Teacher Created Materials for Adapting Literacy
Instruction for Braille Readers
Paige Weaver pweav936@live.kutztown.edu and
McKenzie Hollenbach mholl670@live.kutztown.edu
Kutztown University
When teaching literacy to students who are visually impaired it is
important to keep Big Five Areas of Literacy in mind: Phonological
Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Comprehension (Swenson,
1999). These five areas of literacy can be viewed as individual puzzle pieces
that must fit together when teaching literacy. For a general education teacher
there are several methodologies for teaching abstract ideas such as phonics
or phonological awareness as well as the other members of the Big Five. The
question to be answered here is how to adapt and apply methods of teaching
for Teachers of the Visually Impaired to ensure students with visual
impairments are gaining a deep understanding of literacy instruction.
Literacy instruction for students with visual impairments or blindness is
crucial, because it represents a huge factor in their independence. Although
students with visual impairments may use different methods to read than their
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