Teaching Students about their Vision


Activities to Teach Students about their Vision

Student Portfolios

It is important for a student to make a portfolio about his or her eye condition/disease, and be able to talk about it intelligently. This also requires good social skills. These social skills are important for everybody, but especially visually impaired children because they cannot often see the subtleties in the social situations. It is good experience for students to look up their visual condition on the internet. Sometimes they can even find websites for teens who talk to each other about their experiences. The introduction of the knowledge about their eye condition should begin, in a simplified way, as early as elementary school.

Role-playing situations are helpful. These can be mainly done with high school students, but could be done with younger studnets who are capable. Role playing can involve explaining to a friend or relative, talking to the doctor, or educating a teacher.

"I'm taking digital photos of students and working on an O&M portfolio of skills in which they braille a description of what the technique is that is shown in the picture. As we go along with adding to the portfolio, I'm encouraging them to read it to their parents, teachers, friends, etc. We agreed on a number of people that they would read it to and then I treat them to lunch (a big incentive when you think about school lunches!). I've found that writing and then reading the description of the technique helps students to interalize learning so that it's easier in the future to implement it in a route. If the student has trouble during a lesson, we use the same language as in the portfolio and the student then has an easier time recalling it".

Facts about Vision

These are from the knowledge base of the professional vision specialist. Use with students depends on their developmental age and cognitive abilities.

1.There are two vision systems, the central system and the peripheral system
2. The central system sees in color, it freezes motion (tracks and scans), it has a normal acuity of 20/20
3. The central system is the "what is it (or who is it) vision system. It is related to naming, language, and higher brain concepts.
4. The peripheral system sees in black and white, it is very motion sensitive, it has a normal acuity of 20/200
5.The peripheral system is the eyes navigation vision. It answers the question "where am I" (or where is something)
6. Vision is a "whole brain" process. There are more than 30 "neural centers" for vision, all connected, and located in every part of the human brain
7. The central vision system (neural tracts) goes from the occipital lobe to the frontal cortex via the temporal lobes (where the language centers are located)
8. The peripheral vision system (neural tracts) goes from the occipital lobe to the frontal cortex via the posterior lobes (where the spatial centers are located)