Students’ performance ratings on the characteristics are used to classify their level of CVI. In broad terms, Roman-Lantzy (2019) refers to 3 different phases of severity of CVI. Phase 1, Building Visual Behaviors, describes students who have little functional vision and are learning to simply use their vision to look at something. Phase 2 describes a student in general terms who is learning about Integrating Vision and Function, figuring out what they are looking at and attaching meaning. Phase 3 describes a student who has a great deal of vision but requires specific instructional support as he/she is Developing Visual Cu- riosity. Common Classroom Observations of Students with CVI Students with CVI may not be able to look where the teach- er points, and are often seen looking elsewhere, or not looking at all. Some students may seem to be focusing on items in the environment that are not part of instruction, gazing up at lights or fans, watching shadows or other people moving around the room. A student who is listening hard when a story is being read may have his head down with eyes closed, and is definitely not looking at the book or the teacher. Another student might be rocking back and forth in her chair, using movements of his/her own body to stimulate peripheral vision. Often these observa- tions my be interpreted as behaviors, when they are really a re- sult of the student’s CVI. Empathy and sensitivity, getting down and looking at the classroom from the student’s perspective, is required to fully understand what the student is doing and why he is doing that. Only then can we design productive learning environments for these students. As is necessary for all students, the support team should col- laborate on how to modify instructional materials and activities. Team members should consider use of the CVI Characteristics: Teaching Strategies and Accommodations Planning Guides found here (http://cvi.bridgeschool.org/interventions/). On this form, each of the CVI Characteristics is listed with places for the team to fill in the teaching strategies and accommodations. Consider the characteristic of difficulty with distance viewing as an example. A student with mild CVI may be able to see 4-6 letters at a time when they are presented on a backlit tablet that is nearby. That same student may need letters presented larger and only one or two at a time during small group instruc- tion. During large group instruction visual functioning may be extremely limited due to auditory distractions or other people moving around the room. Therefore, one student may need to have access to multiple accommodations during the school day in order to participate fully in emergent reading and writing ac- tivities by actively manipulating the letters and sounds of the al- phabet, recognizing patterns of connected words, and getting/ making meaning from stories. Many students with cortical vision impairment have difficul- ties visually processing photographs of faces, and may struggle
to read facial expressions in real life. They may also be unable to visually follow where somebody is pointing to establish a joint reference when communicating with a partner. This may impact how their social-linguistic skills develop. Utilizing routines and increasing familiarity with materials by providing consistent vi- sual descriptions can be beneficial. Engaging in the process of writing and sharing personal experience stories (Hagood, 2014) and home-school journaling (Mogan, 2018) can be used as a context for building social-linguistic skills (Wagner, 2019). It is easy to see how CVI can get in the way of students’ litera- cy learning. However, students’ vision must not be a roadblock or a gatekeeper to rich, authentic literacy opportunities. There are multiple facets to literacy development, many of which don’t require vision. In addition to the CVI characteristics, profession- als need to have enough knowledge about the details of literacy development in order to design instruction, starting with emer- gent literacy. Overview of Emergent Literacy The term emergent literacy describes the process of begin- ning, exploratory reading, and writing experiences of children before they learn to formally read and write (Teale & Sulzby, 1986). Emergent literacy is not about identifying sight words, phonics instruction, spelling words, or taking comprehension tests—these are all conventional literacy skills. Instead, emer- gent literacy refers to the foundational experiences that prepare children for such conventional instruction once they enter ele- mentary school. Teale and Sulzby (1986) outlined four principles that apply to the earliest stages of literacy learning, all of which have important implications for how we design literacy instruc- tion for students with CVI. These key principles are described, followed by implications for students with significant disabilities (Koppenhaver, Coleman, Kalman, & Yoder, 1991). No Student has to be Ready for Literacy: Literacy Learn- ing Begins at or Even Before Birth With this concept in mind, most children are exposed to liter- acy before they even know what to do with it. Many parents cre- ate environments filled with books, crayons, print-rich toys, and even print-rich clothes and room decorations. Children cannot help but not see print all around them (e.g., labels, signs, recipe books, mail, posters). They also see others using print (e.g., dad writing a shopping list, mom reading the newspaper). Adults read to children, often over and over; some parents even read to their children in utero. These rich experiences are ongoing and numerous; in fact, some children have more than 1,000 hours of these early print-based interactions by the time they begin school. (Heath, 1983). Through this emergent lens, it is clear that children are born “ready” for literacy (Teale & Sulzby 1986).
Implications for students with significant disabil- ities: No student, regardless of their disability and
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