1. Early Intervention Preschool Conference
Everyone Participates and Learns: Strategies for Young Children with Sensory and Multiple Disabilities
Deborah Chen, Ph.D.
October 25, 2016
Early Intervention Preschool Conference
Montgomery, Alabama

2. Universal Design for Learning
Multiple means of engagement
- Ways to motivate child to attend and participate
Multiple means of representation
- Ways information is provided
Multiple means of action and expression
- Ways child shows that he/she is learning
(CAST, 2014)

3. Multiple Means of Engagement
Meaningful & motivating activities
Natural reinforcement
Task analysis
Flexible or partial participation
Prompts

4. Flexible or Partial Participation
Creating materials and devices
Adapting skill sequences
Using personal assistance
Adapting rules
Changing social attitudes
(Baumgart et al., 1982; Parette & Blum, 2014)

5. Multiple Means of Representation
Visual: pictures, gestures, actions, manual signs, print
Auditory: speech, home language, vocalizations, sounds
Tactile – touch, textures, shapes
Olfactory – associations with smell
Gustatory – associations with taste

6. Multiple Means of Action & Expression
Imitation
Action or gestures
Pictures
Speech or signs

7. Activity Plan: Mutliple Means Visual Auditory Tactile Other Engagement
Representation
Action & Expression

8. Dialogic Reading Strategies
PEER
Prompts to say something
Evaluates response
Expands response
Repeats prompt
What Works Clearinghouse, US Dept of Ed
CROWD
Completion prompts
Recall prompts
Open-ended prompts
Wh-prompts
Distancing prompts
wwc_dialogic_reading_ pdf

9. Means of Representation: Input Considerations
Use of available senses
- vision, hearing, tactile, kinesthesia/ movement
Comprehensible input
- Figure/ground (visual)
- Signal/noise (auditory)
- Matches child’s ability
- Meaningful context
- Use of scaffolds

10. Hierarchy of Responses to Sensory Stimuli
Awareness
Attention
Recognition
Discrimination
Comprehension
(Chen, 2014)

11. CUES
Touch cues: touching the child to let him/her know what’s about to happen or to encourage participation
Object cues: objects or parts of objects that provide concrete cues to help the child anticipate or request familiar activities. 11

12. Touch vs. Vision Vision Touch Distance sense Proximal sense
Can be eliminated
Provides immediate, holistic information
Touch
Proximal sense
Impossible to eliminate
Provides info on one aspect, requires synthesis of tactile images

13. Increased Exploratory Behavior
Objects that respond to actions
Materials or textures with complex surfaces
Novel or dissimilar objects or materials
(Dunst & Gorman, 2011)

14. Making Tactile Adaptations
Identify objective/concept of activity
Select materials to convey concept
Close eyes and tactilely explore materials
Decide how and what materials to present to student
Alphabet
Cards
Braille
Objects within child’s experience- Examples
A apple,ant
B ball, button, balloon
Z for zebra
Reading: What’s in my pocket
Marble, teddy, ball
Some concepts may not be able to adapt
General ed curriculum- basic concepts
Matching, sorting, color, size, shape
Same/different
Vocabulary
Math
One to one correspondence,
Number identification, matching, sequence
Letter recognition,

15. Effective Material Adaptations
Use real objects
Make objects easy to discriminate
Develop tactile alternatives for visual activities
Make materials easy to manipulate
Use adaptive equipment and technology
Plastic replicas do not provide same tactile and other sensory information
Fake apple vs real apple- orange
Parts that have holes, points, movement (slinky etc- Lili Neison)
Easy to explore and handle
Switches, velcro, non slip pad

16. Visual and Object Schedules: Step-by- step plan
Determine child’s sensory abilities
List activities in daily schedule
Identify key activities to represent
Decide how to represent activities
Create organization format
Plan how to introduce object schedule to child
Implement use of object schedule
Generalize use of object
Evaluate use of object schedule
Make adaptations as needed

17. Planning an Activity Practice from the child’s perspective
How will the activity be introduced?
How will the child participate?
What adaptations and supports are needed?

18. Evaluating an activity
What happened?
How did the child participate?
What did the child learn?
Changes for the next time?