Durkin Kim - TVI - Frederick County Public Schools, MD -- "Increasing Communication with Tactile Symbols and Familiar Objects" -- Field-initiated Mini-grant recipient presenation

1. Increasing Communication with
Tactile Symbols and Familiar Objects
Frederick County Public Schools Vision Team

2. Purpose
 Seamlessly integrate an additional form of communication
with the school wide Core Vocabulary initiative
 Increase knowledge of CVI across all stakeholders
 Create a more symbolic form of communication through
repeated exposure to a fixed and universal set of concrete
school symbols and objects across settings
 more concrete symbols through actual objects or parts of the
object on a black background or tactile symbols/words made with
crafts

3. Population
(8 students)
 Rock Creek School is a regional school in Frederick County with special
education programs for students with severe intellectual, physical, emotional,
hearing, visual and learning disabilities. The school services students from age
3 through the school year they reach 21. The students at Rock Creek School are
most often diagnosed with multiple disabilities
 All targeted students have been diagnosed with visual impairments (VI)
 Seven of the eight have a diagnosis of Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI)
 Three of the students with VI also have mild to profound hearing loss

4. Our plan
 Work with initiatives already in place at RCS
Mark Campano
 Be sure we were sensitive to the information he was sharing
High frequency abstract symbols using Boardmaker symbols
for communication
 Used core vocabulary words to develop a theme for our CVI room
Pathways Reading Program
 Added actual objects related to the story
Prescheduled Professional Development times
 Conducted a 2 hour PD with the assistants on March 13, 2017

5. Our Successes

6. More Successes

7. And some more…

8. Budget
 Materials for Workshop
 $350
 Objects: CVI room & Classroom Corners
 $200
 Objects for Books
 $100

9. Next Steps
 Continue to add actual objects to frequently used books
 Create a model CVI classroom
 Continue with school wide professional development and
collaboration
 Data collection
 Family PD

10. Kim Durkan
Kimberly.durkan@fcps.org