What to Do? Working with Non- Verbal Multi-Sensory Involved Students

Charting the C’s Conference

April 13-15, 2014

Dr. Jan Van Djik Functional Assessment www.drjanvandijk.org

• Standard Assessments- no useful information for children with sensory impairments

• Process is guided by child: interests and movements

• Functional Assessment is needed

Functional Assessment Ten Domain Areas

• 1. Social Relationships with family and others • 2. Interaction and Communication • 3. Preferred learning channels • 4. Anticipation of certain events • 5. Neurobiological status • 6. Problem Solving Skills • 7. Fine and gross motor skills • 8. Orienting to new events • 9. Imitation skills • 10. Understanding events and routines

Brain Development and Research Dr. Jan Van Dijk

• Our knowledge of “things” is based on our emotions, experiences and memories.

• By watching others’ emotions, your own emotions are triggered (Mirror Neuron System) - MNS

• Feelings of approach or with drawl - fight or flight

• - children with multisensory impairments many times cannot choose “flight”. This is when they act out or shut down.

• Development of attachment behavior based on touch, odor, facial expression and intonation of voice.

• Children with multi – sensory impairments reorganize their brain. Touch becomes more prominent to attachment and pleasure.

• If joint attention, empathy, social behavior and imitation do not develop –language does not develop. This also may result in ASD.

Mutual Touch

• Hand under Hand / Hand over Hand interactions help us understand each other’s actions, read each other’s minds and sympathize with each other

• Mutual touching develops empathy

Stress Behavior and Students who are Deaf/Blind

• Prolonged stress can damage Central Nervous System

- Needed for memory and learning

• Stress hormones divert glucose from brain to muscles and compromise the ability to form new memory

• Early intervention and warm relationships can buffer effects of other stressors

• Secure relationships help control stress in a person’s life

• Deaf/Blind people need the following:

Environment -meaningful activity – turn taking -Anticipatory – touch cues or object cues -Calming – sensory smells, touches -Communication – sign, tactile, voice

Behaviors

• Stress behaviors – turning away, whining, yelling

• Function - why are they doing this behavior?

• Regulation behaviors – participation behaviors

Active - smile – allowing hand under hand

• Importance of meaningful and enjoyable activities

• Importance of routines

• Anticipatory strategies are important – but can be successfully faded for some if a predictable routine is in place. A child could become dependent on them.

STRESS

• Stress on parents

• Stress on teachers

• When a parent’s and teacher’s stress goes up or down - the student’s stress levels will mimic

• Control : healthy diet, exercise, sleep, relaxation techniques, foster relationships, sense of humor, seek counseling

Instructional Strategies for Students with Dual Sensory Loss/Multiple Impairments

CLASSROOM NEEDS:

• Order

• Organization

• Predictability

• Consistency

• Non - distracting

Room Set-up

Room Set-up

3 C’s of Concept Development

• Concrete Real Experiences

• Complete experience – every step

• Connected Experiences – more than one – follow up – compare - generalize

Real Experiences from Start to Finish

Bakery – huge mixing bowl

Baker showing hot oven

Decorator with plain sheet cake

Frosting the top of cake

Adding flower decorations

Tasting the frosting

Cake in box for home

Integrating the Expanded Core Curriculum into Everyday Routines (Junior high and high school)

• Robbin Keating Clark - Vision Rehabilitation Therapist

• www.adifferentkindofvision.blogspot.com • http://tipsheetofthemonth.com

Quality of Life communication, independent living skills and mobility

F.A.C.T. (home and young children)

• Functional: lock boxes, movement games, setting table, songs, cause and effect

• Active: hide and seek games, tunnels, obstacle courses, peek a boo

• Concrete: Cabinet play – bathroom , kitchen, desks, cubbies. Mental mapping – where did it go? Where did it come from? Find items in room.

• Tactile: replace plastic toys with real items.

Organization and Anticipation = Independence

Use concrete planning system for daily activities - anticipation

Use finished boxes in every room (home)

Use finished boxes for school.

SAM

What is SAM?

• The program (SAM: Symbols and Meaning) is designed to help learners develop the conceptual foundation, based on experiences with high-quality sensory information, necessary for the use of meaningful symbols.

• The program is for students with visual and multiple impairments and pre-school children with visual impairments who are just beginning to use symbols—the late sensorimotor, early preoperational stage of cognitive development.

Millie Smith and Tristan Pierce American Printing House for the Blind

• The SAM Guidebook provides strategies for developing a strong sensory foundation for concepts about people, objects, actions, and places so that symbols referring to them are meaningful.

People: The self and others Objects: Tangible things Actions: Body movements of the self and others Places: Where things are, contexts for groups of things

Using SAM enables learners to understand

• What is it?

• What does it do?

• How does it relate to other things?

There are four assessments in the program.

• Symbol and Referent Analysis: Common Words

• Symbol and Referent Analysis: Academic Vocabulary

• Environmental Gap Inventory

• Curriculum-based Gap Inventory

The program is web based to keep data and access student’s progress for goals and objectives on IEP’s

http://tech.aph.org/sam/

SAM KIT

SAM kit includes • 2 baskets • Digital recorder • 25 plastic story pages • Assessments and Games book • Electronic assessment forms • Flash drive • Guidebook, Large Print • SAM videos • Sport bag • 3 sizes, Story bags • 3 sizes, Story binders • Vinyl story box liners • 6 story boxes • Non-glare plastic tray liner • Vinyl tray liners • Trays, two • Black hook/loop material strip and coins • White hook/loop material strip and coins

SAM – Symbols and Meaning Kit Millie Smith –

• Play is a function – natural context and functional context to learn vocabulary

• It takes 1000 repetitions of a word before understanding occurs.

• Need good receptive skills before development of expressive language skills.

Receptive Language

• We can assess a student’s receptive language:

Can the student…..

• Touch it

• Do it

• Look at

• Go to place where it typically is

Symbols

• A symbol stands for what it represents

– Allows us to think in our own minds about things that are not present

– Allows us to talk to others about things not present

– Allows us to talk about past or future

• A symbol develops meaning by being paired with an actual thing to which it refers.

Multiply involved children PROBLEMS ….

• There are delays in active exploration

• Too much variation in concrete experiences

- absent or incomplete experiences

- objects experienced out of context and without intended function

- words are given without meaning

** THE CONCRETE REFERENTS ARE MISSING**

Symbols

• Pictures and miniatures are fine to use as long as the student has adequate vision to see them. (can pair picture with another symbol)

** If they can receptively show understanding – these are ok to use. *

• (We use photo and bracelet

for teachers/service

providers)

Senses

• Near Senses: - touch, taste (not activated unless you have physical contact)

• Distant Senses: - vision, hearing, smell (can be activated without physical contact)

• BtB – Beyond the Body experiences

- need to pair near and distant sense

experiences together to create understanding.

Object and Experience Stories

• Bag stories - put objects from an experience into a bag. Student pulls them out – “tells” the story by touching and placing on table.

• Box stories – objects placed in boxes to show order of events – how story or experience happened.

• Binder stories – pictures and objects placed in binder – story or experience is “retold” as student goes through.

• Helps create a tactile card system that is individualized for visually impaired and blind learners who have additional disabilities and/or lack a formal means of communication or literacy.

• The tactile symbols are created when part of an object is

mounted on a hand-sized card representing core vocabulary categories (e.g. people, places, actions, objects, etc.).

• This kit provides some of the essential components that

assist in a system's construction and application.

Standardized Tactile Augmentative Communication System

• Aids learners with conversations about people, places, events, and ideas.

• Helps to teach a beginning standardized vocabulary.

References

• ‎American Printing House for the Blind

www.aph.org

• Millie Smith and Tristan Pierce, Sensory Learning and Multiple Impairments: Accessing the World Differently for Learners with Visual and Multiple Impairments, American Printing House for the Blind

Things I can’t live without!

• Black duct tape

• Industrial strength velcro (large enough to cut various sizes)

• Velcro tabs – (buttons)

• Glue dots

• Sheet protectors

• Mini laminator – self adhesive – no heat

More needs !

• Invisaboard – from APH

• All in One Board – from APH

• Black material

• Ipad

• Plastic bins – SAM Kit

• Three ring binders – SAM kit and store bought

• Black/dark laminate samples – (Home Depot, Lowes etc)

• Drawstring bags

Sorting trays – Lakeshore Learning Play activity mat – mirror and picture slots

• Sue Will - Teacher for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Hibbing School District #701

susawill@hibbing.k12.mn.us

• Gayle Rozelle --Teacher of the Visually Impaired

Northland Special Education Cooperative

grozell@nsec.k12.mn.us

Resources

• http://www.pathstoliteracy.org

• http://www.wsdsonline.org

• www.drjanvandijk.org • Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired:

“Elementary Concepts for Students with Visual Impairments” - (main curriculum used)

• “SAM – Symbols and Meaning” – Mille Smith – American Printing House for the Blind

• SAM Kit