This is a series on providing tactile graphic rich environments for preschool and elementary students. This second section is on early Elementary tactile pictures, drawing and engaging the student in literacy activities.
Reading Literacy
Books with tactile pictures build concepts and provide rich literacy experiences. Logan’s first grade classroom teacher begins small group reading lessons with a ‘Picture Walk’ where all the students look at and review the pictures to build background knowledge before reading the story. Books with simple tactile drawing helps the student to be included in the literacy program. Small reading groups activities are a rich social environment for students!
The tactile drawings are simple, age-appropriate drawings that focus on the object’s salient features. Logan’s TSVI or para preview the drawings with Logan before the book is used in the classroom. Just like his peers, Logan gleans clues from the pictures that help him decode the words.
Writing Literacy
In the classroom, during early writing instruction, students are often asked to draw pictures and then write a story. They will learn to write freely but then edit and produce a final copy.
Logan is learning to draw but these early writing assignments can be illustrated by the TSVI and para. Looking at the tactile drawing together allows him to learn the details of the image and then he can show and describe it to others. Students are excited to read books that they wrote; reading braille is hard and this makes it fun and meaningful!
These drawings support Logan’s writing. Early writing often centers around a student’s experiences, such as the fishing trip that Logan took with his dad. The raised line drawings help him read these emerging reader books and help him write his own stories.
In the video of 5th grade Logan looking at the books he read in kindergarten and first grade, Logan remembers the pictures and stories with pure joy!
Help make meaning out of tactile imagery – teach salient features and build conceptual understanding, learn from your student
Tactile details in drawings are symbols for things in the world and concepts (just like the braille alphabet are symbols for letter names and letter sounds)
Drawing is universal, purposeful, and needed and follows a developmental progression whether it is visual or tactile – provide the tools!
Support inclusion and access: make student’s tactile drawings visually accessible, provide and encourage use of tactile drawing tools by sighted peers and family
Early Elementary Strategies to support fluency with tactile pictures and drawing
Go from 3D to 2D, make connections to what the pictures represent
Use story
Use questions to elicit understanding and looking
Narrate while looking at tactile pictures
Braille classroom books, add tactile pictures, even one picture on the cover
Use repeated representation (make all cats similar)
Highlight contrast (two dog characters have different tactile detail)
Preview and discuss books that will be read in class, tell student what the lines show, do “picture walks”
Use positional language, connect to real world (sun in the sky, but on page it’s above the house at the top of the page, use toys/objects to work on this concept)
Build confidence and interest in exploring with errorless learning, make it fun!
Use student’s interests to create meaningful books with tactile drawings
Add tactile pictures to student’s writing, have student make pictures for their writing
Model and reinforce using both hands to get the big picture first, explore with both hands
Model and reinforce using one hand a place holder and coming back to one spot (counting, systematic searching)
Use paths, roads in stories – following lines
Discuss salient features and concepts
Conventions of 2D representation, e.g., ocean wave shape, sun with rays, pointy ears of cat with whiskers, etc.
Student will recognize tactile representations as symbols through conceptual understanding
Students get enjoyment and meaning out of tactile pictures
Share tactile/visual images with peers and support shared play and story through pictures