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In Brazil, the official educational
policy favors the integration of handicapped children to the regular school.
Unfortunately, the corresponding resources are not always available. Moreover,
many of the handicapped children are the victims of additional problems:
extreme poverty, lack of adequate health services, familiar difficulties,
etc., which interact to produce situations that do not favor a satisfactory
global development.
Those conditions motivated
the proposition of the present research and intervention project, with
visually impaired children, with the aim of preparing and following them
up at the beginning of their school life. It is developed a Center of Reseach
and Rehabilitation for deaf and visually impaired people, in the context
of its Visually Impaired Children Program, where the children receive attention
of an interdisciplinary team.
METHOD
Subjects
The project was initially
designed for children with low vision. But, during the group work, some
of them became functionally blind and kept in the group. In general, they
had a very bad socioeconomic situation, some of them living in very uncomfortable
habitations and with an extremely low income. The majority of them lived
in other cities, distant 20 to 50 km from Campinas. Most of these children
showed some delay in their cognitive and linguistic development; most of
them did not show the appropriate social behavior for a group situation
and some did not have the psychomotor abilities minimally necessary in
school.
Objectives
The objectives of the project
were the following:
- to intervene in the global
development of visually impaired children, in order to prepare them for
regular school and/or to complement the school process with a more individualized
attention to each child special needs;
- to develop simple strategies
and non expensive educational materials that would favor the joint work
of blind and low vision children, as well as of visually and non visually
impaired children;
- to follow the regular
educational process in order to detect the main difficulties and to cope
with them.
Group planning and activities
We planned regular meetings
for small groups of children. The basic schedule for the group involved
one or two 90-minute meetings every week, on non-consecutive days. Each
group had a maximum total of six children. There were two groups: a) preschool,
with children who did not go to school or that were in preschool (four
to seven years old); b) alphabetization, with children which were at the
beginning of Elementary School and that did not read with fluency.
The groups had the educational
goals proposed for a preschool by Kramer et al. (1991), who focused the
construction of autonomy and cooperation, problem solving, responsibility,
creativity, positive self-concept, communication and expression. As describek
previously (Batista, 1996), the following specific objectives were proposed,
comprising different areas of child development:
- Cognitive and linguistic
area: 1) To promote the development of different kinds of representation
(oral language, graphic and plastic representation, the beginning of reading
and writing) and of different kinds of knowledge (physical knowledge, logical
and mathematical reasoning and social knowledge). 2) To promote the development
of habits and attitudes that are necessary in intellectual work, including
concentration, persistency in the task and participation in games and tasks
that require the establishment of relationships, as, for instance, comparison
between elements and among sets of elements.
- Social and emotional area:
1) To establish a good relationship with adults, including communication
and questioning, collaboration with tasks and attendance of simple orders.
2) To establish a good relationship with other children, including cooperation,
shared playing and adequate conflict negotiation. 3) To promote the development
of self-confidence and self-esteem in the child.
- Psychomotor area: To favor
the development of perception (specially necessary to visually impaired
children), global coordination, time and space orientation and eye-hand
coordination, the latter with low vision children.
A typical session included
the following activities:
PRESCHOOL AND ALPHABETIZATION
(Elementary School)
- name tags: distribution
and identification
- calendar: identification
of day of the week, day of the month and month of the year
PRESCHOOL ALPHABETIZATION
(Elementary School)
A session always had some
of the following activities:
- educational games (ex:
bingo) and activities: including concepts and recognition of letters, words,
quantities, etc, some of them related to the story and to other significant
activities
- story telling
- graphic and plastic expression
- free play, playground,
etc. - school activities: reading, writing and mathematics, related to
what is currently being requested at regular school
Also presented in some sessions:
- educational games and
activities
- story telling
- graphic and plastic expression
as a context to new activities
concerning school tasks
- free play, playground,
etc.
Team-work
This project is being developed
by the present author and a group of undergraduate and graduated Psychology
students, who work in the planning, intervention, recording and analysis
of the sessions.
Recording procedures
As we were developing a
new program, we wanted to characterize our population, as well as to describe
changes in the performance of the children. To do so, we chose the technique
of continuous and cursive recording of the interactions between children
and adults (Danna and Matos, 1982). At the end of each session, a synthesis
of three aspects (cognitive and linguistic, social and emotional, and psychomotor)
was elaborated for each child, with the main emphasis being placed on the
first of these (Batista, in press). The individual evaluation performed
for each child (once per semester) was recorded on the same basis and was
also videotaped and transcribed.
Adaptation of educational
materials
In order to enable the joint
work between blind and low vision children, we developed some adaptation
of materials, as, for example:
- name tags: written in
enlarged print letters, for low vision children, and in print and braille
for blind children (the initial letter in braille also presented in a bigger
size)
- individual calendar: after
various trials, we decided to use two types:
a) month: made at the computer,
with the following design:
name of the month (contrasting
print, for low vision children, contrasting print and braille for blind
children)
calendar of the month (numbers
in print and braille, as above)
name of the child (print
and braille, as in the name tags)
The month calendars for
blind children were stuck on a sandpaper, in order to the child perceive
where she has put the mark corresponding to the present date.
b) semester: six squares,
each for one month, each with its name, with the borders indicated by small
points in relief.
- bingo charts: made with
light-colored thick paper, with the forms (geometrical shapes, 1 to 6 points,
etc) in dark sandpaper, in order to enable blind children to recognize
them by tact.
School contacts
In the case of the children
which went to regular school (the majority of them), we kept contacts with
the school, trying to keep at least a bi-annual visit, and to keep telephonic
contacts. In the present year (1997), as we began to follow the school
integration of blind children into Elementary School, we are making more
frequent visits to their schools (presently, one of the children does not
come to the group, and is followed only at the school).
RESULTS
General Trends
Trying a general retrospect
of the project, which was formalized in the model here described since
1995, we can identify the following results:
- preschool children: increase
in participation in group activities (e.g. verbal interaction with adults
and peers and more sharing during play); growing participation and comprehension
in games with simple rules, comprising concepts as forms, quantities, etc;
increase in attention and understanding during storytelling; beginning
of recognition of the days of the week (Sunday, Monday, etc.) and of the
days of the month (1,2,3, etc.); growing recognition of words and of some
letters (e.g. initial letters of the names of the members of the group);
the beginning of drawing and "signing" of their names; and the comparison
of quantities and the beginning of counting.
- alphabetization children
(at Elementary School): growing recognition of the days of the week, the
days of the month and of the months of the year; growing recognition of
words (mainly in the context of games like bingo or pairing cards (one
card with a word, the other card with the same word and the corresponding
picture), recognition of letters; counting and correct use of numerals
(1 to 10, 11 to 20, etc.). In most of the cases, there was also an increase
in their self-confidence.
The joint work between blind
and low vision children proved feasible, with the use of the materials
specially designed to this. However, for some specific tasks (for example:
familiarization with letters of the alphabet), we separated the children
in two subgroups. The techniques developed for joint work are being showed
to teachers in regular schools, as possible strategies to be used in their
work.
School integration
For most of the children
who were attending school since the beginning of their participation in
the program, their improvement in the group was paralleled by a corresponding
improvement in their school integration. This was visible for some preschool
children, as, for example, Mi, a boy who was excessively shy and who began
to participate in playground activities, to make demands (for example:
to be the first at a game) and to ask explanations about academic tasks
(for example: how to spell his name). Another example is Is, a girl with
a diagnosis of Bardet-Bield syndrome, with problems in the brain stem,
which affected her static and dynamic equilibrium, speech (a little trembling)
and motor coordination (difficulty in precise movements, such as required
for putting small pieces together). She is at a regular private preschool
which accepts some deficient pupils and, at the end of 1996, was enrolled
in a class for four years old children, although she was five. Now, she
is at the regular class for six years old children, due to her recent academic
progresses (which are more significant in reading abilities than in her
drawing, which is still not adequate to her age).
The least progresses are
being obtained for children who begin the Elementary School. The formal
demands are more strict than in preschool, the classrooms have too many
children (more than in preschool) and for the teachers it is more difficult
to give individualized attention for children with special needs. We are
trying to accomplish the main school tasks in our group, and, as far as
it is feasible, to ask the mother to collaborate with us (for example:
the mother of A, a boy, followed our guidance to improve his handwriting,
which was demanded by the school teacher).
One special case is E, a
blind boy who did not previously go to school, and who is having a good
social integration at the regular Elementary School. We have a good prognosis
of the case, although, in the academic side, we are observing some difficulties,
due to the present defective communication between his teachers (that is,
the teacher of the "resource class" for visually impaired, who stays at
one school, and the teacher of the regular class, at another school). This
boy was evaluated by our group as very self-confident and happy (always
making jokes), as well as interested in learning tasks, and he is showing
the same pattern at school. In the case of E, we considered that he did
not need to keep the participation in our group in the present year: our
present work is to make regular visits to his two teachers, trying to improve
the planning of activities which fulfill his special educational needs.
The other special case is
L, a blind boy with cognitive abilities similar to those of E, but not
motivated to school tasks. In his case, we are demanding that his mother
keeps bringing him at the group (and this is not ease, due to her lack
of motivation), and we are keeping contact with his school.
In bridging the gap with
the school, we feel that there is a great distance between the official
integration police and the concrete resources to enable it. We can demonstrate
the progresses of our children in the psychoeducational groups: this can
make easier their school integration, but does not fully guarantee it.
REFERENCES
BATISTA, C.G. (in press). Observação, registro e análise de dados em situação de intervenção psicopedagógica, Revista Brasileira de Educação Especial.
BATISTA, C.G. (1996). Promoting cognitive and linguistic development in children with subnormal vision. Abstracts: XIV Biennial Meetings of the International Society for the Study of Behavior Development (ISSBD), 361.
DANNA, M.F. & MATOS, M.A. (1982). Ensinando observação: uma introdução. S.P.: Edicon.
KRAMER, S. (coord.), PEREIRA, A.B.C., OSWALD, M.L.M.B. & ASSIS, R. (1991). Com a pré-escola nas mãos: uma alternativa curricular para a educação infantil. São Paulo: Ática.