next and she moves herself back and forth very purposefully. This -- what you did not see is this is about a 45 minute long session that we just pulled a couple of clips from, but if you watch -- and the entire video is on the active learning space website, or a much longer version anyway, you can watch how she really explores her space, how she orients herself and figures out the direction she needs to move to get from one thing to the other. You know, the way she explores things with her feet and how every surface initially shocks her, but then she comes back and explores it more. So she's gaining so much in terms of sensory efficiency skills and all sorts of stuff like that. And at the same time, she's learning a wonderful science lesson, because the goals of this are to learn what plants are and what plants need to grow. So she's having that exposure to those different components that then make any lesson that the teacher might give, any book that somebody might sit down and read to her have a little bit more meaning because she knows -- she's had some experience with these materials. Chris, what do you think? 

>> Tabb: Chris, I wanted to do some side comments here, for those that are noticing the hops address with the harness suspension system from the ceiling, that's basically what's happening here. If you don't have that type of system, we're going to be going through some things later in the presentation where you can make things on your own, so that if you don't have all this let's say fancy equipment, very expensive equipment sometimes, there are still lots of ways to be involved with active learning with your students. There were some questions. Elizabeth white has some here that she asked about, was there no feedback given, just observations? Is she moving herself through the activity independently? And so I'm going to let Kate answer, but just so y'all know, as we get further along in the presentation, we'll talk a little bit about how much do you interact with the student. Is there a benefit for them having focus time without adult interruption or intervention. And so, Kate, maybe you can address some more of that. 

>> Hurst: Good point. And I would love to, and those are terrific questions. In active learning, you want a child to have opportunities to explore environments and play independently and you want opportunities for them to interact with others. Lily recommends that there is at least 45 minutes every day where they're having direct one-on-one interaction time with an adult in a very purposeful way. So when you think about a typical child's day, there's probably, I would say, somewhere between five and six hours of instruction time for these children, and as many of you know, these children require pretty much one-on-one support for any learning. So we want to make the time when they're not being actively engaged by adult as valuable as time when they are being engaged by an adult. So we do like to set up experiences in environments where they do independent learning. And we don't interrupt that learning because they need to be able to focus and concentrate on their own movements and what they can do. Our interjections, our talking to them disrupts some of that ability for them to stay focused, and that's one of the key points of active learning. There is always an adult on hand observing and watching for safety, everything is checked out, you want to check out all your equipment before you put a child in it to make sure it is absolutely safe, that the materials the child is working with are safe. And the adult doesn't just put them in and walk away. They are watched, in part, because you want to make sure they're safe, but also so you can document what they do because as this is not just a place for them to hang out, it's a place for them to learn. And you have specific goals in mind for each learning environment and each piece of equipment that they go into, so you want to see what they do with it. It's -- you know, that's their little pop quiz, what do they do? What kind of progress are we seeing? How are they working towards their goals? Because you may have to redesign some of the environments and you may have to tweak some of the activities to get them to be just right for the child. And you do want the child, though -- I can't state this strongly enough -- you do want to make sure the child has time to do what they can do on their own without any prompting, coaching, anything from an adult, because it's through their own self-initiated movements and activity that learning is going to take place for them. And I hope that kind of covers -- or answers that question. But if not, put some more messages in the message box and we'll talk about it a little more. Okay. There is a whole section on the active learning space that talks about the principles of active learning, but in one particular page, the key principles of active learning we learn about things that are really important, some of the basic, basic things that you need to know about. First of all, and I'm seeing some comments, I'm going to mention that here, this approach is designed to be used for individuals who are between -- are under the developmental age of 48 months, so that's four years. And that is a place where kids are sensory, motor and preoperational level learners, and they do not learn by reading or necessarily watching somebody model something for them. Though at some point they will become receptive to some of that, they learn by what they do. And if you think about a baby or an infant, they're going to do things with their body and they're going to repeat movements and actions thousands and thousands and thousands of times. They're going to go through a room and they're going to touch and taste and, you know, bang on everything that is there, and that is how they're learning because they're learning foundational concepts about the world, about their body, and they're figuring out how to move their body. They're still cooking. You know, they come out and they're not quite done yet. They've got to grow their muscles, they've got to grow -- start to create neural networks in the brain. And so there's a lot of stuff that they have to do on their own. So active participation is really important. Repetition, a child needs an opportunity to repeat a motion and activity again and again and again until they've learned everything they can learn from it, and then they'll be ready to learn something new. At the earliest stages, one skill in one area builds on another. And so repeating motions and repeating actions is really an important part of it. Things need to be developmentally appropriate. For example, you can't throw a ball until you can reach your hand out, grasp the ball, hold the ball. There's steps that lead up, physical motor skills that lead up to being able to do certain things. These motor skills also play into what you can understand about an object. If you can't grip an object and hold onto it and explore it, you may not know what it is made of, especially if your vision isn't working really well. You may not understand that it makes a particular sound if you can't hear it. So having the opportunity to get their hands on things and to explore them in the way that they can explore is so important. So we have to target -- do things that are developmentally appropriate. For example, a child who is just learning to grasp a crayon is not going to be able to draw their letters immediately. They need time to just hold onto it and scribble. And if you try to get them to do letters, they're going to have -- they're going to push back against you. And for a lot of these kids, that's what happens again and again. And at some point they get big and then we start labeling these -- this push back as behavior problems when it's really us that are missing the boat, because we're targeting skills that are too high for them, and they're just trying to cope with it. The activities -- and I can't stress this enough -- yeah, go ahead, Chris. 

>> Tabb: I just want to pause you for a second for a question that came up in the chat. The question was how young developmentally many children start active learning and asks about something starting at six to nine months, and so for those that haven't seen the chat, yes, you can start as early developmentally in that zero to three months. Again, for those that are new to active learning, we may have a student that's 20 or 21 years old that we're working with in the school-aged system but they're functioning at a very early developmental level. It isn't the chronological age that we're talking about, by using that functional scheme to do our assessment of where that child is functionally right now helps us to know what types of activities to introduce for them to be able to develop. Sorry, Kate. 

>> Hurst: No, that is perfect. That is so perfect to share. You are exactly right. And though we don't have time to go into it, there is a lot of content about the functional scheme on the website and actual webinars that you can go back and look at to learn more about the functional scheme and the 20 different areas that it assesses skills in, so that's good points, Chris. And then -- so reinforcing to the individual. We all know that we are more likely to learn if we're interested in something, if we find it, you know, appealing. But when you're the age these children -- these individuals are developmentally, it has to be reinforcing to them. That doesn't mean that they never try out something that they haven't liked before, but you have to figure out how to make that activity something that's going to motivate them. So, for example, if they're inclined not to want to get their hands, you know, sticky or whatever, you might have to put some other factor into an activity that will make them be interested enough to touch something. So, for example, if we think about Kyra that we just saw, she obviously is not one who's real comfortable having her feet touch a variety of different surfaces. They startle her. And so giving her opportunities to explore where she can touch and pull her foot away different surfaces helps her begin to be less sensitive, and so maybe more interested in those things. Maybe she wasn't terribly interested in playing with water before, but if she goes through this activity and encounters it enough where she can have some control over it, maybe she will become interested in playing with water. You know, so you have to kind of think about those things and balance them out. And then the last one is limited distractions. Have any of you ever had the experience of, say, for example, trying to learn a new computer software and somebody stands over you and they tell you how to use it and -- are watching every movement you make? I have, and it's really irritating. And it doesn't help me learn at all. I need to have time where I can do things without people interrupting me and bugging me and trying to tell me how to do something, or taking it away from me to show me how to do it the correct way. So what we talk about when we're talking about limited distractions, it's not that it's a perfectly quiet, totally isolated location that you're doing it in, because, hey, this is life and these are schools and homes and those are never, you know, without some things going on, especially lately. But what you want to do is to try to get rid of as much extraneous stuff as you can that's not needed. For example, do you have the television set turned on and just in the background? Is it really needed? Can you turn that off? Is there a corner of the room where you can position things so that there's not traffic walking by that's constantly going to draw the child's attention, especially if they're like a child with cortical visual impairment that may cue into movement easily. You know, so just think about some of those things, and, again, there's a lot of information about, you know, how to design and think about your environments that you're creates just for that purpose. 

>> Tabb: And, Kate, for those O & Ms still scratching their head, just that picture on the previous screen, we don't have to go back, but that's a young person reaching out into their world, that's a young person being actively engaged in the world. If we want a child to be able to start to look for landmarks to use to remember where they are or start to look in their own cubby, we have to help them to be able to engage with their environment. And that's what this whole process is about, helping them to be able to engage with what's around them. 

>> Hurst: That is so true, Chris. That is so true. I'm going to talk now just briefly -- and, again, this is stuff that I could do easily we could do a half day just on the dynamic learning circle, and there's a lot of wonderful content by patty, who happens to be in our chat room, Patty, I'm so glad you're here. Patty talks about the dynamic learning circle. And this is something when I first started learning about active learning, I didn't really register how important this is. I do want to encourage you to take some time to visit this page and take a look at it. Basically this is a process or circle that Lily defined that I think is true for all human beings, but I think it really guides us in our instruction with a child, it helps us observe when we need to make some changes in the environment. So the first stage is the child becomes aware and interested. And for a lot of our kids, we go into our classrooms and people who aren't familiar with working with a child with a visual impairment, sometimes does not seem to get that this child truly just can't see. So getting something positioned so the child will bump into it is an important thing. And learning how to do that in a way that's not intrusive to the child. You know, we don't want to grab their hands and stick it on something, you know. We don't want to be moving them around and guiding them to different environments, we want them to find it on their own. And so we have to think about can we present it in a position, in a space that is going to be near enough that they'll -- an involuntary movement that they make will cause something to happen so they know it's even there, and then when they're aware of it, does it draw their attention in some way. So, for example, if a child is really into sounds, and a lot of kids are, sounds are real important to them, is the object that we're offering them, does it make some sound that's interesting to them that might draw their attention? Once they're aware and interested in it, then we should see the child become curious and try to do something with that object. And, again, what typically happens is the child will have some reflexive kind of response to it. You know, many kids who have -- may have little spastic movements that cause their limbs to move, and if they bump into something, what we see happening again and again is at first it's an involuntary response in that environment, but because something happens, they begin to start creating that movement on their own. And it's -- it's truly nothing short of miraculous when you see this happening with a child, but it does. So we want to see them become curious and engaged, and we want to see them start repeating movements and actions in this environment, on these objects. And at some point, we're going to begin to notice that this child is doing this repetitive movement in a way that seems like they're somewhat bored. This is a part that you have to be really discerning and you really have to observe this child and know this child well. Because when you get to that place, you know that the child is ready to learn something new, and that's when you're going to add a small bit of novelty to this activity or this environment. And I do mean small. Because these children can't take these big, huge leaps. You need to be mindful and thoughtful about how to change it just slightly. And there's a whole -- again, there's a whole wonderful lecture that Patty does about the dynamic learning circle that I want to encourage you to go watch because I think it will inform you about this. And I'm seeing some chat stuff, so, Chris, do you have anything to share while I look at the chat real quickly? Chris, I can't hear you. You're muted. 

>> Tabb: Thank you, Kate. I was trying to find a link for the active learning group on Facebook, and I know it's a private group and I haven't been able to find a link yet. But there is a group, I will try to find that and add that to the chat in between. 

>> Hurst: I will help find it, too, in just a moment. 

>> Tabb: Thank you, Kate. 

>> Hurst: It says Kate, other than visual impairment and developmental level, what should the team suggest implementing active learning. Can it be started for an older teen when they didn't receive it through younger ages and grades? What criteria would you consider to not recommend active learning? Any comorbidities, diagnosis, like epilepsy, cerebral palsy, et cetera. Wow, what a great question! One, I would say that this approach can be used with any individual who's visually impaired for sure pretty much at any point in their life if they're in that zero to 48 months, and even a little older. Some of the activities would be very appropriate, some of the equipment might be very appropriate. It can be used with children -- Patty, I hope she'll chime in here, but it can be used very successfully for children with autism. It's been used successfully for kids with cerebral palsy for sure. Children with cortical visual impairments have used it. Children with -- I know of who have had extreme medical issues have used this and there is a video on the active learning space website a young girl in a Hopsa dress who they were a little unsure about whether to let her use the Hopsa dress because she had dislocation of her hips, but her doctor approved the use of it and this child travels all over Pinricten center in a hopsa dress and does incredible movement. Now, is she going to be an independent walker some day? Probably not, but that movement, she's learning so much from it. So I hope that answers your question. 

>> Tabb: And, Kate, we had another question from Myra about how do you deal with or what do you say to adults who want to see results and don't understand if you're doing activities that don't look like O & M, and that's a terrific question. Very often, much of our job is educating other adults around us. And some of the videos we're going to see, there's a young man whose name is Jack, and watching the development of Jack going from being what many people would consider very still to being much more mobile and being able to move himself purposely in his environment. And helping people to understand that this is a continuum, and that your involvement as an O & M helps get them moving, helps get them learning. And the way that you are targeting that movement is toward a bigger movement, but we're developing their precursor skills without your involvement as an O & M, that those things won't happen as readily. So helping people to understand either with Lily knee son's work, like the functional scheme, what it is you're evaluating and assessing and what we're targeting, how we're helping them to develop into purposeful movement is the best route for educating people. 

>> Hurst: That's right. And we have a question here about the hopsa dress be used on a frame of some kind if you don't have a track? And I would say yes. Ideally, you know, you would want to have a track at some point in time, but actually to start out with, it's recommended that you start a hopsa dress -- a child in a hopsa dress in a static position, so you can use things. Sometimes you can use lifts if you have a lift that might go high enough for especially younger children, sometimes that can work. We've had families at home that have actually used an old swing set as a place to attach a hop sa dress to. I know in a lot of school programs, they have gone into the gym, into the PT room, where they've had anchors put into the ceiling for hanging swings and various things like that and have been able to use that, so I think that just getting used to, you know, you have to be somewhat creative. Yes, a hopsa dress is expensive, yes, a track is expensive, but in home environments, a lot of our families have been good at being able to use Medicaid waiver funds to purchase some equipment. The other things that I've seen families do is instead of asking grandparents to buy a bicycle for their child for Christmas or grandparents want to get a neat present for Christmas, they ask family members to go in, put the money towards getting a larger piece of equipment or a track or something like that that can be used. So there are ways to do it. And a lot of people have approached lion's clubs and things like that to get support and funding for some of these things. And if you have a school program where you can get a track and you have multiple kids that can use it, then it's not such an outrageous expense. Okay. Let's move along, I want to get to some of those videos, so let's see what's next. Okay. Again, we don't have time to go into this very important topic, but I wanted to mention, again, on the website the five phases of educational treatment. These are basically techniques that Lily shares with us to guide our interaction as the adult during activities where we're doing interaction with a child. And I'm going to say that for the most part, you are going to be using phases 1, 2 and 3, because a lot of these children are going to take a very long time before they have developed enough emotionally and socially, and this has -- this ties in very directly with social and emotional development, to be able to do activities of sharing the work and of consequences. So the first three are the ones that, you know, you must, must, must learn about them. And even as a child gets older and is more able to go into doing things, like when they're 24 months -- they have to be at least 24 months developmentally before you want to do sharing the work activities and consequence activities. But even when they're at that point, they still may from time to time, you may need to be able to reach into your toolbox and be able to use these techniques of offering, imitation and interaction. Especially when you're introducing new environments and new activities. So basically the very first phase, you'll see an example, -- no, you're not going to see an example of that today. You're just offering the child different objects and things and seeing what they do with them. It is for the purpose of creating trust and building a relationship between you and that child so they're willing to let you be around them and work with them in any way, but it's also when you're going to do a lot of very critical observation, so you can see what it is the child actually can do on their own, what kind of skills do they have, how do they use their hands, how do they use their feet. What are they doing with their body? Do you notice what they're doing with their vision? And so this is a time when, you know, ideally you would have at least one team member there working with the child and then maybe have a video set up so that you could record what's going on for the whole team to look at, or at least have some other team members observing this interaction and taking notes about what they're seeing the child do, because this is real important for assessment in developing these kinds of activities. At some point when the child is comfortable with you, and this may take a while for the child to really feel comfortable enough with you that they start doing something, then you want to imitate what they're doing. And you're doing this to increase their interest in nearby activities. A lot of these kids are really body bound, and they're not aware of much outside of their very own body. So when you're sitting with them and you're -- and they start to do something and you imitate that and they become aware of it, are they willing to kind of pay attention to what you're doing a little bit? And you start out by imitating exactly what the child does. And then in time, you might offer another thing that they could do and see if they will imitate you. If they don't, you just go back to imitating them. By the way, this happens to be exactly what Dr. Van dike talks about when he talks about working with children and from Barbara Miles and others about how to approach children that have these significant disabilities. Then at some point after a lot of time doing imitation and whatever, you're going to see a child begin to be as interest in you as they are in the activity, and they're wanting to do stuff just to kind of keep things going with you. And this is really so important to social development and to communication because when kids will start interacting with you, then that's -- that's that back and forth, that serve and return, that is important for social development, but it's also important for communication. And this is where you're going to spend a lot of time with a lot of these kids, because they're not going to just zip through this for the most part. But at some point, when they do, when they get to be about two years old developmentally, they are going to be ready to sort of walk through a little activity and do a little piece of it and let you do the most of it, but they're kind of interested in learning how to do some new things. So they'll let you do something and then they may try it. And then the last phase is consequences, and this is when you're start of looking at the child doing more things on their own and sort of dealing with problems that might crop up as they try to do something more by themselves, more independently. Okay. Again, we could spend days on this one, we don't have time, so I'm going to move us on along and we'll try to answer questions. And, Chris, I think this one is -- is this one mine, too? Well, let's just take a look at this video. I want you to watch what this little boy jack is doing in the little room. And, again, kind of think about the -- if you back up one, yeah, the types of things he's doing with his body, but also how this relates to orientation and mobility. [Captioned video playing] 

>> Hurst: Okay. I think we can stop the video right here.. 

>> Tabb: Kate, I'm going to jump in just about that video. When we think about orientation mobility, we think about being able to go somewhere and come back to the things that we like. We want to come back and do that thing again. This is the basics, this is just like the starting seed for Jack of being able to find something he likes and interested or curious about and being able to go back to it. And so that repetition of movement is what's happening in this early phase. 

>> Hurst: And there's such great work on spatial orientation, and the other thing is, he is not moving his feet a lot initially, but as he begins to move his hands, his feet naturally move, and that begins to develop movement within his leg that's more controlled and intentional. I'm going to skip this one for right now, Chris, because I want to get to some of the other ones. One of the things that I want to point out to you guys, because right now in the midst of COVID? I know that a lot of you are working with kiddos who are basically being served at home. And there is a specific page on the active learning space website I wanted to turn you on to. It's under the family tab and it's called home hacks, and there's a whole section of home hacks there, and you should check them all out, but especially activities of daily living I think are important because all families are doing activities of daily living with their kiddos right now, and so that's a good place to sneak some of this active learning space in and you can do it without expensive equipment. So, Chris, will you take it away. Oh, Chris, you're muted. 

>> Tabb: Thank you, Kate. We'll do these videos quickly and I'll try and throw in one or two O & M components. And if we can play that video, I'm probably just going to talk over it. We've got some [Indiscernible] happening here with some balls. If you think about a student trying to carry their lunch break, in order for them to understand what level is and how that tray has to be held, they have to understand what happens with tilting and tipping and part of that comes with play and interaction. That's what this is about. Again, very inexpensive activities that you can, without having a full active room -- active learning little room set up, you can create your own environments. We'll jump on to our next one here. Getting familiar with textures and materials. When we want a student to identify that they're touching a metal door handle compared to something that's wood or glass, they have to understand the materials and how they -- their interactions with them make different noises and different sounds, different feelings. That all comes from this basic interaction that many of our students at the active learning level haven't had an opportunity to engage with. We have some activities here where we're just encouraging some movement of the feet. We've made that foot a little more inviting with some bells and some sounds. It creates more interactions with the environment. It's encouraging movement. That's the same type of kicking that's going to have to happen to get our pants off, to get our snow pants off, depending on where you all are, these are lots of different ways of moving the body that we're going to tie into O & M skills later. And for the sake of time, we can jump onto the next one. And, again, just showing that that same movement, a little more development, now we're into undressing and abilities that we can use for independent living skill. Jump onto the next one. Sometimes it's as simple as getting the hands to be in motion. We're basically making somebody uncomfortable at this point, but it's bringing the hands up so that we can use them purposefully. At some point that might translate into the student taking off their own clothing when they come in from working outdoors, just getting them to use those different body parts in different ways, understanding about noises, different materials, again, metal, wood, plastic, how do they feel different, how do they sound different, how do they interact with the environment around us. 

>> Hurst: Also point out positions. On, under, in, around, all those things. 

>> Tabb: Terrific concepts. Thank you, Kate. We can jump onto the next one. And here we've got some hand movement. Again, there's some activities here that will encourage movement. It might not be as interesting just to put our hand out and to touch something, but we've combined this with some new textures, some new feelings, and so the student might be more willing to engage. If you think about scanning a tactile map, it's the same thing your hand has to do looking for a tactile map, but we have to understand how to explore. And that's exactly what's happening here. Just some precursors to those skills that we'll be using for more advanced travel skills. 

>> Hurst: And so they're also being able to get their hands soapy and then you can give them a tub of water and they can play in it and we're working on hand washing. 

>> Hurst: And I think we can skip over a couple of these to get a little further along. I think we've got about 60 seconds left. This is another one where we've just used the home and the railing to tie some interesting things. Now we're cruising, we're starting to, again, move. It's bigger than just moving our feet inside a little room. This is almost like an expansion of that, we still have things to explore, but our body has to provide more movement for that to happen. We have comparison, we have back and forth, lots of different things happening here. We can also set up an obstacle course. Again, no money involved, we're just cushions and blankets and household furniture, doesn't have to be that complex, doesn't have to be thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Just things that we can use in that parents' home. 

>> Hurst: And for a lot of zero your children, you can say my kid can't move that well. You can set up simpler courses where they roll or wiggle. You can make little pathways with cardboard and different textures for them to explore ad get them moving. Okay. We don't have a whole lot of time, I'm going to throw this out there real quick. You can use active learning for children who are mobile. Yes, you can. You need to think about what it is you want them to do and what skills they need to work on, but, yes, you can use it for kids who are mobile. Should a child who can stand and walk use a little room? Yes, if that little room is configured appropriately for them and they enjoy playing in it, yes, they may -- a little room might be appropriate. It wouldn't be my first thing to go to, but they could use it. When a child is engaging in independent play, what should the adult do? You should be a good observer. You should back off, you should be quiet, you should let them do what they can do and stay out of it as much as possible, but you can, after they are taking a break and pausing, talk to them a little bit about it or at the end of the activity, kind of review what they did with them. And how frequently should a child play in an active learning environment or activity? Well, ideally I would say all day long, as much of the time as you can get them in it while they're awake. All right. I think this is -- we've already talked about this, so we'll move along. And this is an example of what -- of configuring a little room in a tall position, and this kiddo can walk and move. If we substituted these lower legs for taller ones, he would fit inside and he might enjoy going in and out of it and playing with some things. And there's a link to that. We have some wonderful forms. Chris, do you want to talk about this? If we have time. 

>> Tabb: We've got some forms that you can download and that you can use. These are just great tools for observations, and sometimes it's called appetites and aversions, likes and dislikes, we're just getting to learn about that student. Sometimes people are curious why we need to observe. This is how we learn about a student's abilities and their own interaction within the environment. I know Kaycee's got to jump in here, so I apologize, Kaycee. That's okay. You know when you see my face, you're out of time. 

>> Bennett: Thank you guys so much. This was so helpful. Please join us on the 25th of this month for a two-hour collaboration titled from the front lines, deaf and hard of hearing early interventionists supporting family and parent coaching for connection. That will be at a special start time of 11:00 a.m. our time here, central time. We will not have a session on March 1st, 4th or 8th, and that is due to our Texas symposium on deaf/blind education that's happening in March. But we will have a session on March 11th, and that will be Google classroom accessibility with Nina. That's going to be a great session. Check our coffee hour website, again for your CEUs today, respond to the registration that will be e-mailed to you from the registration website, ESC works. You'll enter the code and the CEU certificate will automatically generate upon completion of that evaluation. Also the handouts and recordings of this and past sessions are available through a link on our coffee page. Once you're on the page, you'll scroll down to under the list of sessions where it says visit the new TSBVI outreach coffee hour archives that. Is a link that will take you to the information you're needing. On the evaluation you'll receive from ESC spz works there are two boxes, 10 and 11, that say additional comments you'd like to share. Please let us know in those boxes if the days and time coffee hours are being offered is working for your schedule or if you have other suggestions. We know things are changing all the time. We would also love to hear your ideas on topics for future coffee hours. I did want to let you know that registration is still open for the mental health symposium for deaf and deaf/blind youth and that is going to be held April 22nd and 23rd. I'm putting that registration information in the