Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Miss Sarah

Today during our Extended School year we were again working on eye gaze (she tends to be VERY quick with her responses!) We are trying to explain to her that next year in Kindergarten she will have new teachers, aides, & friends that want to know what she is saying/choosing. We are trying to work with her on holding her gaze.
We are working on letters - obviously the ones in her name during this picture - I found these great stick on/reusable letters at Staples!
We normally work with her in a chair but today we worked in her stander and it was fantastic!
Seriously....such an angelic face...if you only knew she was teasing Miss Sarah SO bad today!

5 comments:

The MacDonald Family said...

Kelly, I love when you post about eye gaze and learning on Brooklyns blog you have the greatest ideas! I'm heading to staples to pick up those letters!!

Annie likes to stand when she communicates too and same as Brooky she is VERY quick with her responses - her teachers are looking for a 3 second gaze and Annie's at about 1/15th or a second! We can see it but they can't. I love that her teachers are working on age appropriate things like learning the letters in her name - that's our battle right now! Thanks for the great tips!!

Anonymous said...

Tori eye gazes the same way! FAST! We are trying the same you will have new teachers so show off with long looks atleast til they get used to you argument also!!!
Hilary
Babysitter to Tori, 16, with Rett syndrome and her little brother Max, 6, with Down Syndrome

Anonymous said...

brooklyn is growing up so much, I love how well she is doing with her eye gaze. As for her teasing well our girls do it best xxx

Anonymous said...

Brooklyn was SUCH a tease to this Miss Sarah!!! I thought it was priceless how she would giggle when we called her out on it!! Those teachers are gonna LOVE her personality! Fun pics, shows how attentive she is :) XOXO Sarah

Kate said...

Hi. I am a special education teacher and I work a lot with eye gaze, including with Rett Syndrome, both high and low tech. A three to five second eye gaze hold time is frankly too long. I know SLPs and teachers will push for that long a time but it is too long. What is nore important than the long hold is the difference between visually scanning and selecting. In low tech aac the communication partner needs to know when something is being selected, thus a .10 second visual scan per location and a 1.0 second hold is fine. In high tech devices the "low" hold time setting is 1200 milleseconds or 1.2 seconds and the "high setting" is 1800 milliseconds or 1.8 seconds. I have had trouble teaching students, especially Students with Rett to use anything lower than a 2.3 second hold because there low tech training did not look at the difference between a visual scan and a hold time, instead focusing on a long hold time. The key is to observe how long it takes the student to look over what is on the board or screen and then determine how much longer you want the gaze held for selection. So a .15 second scan might meen a 1.5 second hold time. Adding a means of correction (a that's not what I meant symbol or a start over symbol) can help when using these faster hold times in low tech. Try using a low tech eye board with a partner for a bit, you will see that 3-5 seconds is a long time to stare a something on your board or screen. Feel free to email me at teechkidz at gmail dot com if you have any questions or want to talk (this includes commenters) or check out my blog at www.teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com and search for eye gaze or eye gaze tips. I hope this was a teeny bit helpful, I adore your blog and read it often. Kate