American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Special Issue on Braille TEACHING
by Erin Zobell
From the Editor: Prior to becoming a teacher of blind students, Erin Zobell was certified as a classroom literacy teacher. While obtaining her graduate certificate to be a teacher of blind students, she was also completing a master’s in reading education. Her extensive knowledge of teaching print literacy drives her to want to find better ways to teach Braille literacy.
In the world of literacy, there is a major focus on the Science of Reading. In the late 1990s, the US Congress created a task force to comb through the existing research and find out which research-based strategies were most effective for teaching children to read. As the National Reading Panel worked to carry out its mission, it categorized five areas necessary for reading instruction—phonological awareness (including phonemic awareness), phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
Since the 2000 publication of the National Reading Panel’s report, continuing research has been conducted. Now, when referencing the Science of Reading, people are referring to the whole body of evidence-based instructional strategies that supports reading, usually with one of the five areas in mind.
I am a reading teacher. (Just ask the six books crammed into my backpack while I write this article.) I started as a certified reading teacher with a specific company. Life being life led me to a new state that required further reading courses. With only a few more classes, I gained my master’s degree as a reading specialist.
While I was working on my master’s, life stepped in again. I found myself gaining a graduate certificate to become a teacher of blind students. I discovered a stark dichotomy between what the Science of Reading was saying and the way blind children were being taught to read Braille. I asked myself, “If this method works for teaching print, why don’t we use it for teaching Braille as well?”
According to the Science of Reading, these are some methods that work for teaching print readers. I will suggest how teachers can adapt these ideas when teaching Braille.
This set of skills includes recognizing words that rhyme and words that start with the same letter. It also includes phonemic awareness, which requires students to hear and identify individual sounds within a word. For instance, the word cat, when spoken aloud, has three sounds or phonemes: /k/, /a/, and /t/, rather than one continuous sound. With this skill kids not only can identify phonemes, but also add, subtract, or substitute phonemes.
Strong phonemic awareness skills have a positive correlation with learning to read. However, it is important to note that struggles with phonemic awareness do not mean someone cannot learn to read eventually. Some elements of phonemic awareness are early literacy skills and do not require the ability to read any print or Braille.
Phonics is the skill of putting letters together to make words. In the early stages of learning to read English, learners discover that c-a-t spells cat. When they get into more complex multisyllabic words, they understand that the suffix -tion sounds like “shun.”
Phonics needs to be taught “explicitly and systematically” (National Reading Panel, 2-89). This means we are going to teach graphemes (the spellings for sounds) in an order that makes sense. For example, in kindergarten or first grade we teach that c-h says ch, as in chair. Later we teach the far less common sh sound of c-h, as in (chef). Eventually, to be an effective reader, students need to know both, as well as the c-h that says k, as in character. But students do not need to know these variations when they are first learning to read.
While there are a number of print phonics reading programs, there are not many phonics options for Braille. A phonics program geared for print will not lead to a knowledge of Grade 2 UEB Braille, due to the additional rules in the Braille code. The Natural Order of Contractions (https://naturalorderofcontractions.com/) is a great program that seeks to build the knowledge of the code once the basic alphabet is mastered. (See “Beyond the Code: Teaching Braille as Literacy,” by Casey L. Robertson, elsewhere in this issue.)
It is important to make sure students are not taught only Grade 1 Braille. Most Braille books and public signage use contracted Braille. Students also need to learn uncontracted Braille in order to master spelling so they can type on a computer.
Though students need explicit instruction, that instruction does not have to be boring. The following activities were meant to help build knowledge of contracted Braille.
1. Contraction Go Fish or Memory: Explicitly teach the child a contraction. If teaching the contraction for “and,” let the student feel the word on the page. Ask the student to tell you what they feel. Talk about the cell, and tell the student it stands for the letters a n d. Have the student think of words that might use the sign, and write them in Braille. Explicitly teach several signs before you play the game.
Make sure there are contracted and uncontracted cards for each sign you are working on. For “Go Fish,” the students ask each other for either the contracted or the uncontracted letters. For Memory, the kids turn over the cards.
This activity can be done with short form.
Make a sentence. Writing adds a dimension to reading that can be challenging. By providing the words pre-Braille, the students focus on decoding (reading) the words. Give the students words that use contractions and short form words they have been taught. Have them make their own sentences. For an added level of difficulty, have the students type each sentence. (When they type they need to know how to spell out words that contain contractions.)
To have a vocabulary is to know the meaning of words. Many times, a word may mean more than one thing. A child needs to know that the word cat means something, that it is not just noise when it is spoken. As a child grows, we expect them to know that cat could mean a house cat, but it also could mean the whole feline family, including tigers and lions. (Where I live, if someone says they see a cat, they could be talking about a giant piece of Caterpillar farm equipment!)
Sighted children learn a great deal visually, from seeing the world. Children who are blind need more explicit instruction. They may need more explaining or realia (real-life objects) to help them understand concepts.
Strategies here are the same as those for a sighted child. The difference is that sometimes blind students need a little more support when learning a word.
Fluency is the ability to read with “speed, accuracy, and proper expression” (National Reading Panel, 3-1). While expression is important for fluency, speed is often an area for concern when it comes to reading Braille. As print readers are learning to read, there are standards for how many words per minute a student should be reading. A similar word per minute scale does not exist for blind students. This lack becomes worrisome as children grow. They need to read words fast enough to hold them in their short-term memory and draw meaning from what they are reading. If a child’s reading rate is too slow, the child may forget words from the beginning of the text by the time they reach the end.
1. Read and Re-read. Record the student’s speed and accuracy, and celebrate the growth. By re-reading, a student builds what I call “instant recall words.” Instant recall words are words that a student knows automatically when they come across them.
2A. This activity exposes the child to the words on the page. Remember that they need to be exposed to a word many times before it becomes an “instant recall” word.
2B. Word list—Make games or silly sentences with words from word lists, such as a Fry’s word list that focuses on the most frequently occurring words. The more instant recall words a student has in their memory, the more words per minute they can read.
3. Word sorts based on patterns—Perhaps you are going to have word sorts with dot 5 contractions to see different words using those patterns. The kids can sort the words in whatever way makes sense to them. This game is great to help children focus on using the ending contractions as well.
The whole goal of every other part of reading is to comprehend. We can read the words, read them fluently, and know the vocabulary. But if we don’t understand what we read, it does us no good. Strategies for both print and Braille readers include:
Like any skill, reading gets better with practice. Find something that interests the reader, and let them read. Let them re-read. Let them find a love of reading. If they can find a love of reading, learning to read becomes easier. If your child is not yet of the age to read independently, you still can get Braille under their fingertips. It is okay for them to make up the words—sighted children do the same thing.
Read to your child. Build the love of reading into daily life.
National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based approach. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and US Department of Education. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf