Strategies for Teaching Braille to Adults

1. Strategies for Teaching Braille to Adults

2. Performance Objectives By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to… • Recognize how to change negative attitudes about Braille • Understand how to make Braille relevant • Know how to help your adult students learn

3. Performance Objectives cont… • Explain why adults find it difficult to learn Braille • Appreciate the benefits of parents learning Braille.

4. Change negative attitudes about Braille • Explain that Braille doesn't "make you blind" • Being seen reading or writing Braille in public is not a symbol of weakness • Being seen reading or writing Braille in public is not a symbol of lack of ability

5. Change negative attitudes about Braille cont… • Tell students to bring their literacy skills with them • Explain how Braille will fit into each individual student's life.

6. Change negative attitudes about Braille cont… • Point out that Braille will insure privacy • Increase positive impressions of blindness and people who are blind • Find other adventitiously blind volunteers to mentor newly blinded students learning Braille.

7. Make Braille immediately relevant by… • Stressing functional uses • Making lists • Keeping track of phone numbers and addresses • Reading to children or grandchildren • Labeling personal items, and so on

8. Help Your Adult Students Learn • Start with something simple and personal • Use small and familiar motivational items for practice • Teach anticipation • Use playing cards

9. Help Your Adult Students Learn cont… • Use Braille magazines • Use flash cards • Make lesson and practice schedules flexible and suitable • Contract practice time before you start the lesson

10. Help Your Adult Students Learn cont… • Tape the lessons to help the student remember • Make homework practical • Help clients by assisting • Encourage student and family members to participate

11. Learning Braille as an Adult • Reasons why older people find it difficult to learn Braille • Language Patterns are established in the brain • A change from visual mode to tactual mode • A shift from a gross perceptual system to a fine perceptual system • Negative attitude

12. Reasons why older people find it difficult to learn Braille cont… • Lack of self-confidence • Loss of vision affects other parts of the brain • The cause of blindness may affect other functions • The elderly have impairments • The elderly may not see a need for Braille • The Braille code itself

13. What are the benefits of parent's learning Braille • Blind children whose parents learn Braille benefit affectively • Parents who know Braille can easily monitor the quality of the child's homework • Parents who know Braille can help their child use Braille for activities other than schoolwork

14. Are you now able to… • Recognize how to change negative attitudes about Braille • Understand how to make Braille relevant • Know how to help your adult students learn • Explain why adults find it difficult to learn Braille • Appreciate the benefits of parents learning Braille.

16. References • American Federation for the Blind http://www.afb.org/section.asp?SectionID=44&TopicID=108&DocumentID=926 • SNOW http://snow.utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=297 • Why Parents Should Learn Braille by Margaret Malinski