This year, one of our focus areas has been developing tactile discrimination skills to enable our students to interpret tactile graphics when they are presented within curriculum tasks.
In figure 1 a student is using toy furniture to create a 3D model of the room explored.
The understanding of two dimensional representations of images involves a scaffolded process. In figure 2 a student is reading a PIAF map using a key.
Building maps is one of the aspects we have worked on. This involves learners exploring a room, then following these steps:
- 3D toy furniture placed within a box to represent the room,
- Building a map using velcro shapes, similar in design to the ‘real thing’,
- A raised line PIAF representation of the room accompanied with appropriate language to describe the orientation of the furniture,
- Introduction to labelling and identifying furniture utilising on a ‘Key’
Our students have achieved a high level of success with the simple and systematic nature of this training program.
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