DOTS for Braille Literacy (Development of Teacher Support) Fall 2003 Volume 9, Number 1

From the Editor

What does the word "literacy" mean to you? Is it simply reading and writing? Is it more than that?

Rexford Brown, in his book Schools of Thought (Jossey-Bass Publishers), postulates that the demands of life in a global society--in the classroom and in the workplace--require an expanded definition of literacy. He and his colleagues at the Education Commission of the States have conducted studies and interviewed educators, administrators, policy makers, and employers from all over the United States. The literacy Brown describes, "goes beyond basic skills and includes enhanced abilities to think critically and creatively; to reason carefully; to inquire systematically into any important matter; to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information and arguments; and to communicate effectively to a variety of audiences in a variety of forms." The term he has coined is a "literacy of thoughtfulness." This expanded view also assumes that students will become active learners, engaged in classroom activities and discussions, and not only making meaning from the text but also bringing their own understanding to it. It also means that instructional practices that teachers engage in will need to change to encourage this higher level thinking and learning. When reflecting on our teaching practices for braille learners of any age, how can we build a literacy of thoughtfulness in our students? Do we encourage creative and critical thinking or do we focus on finding one right answer? Do we encourage wide reading and discussion on a variety of topics, or short paragraphs with a focus on skills only? Do we encourage writing that is personal and thoughtful, or formulaic and mediocre? Please share your thoughts with me on this topic. This edition of DOTS is a bit late, for which I apologize. I very much appreciate the support and concern I hear from readers when their DOTS doesn't appear when expected.
--Frances Mary D'Andrea, Editor, DOTS

New from AFB Press!

Braille Literacy: A Functional Approach

Teachers of students challenged by learning braille--perhaps because of additional physical or cognitive disabilities, the inability to speak English well, or difficulty in making the transition from print to braille--will welcome this innovative and practical new book. Dr. Diane Wormsley, author of Braille Literacy Curriculum and co-author of Instructional Strategies for Braille Literacy, presents a straightforward, step-by-step approach to teaching the reading and writing of braille to both children and adults. This clearly written guide uses a "functional" approach based on concepts and vocabulary with high interest and motivation to the reader.

Key area covered include:

• creating braille-rich environments
• selecting and teaching key words
• creating stories with learners
• keeping records

and much more! A separate section suggests ways to reach special groups, such as learners with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, severe to profound cognitive disabilities, and multiple physical and cognitive disabilities. This essential text is enhanced by photos that bring the program to life and sample forms that help you put it into action. To order Braille Literacy: A Functional Approach, or for more information, contact AFB Press at www.afb.org/store or by telephone: 800-232-3044.

BANA News

The Braille Authority of North America (BANA) has released three important notices.

English Braille American Edition, 1994, Revised 2002 Now Available

The Braille Authority of North America (BANA) announces that English Braille American Edition, 1994; Revised 2002 is now available. EBAE is the code book which gives the rules for contracted braille. The book is available from the American Printing House for the Blind, 1839 Frankfort Ave., Louisville, KY 40206-0085 in braille (#5-35932-00) and print (#7-35932-00) for $20.00 US.

If you do not wish to purchase the complete new edition, a compendium of the changes to EBAE from 1995-2002 is available for downloading in braille and print formats on the BANA web site at www.brailleauthority.org/downloads.html. For those unable to access the web site, braille and print hardcopies may be obtained without charge by writing to Eileen Curran, National Braille Press, 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston, MA 02115; telephone: 617-266-6160, ext. 17; e-mail: ecurran@nbp.org.

BANA Launches BANA-Announce List

BANA invites people to subscribe to BANA-Announce, a one-way list to share information about BANA's activities. BANA-Announce will be used to disseminate summaries of meetings, code changes, new publications, and activities of the technical committees. The list will post information and announcements to promote braille, its use, and production. To join, send a blank e-mail message to bana-announce-subscribe@brailleauthority.org. (You do not need to include a subject or even a text message.) Follow the directions contained in the confirmation message that will be e-mailed automatically to your subscription request, and you will be added to the list. For more information about BANA-Announce, contact Kim Charlson at kim.charlson@perkins.org.

BANA Announces New Officers

BANA held its fall meeting at the Braille and Talking Book Library on the campus of Perkins School for the Blind, November 13-16, 2003. The meeting was hosted by the American Council of the Blind. New officers were elected whose terms will begin January 1, 2004. Those elected were:

Chairperson: Kim Charlson (Watertown, MA) serves as the representative for the American Council of the Blind. Kim is employed as the director of the Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library. She is a braille reader, and a recognized advocate for braille literacy, both nationally and internationally.

Vice-chairperson: Warren Figueiredo (Baton Rouge, LA) serves as the representative for the American Printing House for the Blind. Warren is employed as the director of the Louisiana Instructional Materials Center, a support service of the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired. He is active in many initiatives to promote the use of braille, and is working with BANA's Early Literacy Materials Production committee to enhance the presentation and clarity of braille formatting and transcription for young braille readers.

Secretary: Mary Archer (Minneapolis, MN) serves as the representative for the National Braille Association. Mary is employed as the braille supervisor for the Minnesota State Services for the Blind. She is the president-elect of the National Braille Association. Mary works with BANA's mathematics technical committee.

Treasurer: Sue Reilly (San Diego, CA) serves as the representative for the California Transcribers and Educators of the Visually Handicapped. Sue is employed as the supervising program specialist, special education programs division for the San Diego City Schools. Sue also serves as BANA's web master.

Immediate Past Chair: Eileen Curran (Boston, MA) serves as the representative for the National Braille Press. Eileen is employed as the vice-president of education services at National Braille Press. She has served as BANA Chair for the past 3-1/2 years.

Two new members have recently joined the BANA board.

David Grimes (Cincinnati, OH) has replaced Keith Tackett as the BANA representative for the Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. David is a proofreader, and will serve on BANA's bylaws committee.

Following the recent resignation of board member Jerry Whittle, the National Federation of the Blind recently named Ruby Ryles (Ruston, LA) as its new representative to BANA. For the past seven years, Dr. Ryles has served as coordinator of two graduate degree programs at Louisiana Tech University.

For additional resource information and a complete list of all BANA representatives, visit their web site at www.brailleauthority.org.

Transcribers Ready to Impress

Students in the new Northwest Vista College Braille Textbook Transcriber program in San Antonio, Texas, have been certified by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), and are now looking for transcribing work.

The beauty of modern transcribing is that it can be done at a distance. Once the pages or books are received in hard copy or on disk, the transcriber can then transcribe the text and e-mail the braille file back for local embossing.

Editor's note (June 9, 2006): For more information about the Braille Textbook Transcriber Certificate Program, please e-mail nvcbrail@accd.edu. For general information about the college, including admissions procedures, please call 210-348-2020 or e-mail nvcinfo@accd.edu.

Online Literacy Survey

Highly literate adults who are blind or visually impaired are invited to complete an online survey of their literacy learning and technology use. The survey is one component of a research study on emergent literacy in young children with visual impairments called Project Emerge based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Drs. Deborah Hatton and Karen Erickson are the principal investigators.

The purpose of the survey is to learn more about the factors that contributed to literacy learning success in individuals who, prior to the age of six years, experienced severe visual impairment that affected the ability to read. For this particular survey, participants should be 21 years of age or older and have completed a four-year college degree. The results of this survey will increase our knowledge and understanding of early learning experiences, environments, and technologies that are most likely to support literacy learning for young children with visual impairments or blindness. Families and teachers of young children who are visually impaired or blind will then be able to use the information to promote early literacy.

The online survey will take about 45 minutes to complete and can be found at www.fpg.unc.edu/~emerge/litsurvey/literacysurvey.cfm. For more information, contact Allen Stutts at allen_stutts@unc.edu or call the project's toll-free number, 888-718-7303.

Braille Bug Reading Club News

Looking for a delightful winter activity for your students? Check out the Braille Bug website, www.afb.org/braillebug, for information on the Reading Club books featured for December, 2003-February, 2004. The theme for this quarter is "The Magic of Wild Adventures." All books selected for inclusion in the Braille Bug Reading Club are widely available in both print and in braille, so all children (and teachers!) can enjoy them.

For grades 1-4, the selection is Sunset of the Sabertooth, by Mary Pope Osborne. This Magic Treehouse book finds Jack and Alice exploring in the Ice Age. They are looking for a the third "m" thing that will free their magical librarian Morgan from a spell. What magical thing will they find while on this adventure?

For grades 3-7, the selection is Shiloh Season, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. This Newbery Medal award-winning book is the second in a series called the "Shiloh Trilogy." Shiloh is a pet beagle that Marty Preston now owns because he worked for Shiloh's previous owner, a mean man named Judd. Marty knows something about Judd, but doesn't know if he should or could speak up! This adventure, set in the West Virginia mountains, is a magical story about a young boy and his dog.

In addition to the list of featured books, the Reading Club area on the Braille Bug web site lists sources of the books in braille, and suggests related sites and activities that teachers and parents can do to enrich the reading experience. Braille Bug Reading Club message boards enable students to share their thoughts with others about the books they've enjoyed. Popular Braille Bug games such as Trivia and Jumble feature questions related to the selected books.

The Braille Bug Reading Club--the perfect antidote to the winter blahs!

Free Resources!

• AccessWorld, the technology magazine published by AFB Press, is now available as a free, web-only magazine. An e-mail message will be sent when a new issue is posted. The web magazine will be fully accessible, including charts, photo descriptions and other graphics, and product advertisements. For your free subscription, e-mail the American Foundation for the Blind at accessworld@afb.net.
• Braille playing cards can be an enjoyable way to reinforce braille reading skills for children and adults who are learning the code. The cards also are great for socialization and leisure time. Heidi DePuy is offering free playing cards that have been brailled by a senior club called Carson City Natives & Newcomers, and by the Nevada State Prisoners. To receive a free pack (or multiple sets), send an e-mail message with the subject "Braille Cards" to wenarced2@aol.com.
• DIALOGUE magazine is subtitled "A World of Ideas for Visually Impaired People" because of its practical content related to careers, lifestyles, technology, and more. The publication is packed with "how-to" examples of home and job skills as described by the people who use them. It's also a great way for students who are blind to learn about the opportunities that await them as independent adults! For a free sample copy in braille (it also comes in other formats), contact Blindskills, Inc., P.O. Box 5181, Salem, OR 97304-0181; telephone: 800-860-4224; e-mail: blindsklteleport.com; web site: www.blindskills.com.
• National Braille Press (NBP) announces its ReadBooks! program, part of Because Braille Matters family outreach initiative. During the first phase of the program, NBP is distributing free braille materials and parent resources to families of blind and visually impaired children, birth through age seven, across the United States. To receive a Braille Book Bag or for more information contact Amy Ruell, National Braille Press, 88 St. Stephen Street, Boston, MA 02115-4302; telephone: 888-965-8965, ext. 34; e-mail: aruell@nbp.org; web site: www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/readbooks/index.html.

Short Takes

• Seedlings announces their 2004 catalog which now includes over 550 books. Among the 60 new titles are print and braille books, board books, and popular series such as the American Girls collection, the Dear America series, and the Magic Treehouse series. Many award-winning fiction and nonfiction books are also included. To receive a new catalog in print, braille, on disk, or via e-mail, contact Seedlings Braille Books for Children, 14151 Farmington Rd., Livonia, MI 48154; toll-free: 800-777-8552; e-mail: seedlink@aol.com; web site: www.seedlings.org.
  
  
• Running Around in Family Circles with Friends in Pursuit is a fascinating and funny memoir written by Georgia Griffith, a woman with deafblindness. Published by Xulon Press, it is available from Barnes and Noble online, or can be ordered at local bookstores (refer to ISBN 1594670366).
  
  
• Research Roundtable (or R-Squared) is an electronic mailing list of researchers in the blindness field but is open to all. The list members welcome questions from practitioners, parents, and anyone who has questions or comments related to evaluation, instructional practices, and other research topics. To join, send a message to R-squared-subscribe@igc.topica.com with no subject or message, and then respond to the automatic confirmation message.
  
  
• The American Printing House for the Blind is looking for braille readers K-3 grade to participate in a research project involving a unit of primary mathematics materials. For more information, contact Eleanor Pester at epester@aph.org, or call 502-899-2320.
  
  
• CareerConnect (TM) offers a new feature called "Window on the Working World." Each month, a different person who is blind or visually impaired talks about his or her career. CareerConnect is a free resource from the American Foundation for the Blind for people to learn about the range and diversity of jobs that are performed throughout the United States and Canada by adults who are blind or visually impaired. For more information, visit www.afb.org/careerconnect or send a message to careerconnect@afb.net.
  
  

Dear DOT

Dear DOT,

I am teaching a very bright student who is a braille reader. I notice, though, that her vocabulary could be stronger. What are some ideas I can use to build her vocabulary?

Signed, Wanda

Dear Wanda,

Expanding students' vocabularies not only increases reading comprehension, it also enriches the writing that students produce. Here are a few suggestions.

1. Engage the student in many hands-on activities. Sometimes children who are blind or visually impaired have weak vocabularies because there are gaps in concept development. Does your student have a limited vocabulary because of a lack of exposure to a variety of experiences? Do a number of activities with your student that build basic concepts. These can be as simple as walking outside and comparing trees (their bark, leaves, scent, etc.), to cooking, to going on field trips. Talk with her family, too, and remind them to encourage new experiences and to enrich familiar ones. For example, a routine trip to the grocery store can be used to discuss and compare different kinds of fruits and vegetables, their textures, weights, smells, and so on. At the same time that the student's world is being expanded, so will the vocabulary she'll be learning and using to describe it.
   
   
2. Expose your student to a wide variety of literature and read, read, read! Read short stories, novels, essays, editorials, mysteries, news stories, sports reporting, poetry, how-to manuals, cookbooks--anything you can get in braille. If you use electronic material (and there's more available now than ever before) have the student use a refreshable braille display instead of, or in addition to, speech access so that she can see how the words are spelled. In addition to new vocabulary words she will be exposed to, you can also discuss with the student how the genres are different, the different kinds of words that are used. For example, how is a news report different from an editorial? What kind of words might you find in a science fiction book that you might not find in a biography? You'll be building vocabulary and at the same time developing critical thinking about books and reading.
   
   
3. Do some mini-lessons with your student on "power words" that can be used in writing. For example, if your student tends to use words like "big" and "nice" frequently when writing, introduce words like "tremendous" and "cordial," and discuss the shades of meaning created by these words. Encourage your student to create lists of these power words and put them in a notebook to create a personal thesaurus. Teach her to use an online thesaurus, and add favorite words to her notebook.
   
   
4. Teach your student about root words, prefixes, and suffixes. This can help her understand how words are put together, and how to approach new words she encounters.
   
   

Here are a few resources that might be useful to you. Kylene Beer's book When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do, includes a chapter on helping students build vocabulary. Gay Su Pinnell and Irene Fountas' book Word Matters contains helpful lists teachers can use to do minilessons with students, such as synonyms, antonyms, Greek and Latin roots, and compound words. Nancie Atwell's book In the Middle lists a number of genres students can explore to expand their worlds--and their vocabularies. All three books are published by Heinemann (www.heinemann.com).

Signed, DOT

Save the Dates . . .

March 5-7, 2004
Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute
Washington, D.C.
www.afb.org/jltli.asp

March 12-14, 2004
California Transcribers & Educators of the Visually Handicapped Annual Convention
Los Angeles, CA
www.ctevh.org/conference.htm

March 29-April 2, 2004
International Council on English Braille General Assembly
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.iceb.org

April 29-May 1, 2004
National Braille Association Spring Conference
Philadelphia, PA
www.nationalbraille.org

I think that the idea that literature should instruct and delight is perfectly sound, provided we understand that it must do both at once.
--Wendell Berry

DOTS for Braille Literacy is published three times a year (October, February, and June), and is available in regular print, braille, via e-mail, or on disk. If you'd prefer to be reading this in a different format, please contact the editor at:

DOTS
American Foundation for the Blind
100 Peachtree St., Suite 620
Atlanta GA 30303
Telephone: 404-525-2303
Fax: 404-659-6957
E-mail: literacy@afb.net

Subscribe to the brlhelp-afb listserve by sending the message
<mailto:brlhelp-afb-subscribe@igc.topica.com>

This newsletter is published by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and funded in part by contributions to the National Literacy Center. However, information contained herein does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of AFB or its contributors and no endorsement by AFB or its contributors should be inferred.

©2003 American Foundation for the Blind

Contents may not be reproduced without permission.