What´s that noise?

How do we use sound when teaching pupils with visual impairments?

Focus: School Years

Topic: Inclusive Education

Birgit Kruk and Inger Lindgren Andersson

Advisors on Special Needs Education

The Swedish Institute for Special Needs Education

Specialpedagogiska institutet

Kruthusgatan 17

S-411 04 Gothenburg

Sweden

Tel: +46 31 739 80 44 

Fax: +46 31 739 80 35

birgit.kruk@sit.se     inger.lindgren@sit.se

According to the Swedish Education Act all children and young persons shall have equal access to the public sector school system, regardless of sex, residential locality , social and economic circumstances. This means that the local authorities are responsible for the education of children with functional impairments as well as all other children and that the majority of children with disabilities take part in ordinary education or special classes linked to ordinary schools.

We both work as advisors at the Swedish Institute for Special Needs Education in Sweden. The Swedish Institute for Special Needs Education is the new national authority with the instruction to coordinate support to the local authorities in matters of special needs education for children, young persons and adults with different disabilities. When we say “disabilities” we mean both physical and medical, psychological or neurological conditions, severe reading and writing difficulties and severe learning disabilities. Besides the advisors with knowledge about different disabilities, there are, since the 1^st of July 2001, four national resource centres. The resource centres are not new, what is new is that  we now belong to the same organisation. Maybe some of you have heard about the Tomteboda and Ekeschool resource centres. They are now united into one resource centre called Resource Centre Vision. Books in Braille are produced at one of our four educational materials centers. The responsibility for the education of all students is always with the municipality, but with support from county council and the government, i.e. The Swedish Institute for Special Needs Education.

We have since many years worked with groups of pupils with visual impairments and their teachers. At our group gatherings we have worked with different themes like sports, handicraft and art. About one year ago we chose to work with sound.

We all know that the experience of sound can be both positive and negative. This goes for persons with both normal vision and with visual impairment. In a class-room there are many familiar sounds e.g. chairs being moved, classmates talking or a window being opened. In an unfamiliar environment a person with low or no vision easily feels unsure and finds it difficult to interpret the sounds and understand what is happening. We asked a boy who is blind what he thought about sound and he gave us the following answer:

“When I hear the word “sound” I think about everything I hear around me, and that it´s almost never completely quiet. As you know sound and hearing are very important to me because of my visual impairment. I think it would be very difficult for me if I lost my hearing. Then I wouldn´t be able to cross the road because I wouldn´t hear the cars. Nor the voices of people. Thanks to them I can recognise my friends, relatives and my family. In school, e g, if I hear someone I know by his voice, I say “Hallo” and he answers back. But there are also sounds that I don´t need to hear. In the class-room I sometimes hear my class-mates talking and then it can be hard to concentrate, especially if they are talking about something interesting. At night, when I have gone to bed it´s nice when it´s quiet, except for the sound of a fan for instance. Completely quiet means that the electricity is out, but I don´t like that to happen!”

We wanted to try and use sounds in many different ways at these groupgatherings. To do this we got help from people from  the organisation “Music in the west” who work with theatre and music in the western part of Sweden.

Our joint work started with an outdoor activity. In this group the pupils were both visually and physically disabled and they all used wheelchairs. We met just outside a leafy wood and we were greeted by a young woman dressed in clothes that looked like they came from a fairytale. She told us to listen when she played on her flute and suddenly we heard the sound of another flute answering from the wood.  We followed the sound into the wood and soon we met a troll who didn´t speak but used her flute  to tell us what to do. On the way through the wood we came across many exciting things: instruments in the trees, but also other things which could produce sounds like a telephone, a music box and of course the natural sounds in a wood. We were also told an old legend from the neighbourhood while we were moving slowly forward.

After the outdoor activity we wanted to work with a group of blind pupils indoors. They were eleven pupils at the age of 12-14. We met on three different occasions about five hours each time. To the second and third meetings the pupils were given a small task, namely to collect some sounds on a tape-recorder and also bring an object that could make a sound and let the others guess what it was. Things they brought were everyday objects like e.g. a bottle of water, a box of matches or a bunch of keys.

At the first meeting we started by listening to the silence. The pupils then listened to sounds in their own bodies, like their own hearts beating and to sounds in the house, like someone walking up the stairs. After that they listened to Sofia, who was our leader, when she made sounds on her own body and they tried to find out what she was doing. She for instance rubbed her hands, slapped her cheeks and beat her chest with her hands. When they had recognised the sounds they imitated them. For some of them this was easy, for others quite difficult. Then they were told to imitate a rhythm in the same manner.

After that they made an “orchestra” .The pupils were divided into three groups with their teachers. Each group chose a rhythm to play on their bodies and the “orchestra” was then started by the leader, one group after another. You will see a short sequence from this on the film we shall show you at the end.

When you read a book with illustrations aloud, the children, especially the younger ones, usually want to see the pictures. They add an extra dimension to the story. When you don´t see, you miss this for natural reasons. One way to compensate this is of course to try and describe the pictures. When we worked with the theme sound, we tried to illustrate the story, in this case a fairy-tale, with sounds instead. We started by reading the story and the children were asked to think about what sounds could be used to illustrate it. The story was about two children walking in a forest where they saw and heard birds, the wind in the treetops, a waterfall, rain and other things and at last came to a cave. The pupils were very imaginative and came up with many ideas about how to make these sounds. They were given one or two sounds each to perform and then we read the story again with the sound-illustrations.

We had brought different objects and instruments that the pupils could choose from if they could not come up with something themselves. This is e. g. an excellent waterfall and a box of matches can become the sound from a magpie. If the events in the story take place in winter you can use potato flour in a  bag to make it sound like someone walking in the snow.

When you have normal vision it is easy to forget the possibility to give “pictures”, in a different way, to a visually impaired pupil. A different way can be to give them sounds to increase the experience of a text. For instance, when you study a country, give them the typical music and try to find more sounds to illustrate what is typical for that country , e.g. the sounds from birds and other animals. For those of you who have a computer the internet has opened many new possibilities to find sounds to illustrate both common and uncommon events. You can find sounds from the household, nature, animals and even from an office! If you are interested we have gathered some useful links for you on a paper. We are sure there are many more links for you to find.

We also know there are CD´s with sounds on the market.

We have wanted to point at the possibilities to use sounds when you have a pupil who cannot see. There are of course many ways to do this, only your own imagination sets the limit!

Video.