Museum of Disability
Taking Visual Impairment to School
What is the world like when you can't see, or when your vision is impaired? Learn about how Lisa communicates with the world around her with Taking Visual Impairment to School by Rita Whitman Steingold. Learners answer discussion...
Perkins School for the Blind
Encouraging Students Who are Blind or Visually Impaired to Express Their Feelings and Explore Imagination
Being expressive in a creative, empathetic, or imaginative way is not only fun, it builds good pre-writing and communication skills. Learners with visual impairments have a roundtable discussion session where several sentence frames are...
Film English
Theo’s Story
Encourage your class to consider a beautiful short film about a boy named Theo who happens to be visually impaired. Over the course of the lesson, pupils work in pairs, discuss their ideas and the film as a class, view the film, take...
Perkins School for the Blind
Timeline for Anne
It is key to the learning process to make everything a child with visual impairments does as tactile as possible. After reading Anne of Green Gables, the class discusses her life events in order to make a tactile time line. They choose...
Perkins School for the Blind
Treasure Hunt
On, over, and under are some very common prepositions; but how can you teach these concepts to children with visual impairments? Here, is one way. Kids will practice following verbal commands as they go on a classroom treasure hunt. They...
Perkins School for the Blind
What Would You Do If...?
What would you do if...? That's a great question, and, when posed to learners with visual impairments, a question that can foster concept development and speaking and problem-solving skills that relate to real-life situations. The...
Perkins School for the Blind
Prepositions
When most children learn about prepositions, they are provided with a visual to show them the concepts of on, in, near, and beside. For learners with visual impairments, concepts need to be constructed in a very concrete way. A stuffed...
Perkins School for the Blind
Familiar Sounds
To foster concept development and auditory discrimination skills, learners with visual impairments listen to identify a variety of common sounds. The teacher makes recordings of various sounds, including those found in the home, at the...
Perkins School for the Blind
Daily Journal
Keeping a daily journal is fun. It builds strong writing skills and provides an expressive outlet. For children with visual impairments, it's even more important. It provides a way for them to connect written word with real events, which...
Perkins School for the Blind
Learning to Express Myself
Expressing one's wants and needs is vital for learners of any age or ability level. Young children with visual impairments and intellectual disabilities practice asking for preferred items, foods, or activities in a structured manner....
Perkins School for the Blind
Tactile Journals
I absolutely love this idea. Children with visual impairments create tactile journals which describe an event from the previous week in an artistic way. They verbally describe one event from the previous week and then use a wide array of...
Nazareth College
Chronological Order
First, next, and last, the elements of chronological order. In every story or text one can find a series of events that occur one after the other. To help learners with visual impairments conceptualize chronological order, this lesson...
Curated OER
Disability in the Media Lesson Plan: Braille
Students determine the workings of the Braille alphabet and how people with visual impairments learn how to use it. In this Braille lesson, students study the associated vocabulary, read about Helen Keller, and complete associated...
Perkins School for the Blind
What Do I Hear?
Being able to give positive reinforcers to a child starts with knowing what the child likes. Intended for children with blindness, this lesson gives you a way to determine the types of music your learners like best. You are given a set...
Perkins School for the Blind
Tactile quilts that tell a story
Learners with multiple disabilities need to engage in projects that push them to know their full potential. They need to be able to express themselves in a variety of ways, and this very thoughtful lesson does just that. They make a...
Perkins School for the Blind
Where Shall I Put It?
Position and positional phrases are concepts that need to be constructed for learners with low or no vision. Help them gain competence and a conceptual understanding of words like on, in, and under with a funny game. After gathering a...
Perkins School for the Blind
Learning Names of Articles of Clothing
What to wear today; such a vexing question. Spend some time introducing the names, fabrics, types, colors, and functions of various articles of clothing to your class. Each child will take turns asking each other what they are wearing....
Perkins School for the Blind
Letter Confusion
Teaching a child with low or no vision how to read is the same as teaching a sighted child how to read — it all starts with letter recognition. This is a simple way to provide your learners with an opportunity to practice reading and...
Perkins School for the Blind
Initial Consonant Activity
Bingo is a super fun game and can be used to reinforce a vast number of recognition skills. These bingo cards are prepared by constructing nine squares, each delineated with raised Wikki Stix or gluedyarn and containing a braille...
Perkins School for the Blind
Conversation Skills
It is so important for learners with multiple disabilities to learn how to communicate for both social and functional reasons. Each child will choose a topic from the list and generate five questions related to that topic. They'll split...
Perkins School for the Blind
Circle Time
Oftentimes children or teens with one or more disability are reluctant to participate in whole-group activities. Foster good participation, verbal expression, and social skills through daily circle time activities. Each day you and your...
Perkins School for the Blind
Personal Information
"Hi, how are you? My name is___." Seems simple enough but it's not always that easy to recall and relate factual information about yourself. Learners with multiple disabilities practice memorizing and relaying personal information about...
Perkins School for the Blind
Build a Word
Get out those scrabble tiles and a braille tape labeler because today we are playing a build-a-word game! Label several sets of scrabble tiles using the braille labeler, place them in a box, and have children take turns pulling letter...
Perkins School for the Blind
Wheel of Fortune Game
Games are great for practicing any number of basic skills. Here is a set of wonderful instructions for making a braille version of a spinning game, where children win points by correctly reading/identifying the high-frequency words the...