Strategy
The Use of Wikki Stix Within the Classroom
This video provides ideas for how Wikki Stix can be used to create tactile graphics or 3 dimensional constructions.
In this Wikki Stix video, Kate provides ideas for how Wikki Stix can be used to create tactile graphics or 3 dimensional constructions. She demonstrates how Wikki Stix can be used with students with Low Vision as well as students who are blind.
Hello, I’m Kate Fraser from the Perkins School for the Blind and today we’ll be talking about the use of Stix within the classroom.
Stix are waxed strings. Some students may find the texture troublesome, but for others it works well.
What I like about Stix is that they very easily, with the warmth of your hand, can be used to construct a picture or, as you can see in these particular packages of Stix, three-dimensional constructions also.
But, as you can see here, the Wikki Stick stays on the paper.
I have some various samples of paper here to illustrate working with a low vision student and selecting the correct background and contrast for that student.
One of the strengths of Stix is that you can draw something for your student and your student can also draw something for you.
I’ll show you a few easy applications of this.
First of all, in the physics classroom, you might be introducing the concept of waves.
This is introduced very often in elementary school, and you can construct a wave easily for the student and show varying amplitudes and frequencies.
And then the student can illustrate his or her understanding of the concept by constructing a wave and showing it to you.
In math and in science, line graphs are frequent and a very fast and easy way to illustrate something that you might be talking about or a concept in math, might be to use the Wikki Stick on some graph paper.
And here in high school biology, there’s the cladogram illustrating the family tree, the common ancestry and various branchings from the common ancestry. This was student constructed as a way of my evaluating what the student had learned during that lesson.
Another very happy use for the student of the Wikki Stick is to use the Wikki Stick to show me an answer.
Let’s say I was using this to evaluate the student and I had constructed it rather than the student, I might say to the student, “Use the Wikki Stick please to underline the area where the fish have split from the common ancestor,” and the student could come down here and put the Wikki Stick at that point where the splitting event was from the common ancestor, or I might want the student to particularly notice a set of words within the article.
For example, to notice where the birds were, I might place the Wikki Stick here and say please pay attention to where I put the birds within this diagram.
Those are just a few uses of Stix and that was today’s teachable moment.
Presented by Kate Fraser
Length of time to complete: approximately 5 minutes
