Tefl.NET Forums

I have a pre-intermediate level class with a blind student in it. I'd appreciate any ideas concerning activities or games for the class.
Thanks for any help you can give me!

dear becca

try these methods on this website:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think ... lind.shtml

hope it is a start!

Dear Becca,

I am a blind ESL teacher. If you need any help or tips, feel free to send me an email. My address is vcbpg@libero.it

Hey Becca how have you managed this student?

I've learned that I will have two blind students in the fall so I would be interested in any advise. These two boys are going to be mixed with the rest of the "seeing" students though...

Hi Guillermo,

Have you also noticed that a blind ESL teacher is offering help and advice?

YOu probably have seen it. If so, sorry for interfering

Susan

As a future teacher, I will surely have to deal with students who have special needs such as being blind or dyslexic. I believe that blind students still have the required abilities to perform well with languages. Maybe their sight is completely impaired, but they still have other senses.

There are many games that can be played simply using sound, or touch, or any other senses. We can also combine sesnses to create a fun game.
For example, students could play a matching game. They would hear a sound and they would have to identify which animal they hear. Or, you could give them objects in their hands and ask them to describe them as well as they can using the target language.

Blind people have very good auditory skills and we should take advantage of these when creating activities for them. There are thousands of ideas for cool games involving only sound.

This is a very interesting topic! I will be an English teacher in about 2 years and I don't think I will have a course on how to teach to blind students... so I really appreciate the links that were suggested in the previous posts. I have done 2 practicums and haven't seen any blind student yet. In fact, I never thaught that I could encounter this challenge in my future job. I guess it is not simple to integrate a blind student to the other "regular" students. As teacher, you have to adapt ALL your materials! You probably need to explain more in details something, for example if you read a story to elementary students, you probably have to give details about what the characters look like if you want the blind student to imagine the story...Or if you sing a song and include gestures, what do you do with the blind student?
I have seen an activity that requires students to walk around the classroom.....is it possible to do it if you have a blind student?
I would like someone to give some examples of activity that can be done in class in order to include everyone!

Hello vcbpg,

Have you got another email adress? I've recently tried to get in touch with you but I received a delivery failure message. I'm really interested in the subject and I'm sure you can help me.

Best regards to all of you,

Chrisbeef

Hi Everyone,

I am currently an ESL Instructor for Blind and Visually Impaired adults. If you have any specific questions or are looking for activity ideas for your lessons, I am happy to help as much as I can. It is a very small community of people who are doing this, and it requires a lot of thinking outside the box. Because language acquisition is so visual, it is important not only to remove the visual input but compensate with other sensory input. One thing I will caution is to not overload on the auditory input as blind learners often suffer from auditory fatigue. Real life objects and context are always the best way to go!

You are fortunate to have a response from a blind teacher. Who could be better to comment on this subject.