We would describe teaching literacy through braille as one of the most rewarding and challenging aspects of the role of a Qualified Teacher for the Visually Impaired (QTVI). This article focuses on teaching literacy through braille in mainstream settings whilst promoting inclusion and meeting the social-emotional needs of children who use braille.…

Materials are suggested for facilitating braille reading readiness of blind children. Four critical areas are addressed and materials offered for each: auditory discrimination, tactual discrimination, language development, and concept development. (CL)

Discusses the Children's Braille Book-of-the-Month Club, a project of the National Braille Press, Inc., of Boston, Massachusetts. Provides membership information. (FL)

Twenty-one children ages 6 through 13 were taught to use their hands independently when reading braille to determine how this pattern of hand movements affected reading variables, excluding character recognition. The results strongly suggested that skill in tracking and use of an efficient hand movement pattern is closely tied to perceptual…

The article describes research conducted in the early 1970s on the comparative efficiency of an electronic teaching system for programed instruction (the BRAILLOPHON) and a conventional brailled book program for teaching seventh- and eighth-grade blind students to spell. (Author)

A self instructional strategy used bar code technology to teach Braille symbol recognition to three legally blind elementary school students. (DB)

Argues that the Learning Experience Approach (LEA) is superior to other methods of teaching reading when used with blind children. (RB)

Considers how blind children do not receive exposure to environmental print and do not generally learn to recognize written letters of the alphabet prior to schooling in Braille. Concludes that letter learning is a major contributor to the development of phonological awareness in blind children. Suggests key similarities in the underlying…

Two experiments with a total of 92 elementary grade blind students were conducted to determine the effects of training blind students in shape recognition accuracy and speed and accuracy of locating shapes on a tactile map by using a distinctive features analysis strategy and line tracing. (Author/DB)

Assesses fifteen 7- to 12-year-old blind children using standardized measures of intelligence, spelling and reading. Finds they performed poorer when reading than their chronological age would predict. Compares blind and age-matched children's ability to segment heard words, which are written in Braille with and without contractions. Finds words…

Discusses teaching methods and instructional aids developed to integrate blind students into a private class for elementary-school-aged piano students. Instructional aids incorporate auditory and tactile stimuli to teach music notation skills. Commercial games, like Bingo, were modified with Braille symbols to teach rhythm concepts. (AM)

Three tables present data from 22 braille-reading blind children, ages 6 to 12, including demographic data (such as years of braille use, IQ, age, hand movement type, and reading rate); highest and lowest reading rates, by years of braille instruction and IQ scores; and oral reading rates. The methodology used is suggested for teachers doing…

This article offers teaching strategies for developing number sense for children who are blind and braille users. Suggestions focus on developing number meanings, exploring number relationships with manipulatives, understanding the relative magnitude of numbers, developing intuitions about the relative effect of operating on numbers, and…

This bibliography is designed to aid in the selection of literature for visually impaired or physically handicapped students between second and sixth grades. It lists selected fiction books available on disc, on cassette, or in braille in network library collections provided by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped…

The reading performances of fifteen blind readers and fifteen sighted readers were compared by evaluating the reading performances of each reader reading at instructional level from Lippincott's "Basic Reading Series" and from Form A of the "Gray Oral Reading Test." Nine matched pairs of subjects read at grade one first reader level and six pairs…