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Sensing & Learning: A Research-Based Approach for Learners with Significant & Complex Disabilities

Added Jul 18, 2025 •

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Presented by Stacey Chambers (TVI) on May 9, 2025. TN VIVA 2024-2025 Session Description: Sensing & Learning is a practical, collaborative approach that helps teams assess sensory efficiency, learning media, and present levels for students at the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development in order to effectively write IEP goals and plan meaningful instruction. Stacey Chambers, co-author of Sensing & Learning from APH, will share case study examples from her own students and share tips for implementing this approach.

Show Transcript

all right good afternoon everybody um this is Dr Alan hang with the Tennessee School for the Blind I will be your host today for today's uh Tennessee Vive or visual impairment Virtual Academy uh training um and so thank you everybody for joining us live uh for on this Friday so happy Friday everybody um for today's training we're very excited that we have a um a special guest speaker um Stacy Chambers who's a tvi out in uh Texas and she'll she'll tell us all about herself and her background um but we're really excited that Stacy is here today to speak about the sensing and learning guide book that is available through AP um many of you guys guys who are familiar with the field or um or adjacent to it have probably been aware of uh product known as the Sensory Learning kit or the SLK or maybe even beyond that I'm not that old so I do not know the exact name of the previous product to the SLK um but you know there have been some really cool um products and things in place before um that have allowed um our professionals to really stimulate and explore the sensory skills and develop them uh for kids uh who are who are uh visually impaired um who have uh simply different uh sensory means of accessing education and so um sensing and learning this guide book is a the next Evolution and how AP has approached um this process and Stacy is um amazingly the co co co-author there you go I'm searching for terms co-author of that book and so we are so privileged to have her speaking with us today about the guide book how to best use it who is for all of those things so um as we go I'm sure if you have questions please ask them in the chat I will bring them uh I'll briefly pause us to bring them up when appropriate um and there any other questions we can um help with just uh let us know but otherwise we're excited uh for today's training we're scheduled to go about 2 hours um and if you're here live 12 to 2 Central um trying to think if I'm leaving anything out uh let's see um Andrea were you going to be able to provide the link for people to request credits or um request the certificate otherwise I can pull that up as we go I don't think so I know Dr celeste's messaged me before here but she hadn't said anything particular yet all right let me see if I can't dig that up so nobody worry I will make sure we get that and if you would like to or planning to request is certificate or ACV credit for today's training uh just know that the opening code for today's session um is uh sensory sensory perfect and um I'll go ahead and get started I'm excited um I I would love to share my screen whenever you get a second um but I'm just grateful for everybody to be here on a Friday in May I know how how much is going on this time of year for teachers for parents I was just at a Powderpuff football game for my eighth grader and you know it's just all the things this time of year um and I know that Dr schles is at Vanderbilt graduation ceremony today so if she couldn't be here and when she told me about that uh I got a little sentimental in nostalgic because I realized that it was 15 years ago this month that I was graduating from that program um in visual disabilities at Vanderbilt and so I had to take a minute and walk down memory lane here this is 15 years ago me and my husband at the graduation ceremony at Peabody and it's just incredible to to realize how much has changed obviously how much um we've grown matured um but all the things um just personally and professionally um we moved to Texas right after graduation where we're both originally from and I've been an itinerant tvi outside of Dallas um for 15 years now and we have 2 daughters I have a daughter as I mentioned that's going to be starting high school so that's exciting and a little 1 um that'll be going into fourth grade but they certainly keep me busy outside of work and then just professionally you know in 15 years I think you have the ability to obviously learn and grow and and just develop areas of passion and interest that you can really dive into and and get your footing in in the field and I think that's such a a privilege it's 1 of the things I love most about this work is is finding those areas of passion so um it's fun for me to kind of celebrate uh some of the accomplishments that that I've been able to have most recently this past summer I published the book through the American printing house for the line the tools for tvis itinerant handbook and so this is really just a culmination of of what I think my philosophy in teaching my Approach really when it comes to uh the expanded curriculum and then how to serve students with multiple disabilities really our Focus today but how to do that in an itinerant model and do it well but kind of pulling all those pieces together in this book um was a really fun fun project for for me and then before that um being able to join with Millie Smith to to co-write the sensing and learning guide book and and manual and um it is an update to the sensor learning kit from the American printing house for the blind but really originated because when I started in my job in Coppell outside of Dallas I realized that a big portion of my case load were students with significant Visual and multiple disabilities and while I did get some good training on that at Vanderbilt it's 1 of those areas once you actually get in and you have a student and and it doesn't look like exactly like the 1 in the textbook you know back in in your program it's it's hard they're difficult to kind of figure out all the intricacies and complexities of their certain situations so we ended up inviting Millie Smith to come do a training for my team in my district and then we ended up partnering with her on research study where we actually were trying to measure the impact of instructional routines and the sensing and learning approach with the students in my schools and so we partnered with her we ended up publishing that research in the Journal of visual impairments blindness in 2020 and then she asked me to help her with this update and just getting to do that was such an honor I've learned so much she's just been an incredible mentor to me um so obviously that's why I'm here to share what I've learned and and my goal today is that I can kind of share some of these tools that will give you real confidence in your role in supporting these students with complex needs and visual impairments that you're working with and then um you'll be able to find me and connect with me later through the ECC and me um I have a newsletter and a membership where I just try to build community around supporting these students and doing the work that we do in this field and I told you that I I was getting a little sentiment mental and nostalgic just thinking about 15 years um since I've graduated and been in the field so I thought I'd start off just by sharing some of my words of wisdom things that I've learned um in the field and and particularly as I'm thinking about these students that we're going to be talking about today uh with visual multiple disabilities are real um Learners with these extra complex needs but number 1 is that No 1 on the team is going to be more passionate about the expanded Core Curriculum than you and this is just in general My Philosophy when it comes to the expanded Core curriculum for all of our students on our case load whether you're a tvi or o&m or behavior specialist a parent if you know and love and report a student with a visual impairment and you know about the ECC I think it's our job to set the tone for the passion and energy that we bring behind it um and that we're just an advocate for that with our students with our teams that we're always thinking and driving towards our expanded core goals and then number 2 connection over Perfection and again I think this goes for all of the students on our case load that we're working with um you know I have a little bit of a type A personality and I am focused on our IEP goals and I want to be seen progress continually I I expect you know a great deal of perfection out of my own self and and my students but just remembering that that connection is more important for the long run um with our students just building that personal relationship with them um getting to know what they love uh what motivates them that's going to take gets further in the long run and and that certain goes for our students with multiple disabilities as well and then also with the members of our team today we're going to be talking a lot about the the multidisciplinary teams that we work with and the view of that collaboration and so just remembering that that prioritizing our connection with 1 another and our teammates and the work that we're doing over the Perfection of you know we need to do it this way or this is exact right way you know really prioritizing that connection is really important so these are um 2 things that that I find really important in my work um that I've certainly kind of developed a philosophy for over the past 15 years and then last Li another word that wisdom is wwmd what would Millie do and I always joke about this with my team because again Millie has been such a a teacher and a mentor to me um hopefully you know of Millie Smith and her work she is pretty much you know 1 of the main experts in our field for working with students with Visual and multiple disabilities and again what a privilege it's been for her to work with my team and our research and and the book um and you know she's she's taught me pretty much everything I know about this work I still talk to her I still call her um she's passed the torch to me to do these trainings and and carry along her work and I still find myself in moments when I'm working with team and and working with my students with with multiple disabilities and I think you know what would Millie do you know I come back to that and I'll tell you the things that she's taught me about this work and what she would do is she would remember always that every student can learn and so I think that's really important too as we we begin to kind of enter into these conversations about the students on your case load with the most significant physical and cognitive disabilities that even when we're faced with those challenging kiddos that that feels like maybe we're not going to see progress she will remind you every child can learn and it's our job to to kind of open up that opportunity and that's what we're here for so I always remind myself of that um and then the second thing that she always reminded us of is that when we know better we do better and so that's what I appreciate about every 1 of you being here today because it's impossible in the work that we do we have a case load probably of kiddos with such varying needs you know from high-end technology you know all the way to CVI and and all these types of things that we have to sort of become many experts on in our work and again we can't be perfect at everything but the more we learn the more we understand the more we stretch ourselves to to think about what is the the most recent research say how can we do our job um looking for opportunities to grow as a professional and with our students you know that's just such a great step and so she's very encouraging in that way and and I'm encouraged by all of you here and and all of you catching the recording later that's how we grow and learn and and make an impact for our students so today I am focusing on this sensing and learning approach and so as an overview again this approach is a way to assess and teach the students on our case loads with the most significant needs these are our students in this sensory motor stage of cognitive development that early this stage 0 to 2 cognition and so we're really going to be thinking about how do we figure out what skills they have and what they need to work on and then how do we teach them those skills so on the screen you'll see kind of 5 Main I think kind of key points that are going to be our takeaways today from this sensing and learning Workshop is really understanding the sensory motor stage what are we looking for for these students in this stage of development then we're going to be focusing on instruction and that is all about a routines based approach sensing and learning is all about using instructional routines to Target specific skills to see our students make progress part of that is find motivating learning media so we're going to be talking about how do we find the things that are really going to help our students engage so that we can kind of unlock that engagement and look for progress we're going to really focus on individualized accommodation that they need to be successful and then we're going to do it all in a collaborative way so we're really going to be bringing all of these key pieces together today okay so our first stop is is really talking about this sensory motor stage and again um kind of taking us back to our child development courses and thinking about PJ stages of development PJ is this has been around forever but it's really still our gold standard for understanding the cognitive stages and so just kind of as a recap this this uh visual here kind of represents these different stages starting at the sensory motor stage there's a baby and uh they're holding on to a a glass of water in a high chair and they're just interacting with the water they're just holding it probably if this is a live view we know they would be splashing in the water you know putting it on their mouth and um dumping it over off the side of the the high chair right their job their developmental level here is just interacting with that cup of water that is what they do the next stage is the pre-operational stage 2 to 7 years development and you see there's a little thought bubble with a water droplet and that's just kind of reminding us that it's not until that pre-operational stage that they're really starting to make the symbolic connection between exploring the object and then having a way to represent that symbolically so this is important as we're thinking about the types of students we're working with and what kind of skills we're looking for and teaching it's really that early foundational stage of just attending and exploring and interacting with objects so we have a good base of understanding and and concept development in order to be able to represent that symbolically once we get to that point and then the other stages we have concrete operational stage where they're kind of comparing and and making you know comparisons between different sizes of cups of water and then formal operations more sophisticated you know contemplating whether that cup of water is half empty or half full right so these are the stages of development um that students grow and build upon um to move through their development but again today we're really talking about that sensory motor stage the earliest stage of development and it has age ranges here but we know that we're really talking about student at any chronological age that we might have on our case load that our functioning cognitively in that 0 to 2 range so 1 of the things that I think is really brilliant about the book is that but what Millie does is she breaks down the sensory motor stage into zones and what this does is really helps us identify the types of skills our students are working on within this big bigger overarching page because we know that many of our students they might be in this stage for quite a long time and on some of our you know assessment checklists that we might have um for typically developing children we see these checklists and and that sensory voter stage you know we're not seeing a lot of progress we're not seeing a lot of growth but we know that in reality we do see some things that they're doing differently or the ways that they're engaging in different ways so it's sensing and learning does is it gives us more micro skills within 3 different zones so that we can really pinpoint where our students are and really move them forward through this path through the sensory motor stages um so we're going to kind of break down what each of these zones looks like and and what what you might be able to do to recognize these types of skills and behavior in your students um because really understanding the zones is the foundation to understanding this approach because it's important that as we get to know and work with our students we're able to pinpoint where are they and that helps us give a good indication of what skills we want to work on so we have to know where they are in order to know where to go so first thing I want to talk about is an extended state and you'll notice that on this original slide extended state is kind of off to the side it's not a Zone um but it is something that we notice or might be able to observe in our students and it's more of a biobehavioral state okay it's not a set of skills but it's something that we might recognize when we're interacting with our students these are students that are um they're fussy they're agitated uh often they're asleep drowsy just really difficult to alert or difficult to engage um I know that often you know I work with teams or even in my own District I'll go um to teachers and I'll I'll hear them saying you know they're just I can't get them to look at anything I can't get them to react to anything they just sleep all the time or they get really upset and I'm struggling for them to do this activity or this routine so really understanding that that type of reaction and that type of you know lack of interaction is something that we can name and we can kind of qualify that and that is called an extended state and our biobehavioral states just to give a little context you know these are things that we all experience and go through throughout our day you know maybe we're tired maybe we're hungry um and as you know an adult um who is is able to sort of have some strategies to regulate those States you know I know I can go grab a cup of coffee if I'm feeling drowsy or get up and walk around or I can you know go grab a bite to eat to kind of help myself navigate through these this these different states our students with complex physical you know often a lot of complex medical things going on internally this is a struggle for them to do on their own already and so that is probably why we're seeing students in these extended States it's important that we're able to recognize when we see them because we kind we can't really Force learning to happen while they're here um they're not in a state that is that is available for learning so we need to be able to see and recognize when we when we notice our students in an extended States and then have some strategy in some ways that we can pull them out of that so that we can begin to learn so when we see our students in an extended state it's important that we really get all of our team players on board to really talk about are there some external factors going on here um that might be contributing to these extended States is the environment you know maybe over stimulating uh for them is there a lot going on here or the are the lights shining in their eyes are if they're laying on their back right what are some things that we can really look about about environmentally um to see if there's things going on um are people moving them quite a bit or touching them in ways without you know giving them some notice are there things going on internally that might be contributing are they on some different medications you know maybe they are not sleeping well at night so how can we kind of get some information about what might be going on internally as well and then what we can do is really think about what is in our control are there ways that we can control the environment when we're when we're getting ready to to do a routine and then we can build an instructional routine to slowly teach attention we need to pull them out of that extended state in a very controlled intentional way and that would be through an instructional routine where we're we're working on building attention on a person an object or an action and we're going to talk about that later but the first thing is just to be able to know those kiddos that you see that are fussy agitated um difficult to engage likely they're an extent in an extended state and that might be their present level right now of their current overall function ing okay and so the next we're going to talk about really the first Zone the first level of skills within the sensory motor stage and this is called the attention Zone these are the student students that you know you might go work with and they are you know attentive they are um alerted to you know some different things that you bring you might bring you know the pom poms or um some light up toys or even just your voice are are the way that you're you know talking to them or um moving them in on the mat and the floor and they're looking at you or they're they're listening to the music or the sounds that you're bringing to them um they're ready to learn and they are they're available to you for some interaction but they're maybe not doing a whole lot yet in terms of initiating uh interaction with objects or people or actions they're they're attentive they're alert they're engaged and and that is their current level I'm sure you can kind of think of some students maybe that you work with that are at this Zone um I think a lot about on my case load of students where oftentimes kids with pretty um uh complex physical needs that don't have a lot of ability to to move or interact or reach and engage with toys they can often sort of get stuck here in the attention Zone because alert and they're paying attention to what other people are doing but we're not seeing a lot of initiation yet the important thing to know about the attention zone is that this is a skill this is a skill for a lot of our students thinking about those kids in the extended state being able to to kind of take away everything that might be going on internally and and the things going on externally and being able to focus our attention on an object or a person or action that's hard work for some of them right and so this is a skill that we can teach and it's also a skill that we can recognize as a strength so this is really what this sensing and learning approach is about is knowing the skills and in these kiddos being able to say you know we might not be seeing a lot of initiation or exploration yet but wow what great attention skills we have look at the way that they're able to tend to an object for 30 seconds or a minute or 5 minutes right that's a skill that we can celebrate and we can also build on so for my students you know that are in an extended state I have an IEP goal that is to maintain attention on an object for a minute right and so that was really kind of groundbreaking for me to think about early on in this process because once I realized you know this is a skill worth teaching and worth focusing on so much so that I can write a whole IEP goal on that was really kind of liberating for me and my team because we knew there are some kids to really need to spend time working on this and so to be a be able to really focus our energy towards that and build it um was really empowering for us because we knew that without these skills there wasn't going to be a a whole lot of learning happening Beyond we had to establish strong attention level skills first so when we're working on attention level skills here are some things that we can think about we want to build routines and again we're going to talk a lot about that later but we're going to build routines to extend that attention and expand it right so we're either kind of getting it getting that attention skills started or we can build and expand it we need our students to be able to hang with us within an interaction so that we can build new skills beyond that the other important thing is that we need to really clarify within the team what does attention look like for each individual kiddo and this can be 1 of the more challenging Parts especially when we have kids who don't have a whole lot of usable Vision we can't always rely or look for vision to be our clue that they're paying attention we have to sometimes do some some more collaboration and kind of investigative work to say you know what does attention look like for this kiddo if you know maybe they're only able to visually attend to an object for a second or 2 but we can tell that they're listening because they're smiling or they're reacting or maybe they're moving their body a little bit or mouth movement what does attention look like and how how can we kind of measure that so that we can begin to grow and expand that skill I know I had a student um on my case load who she had uh quite a lot of medical things going on and we really struggled to know you know is she honestly like is she asleep or is she attending because we know we would kind of debate back and forth sometimes during some different activities and um at 1 point I remember her nurse kind of chiming in in our conversation and saying well I can tell when she's paying attention because her heart rate increases um and so we can kind of see that on some of her her machines or even her breathing rate right so when I when I mentioned you know we have to get creative and and and really specific about what does attention look like we can even be talking about those very minor minor things as well so again just as a team um thinking about what is attention look like and then also what conditions are necessary for that attention to really take hold and to be able to expand are we noticing that our students are really good at paying attention when we have this highly controlled environment and all those CVI accommodations set up um with certain materials are very attentive and other things that they're not so we want to really pay attention to those specific details so that as we're we're writing an instructional routine we we set it up for Success because what we're trying to do is is build on this strength and then once we have this attention kind of a established and we're expanding it and we're growing it that's when we begin to teach the next Zone which is expiration so again these these zones are moving us through the sensory motor stage and the First Foundation is attention without it we're probably not going to get a whole lot of exploration because if we're not paying attention to objects we're probably not interested in exploring them but exploration is really kind of the main work of our sensory motor stage and we know this because you know any of us who've been around babies and kids that are 0 to 2 you know that is what they're doing that is what they're interested in they are grabbing everything putting it in their mouth shaking it banging it doing everything with it because they're just interested in getting as much information about the things in their environment in the world around them and so it's such an important important skill in the sensory motor stage expiration can look different you know for everybody especially if you don't have a whole lot of physical abilities or if you have some restrictions there with how much you can move move your body's in these ways but when we think about kind of what is exploration I want you to think about that it is really the initiation of the interaction with objects so kind of reframing it in our in our heads of you know it's not necessarily the ability to grasp an object or you know shake an object or bring it to their mouth right we know that all of those skills are not available to all of our students just based on their physical needs but we're really looking for the initiation of that movement the cognitive understanding that hmm there's a thing there that looks really cool and interesting or sounds really cool and interesting and I want to I want to get more information about that so I need to initiate some movement towards it um or maybe something's placed under my hands and I'm going to in initiate some movement side to side to get some some tactual input there about what it's all about so we're really looking for kiddos who are making intentional initiation movements to interact with objects and again that's something that we're going to be assessing for as we observe our students interacting with objects but also you know we can recognize it and we can teach it so really kind of understanding that this is what we're moving our kids to do um we can recognize it as a current skill and a strength um and then it's also something we can teach to those kiddos who aren't doing it yet um um another thing that we see at the expiration zone is just that understanding of cause and effect so we see this a lot with with students who have you know fun led up to Waze or sound toys and we see them like they know I'm gonna hit you know that that button and it's going to light up and do some cool stuff so just that cause and effect interaction that's a skill that we're looking for in the exploration Zone and it's a skill we can teach in the expiration Zone and it's a really a critical skill if we're thinking about moving on and teaching more kind of higher level communication systems or things like that we need to see and understanding of cause and effect first and um just kind of on that note I do think it's important that if we have a student that we're teaching those skills and the expiration Zone that that cause and effect is best taught through body to object interaction right rather than necessarily the switches and we can talk about that later but I'm a big fan of teaching kiddos cause and effect through their body making an interaction with the actual the actual object um because they're getting also that input back from from that thing so the musical instruments that they can you know bells that they can ring or Chimes that they can hit or drum that they can bang um real things that they learn my body can interact with a thing and make something happen and so again something we can see our students already doing and celebrate as a skill to build from or a skill that we can teach and just as a reminder this is another Millie ISM but the more mental than motor is a real big 1 as we're thinking about the exploration Zone because again we're talking about the cognitive skill of understanding cause and effect or exploration not necessarily the ability to execute every single action so you know as we move our students through the cognitive stage we're really looking for their intent and their understanding of what they can do and how they can interact with objects rather than you know expecting them to be able to execute every single skill and so we can we can look for that um and really settle settle and minor ways and we really want to be the folks on the team that are championing that idea um because we just know that some of our kids are not going to have the physical ability to do all the things um but we're looking to move them through the cognitive stage of understanding that um that it can be done so for our kids in the expiration Zone some things to think about as we teach and expand on these exploration skills big 1 I know you all know this is preaching to the choir but the hand and your hand guidance to teach exploration is going to be key for these kids um and again I think as as Vision Vision professionals we're really the champions of this idea um we we need to really advocate for it if we see it with our students because we're trying to teach them that their body can make something happen with an object and then we're also trying to give them an opportunity to get some sensory feedback back from that object they're going to feel something and learn something about it and so the way that the brain works is that in order to get the most Bang from your buck in that interaction it's best done when initiated um and controlled by the individual so if we can use hand in her hand guidance to bring um our students hand to an object and kind of um show them how to move you know along an object side to side and then pause we can wait and see if there's some initiation right from them just even some minor movement even just a little bit of movement initiated by the student that's going to give them more input back than from us taking their hand and showing them you know all around the object um or or kind of sort of doing it for them um so something just to really think about again as we think about the point of this expiration the the value of that object to body interaction and the fact that we're teaching them that their body is in control and it's really best taught through that hand underhand guidance we're going to be using routines again to expand expiration maybe you guys can relate but I have a few students who are um pretty good at like 1 exploration strategy like if you give them it doesn't matter what object you give them it's either going to go straight to their mouth and they're getting lots of good input there you know nothing wrong with that um but they don't have a lot of other tools in their their toolbox for getting different types of information um or maybe I have 1 student who no matter what it was it just what he would hold it and he would hit it and so that was like 1 thing and again really great that he has ability to do some expiration there's so much more we can learn about objects by exploring them in different ways so we can teach different ways to to explore and then as we're moving through that exploration Zone we are going to begin teaching very specific functions of objects so once we have exploration skills we'll move on to that next zone of function I do want to touch for a minute on a couple key expiration Zone type things that I think are really important um you'll if you spend any time with me or or come to more of these workshops you'll know I I just think exploration is so important uh for our students not only our students with multiple disabilities but but all all of our kiddos with visual impairments because they need that tactile uh opportunity to to interact and and get that hands-on experience with real objects but through the process of sensing and learning I learned about what Millie calls exploration schemes and procedures and if you have the book um there is a an appendix on page 224 that really goes through a series of exploration scheme names and procedures and there are things like um grasping banging shaking throwing stacking taking apart putting together um there there are different strategies of of exploring and I I love looking at that list and I'll share it with you um on a later slide but it's really nice to kind of see those to kind of guide you as you teach students these different ways to explore and then expiration procedures are way specifically that students are getting information about tactile attributes so um you know they're learning by going side to side on an object they're learning the texture um if they're holding an object in their hand like closing it in their hand they're learning the size if they're holding it they're feeling the weight right so there's a lot of different ways our students are going to be able to get information about objects um and important ways for building their Concepts so I think this is just a really important area a great point to to connect with our occupational therapists who who love that opportunity to explore and use our hands in different parts of our bodies to get information and then again just another point with the hand underhand guidance it's um just a great segue into understanding how to teach exploration through tactile modeling and so I just wanted to share another great resource it's the tactile strategies for children who have visual impairments and multiple disabilities from AFB press it's um an older texts but it has some great visuals and information about how to use hand underhand to teach these exploration schemes and procedures so in our routines we can have steps where we're actually showing a student how to squeeze a ball right their hand is under ours um and so I mean our hand is under theirs and so we're squeezing and they're feeling the the physical movement that our hand is making so that they can kind of replicate and copy that example as well and so it's just an important thing to think about especially for our students who aren't able to visually see the ways that we are exploring objects this is our this is our way to show them um so that they can have an opportunity to imitate that that skill okay gonna go on to the last Zone and then I'll I'll stop and ask some make sure there's no questions or just kind of hear from you all in terms of these zones if this is something that um you're able to kind of connect with in your work with kiddos um but this is the final zone of the sensory motor stage and that is the function Zone so once our students are able to maintain attention on an object and then we see them initiating Exploration with objects in a variety of ways then we can begin to see them maybe showing us an understanding of what specific objects are for so this is when you know you give a student a a brush and maybe at the expiration stage they're banging the brush on the table or putting it in their mouth again very important skills that they're working on in practicing but at the function Zone if you my hairbrush maybe they put it towards their head or actually use it um or maybe if you're holding it they move their head towards it so they're showing us that they are actually understanding what that object's purpose is for um other ways to kind of put that same idea as to call it means end or tool use to really understand certain objects are used as a tool uh for a very specific outcome and so these are things again that we can teach through routines as as we're using objects for their specific purpose and then at the function Zone this is also where we start to see really early symbol recognition so we're starting to see connection between okay I see the symbol and I have an idea that it's connected to a particular routine or activity and so this is really exciting because we've moved through that sensory motor stage and we're starting to see some of the skills coming together again during our assessment period we might assess and find that our students are here they're at the function Zone and this is our present level but for some of our kids and expiration these are the types of skills that we're going to be focusing on in our instruction so when we're teaching function level skills we are making routines that are specifically teaching the function of the objects I have a picture of a blender here it's a perfect example of um you know really showing them that there's a there's different steps you know we're going to scoop some some fruit and put it in the the blender and then we're going to turn the blender on and we're going to have this tasty treat right there's a real specific um purpose and and different tools that we're going to use to get that outcome also at the function Zone we can work on skills like turn-taking and really begin to to look for symbols and how to expand the use of symbols object schedules are a great thing to to work on I encourage teachers to to use object symbols at any Zone within the sensory motor stage just you know whether they're attending to it whether they're exploring the symbol but at the function level we really start to see a connection being made between that symbol and the um and the activity or the routine and so I just think that at this function Zone that's a really great place to make sure that um that consistency is there and that we're looking for the connection so there's a picture here of a teacher and a kiddo and she's presenting an object symbol in a little black now container from AP okay so next we're going to kind of talk about some of the ments in sensing and learning and how to kind of look for their present level what zone are they in but I'd love to pause and just kind of hear from you in terms of um how you're thinking about these different zones that we just went through um for some of you whether this is kind of a new way to think about uh the sensory motor stage skills or if this is something you're familiar with if you're familiar with the book or the Sensory Learning kit this is um something you probably thought of before um but just kind of curious from from you all if this is this is helpful if it's new just any thoughts that you might have on on zones and how this might help you in your practice with kids you can kind of put it in for us yeah don't be shy guys such such good uh such good information I really love saving myself how it you know can really help people organize how to direct their attention themselves as Educators in in kind of surveying where a student is and I'm really excited about this upcoming assessment section of the presentation um comes in thinking about so many past and current students in each of these zones very helpful awesome thank you anyone else any questions about a Zone I know what I'm gonna kind of show a few videos um here in a little bit to kind of paint the picture for you um of what some of these skills might look like as you think about you know doing an assessment with a student what are we looking for but honestly you know just understanding those zones and thinking about the skills in a different way if you don't take anything else from this this Workshop I think thinking about that as you approach your students that you're working with will help you see it in a different way I can't tell you how many times earlier on in my career um you know you do you get called in there there's teams of kids or teams of teachers kind of talking about kids and IEP goals and what should we teach and sometimes I feel like you know there's just a lot of guessing that goes on um of like well we could we could try some symbols right or we could what about you know a functional routine for the blender and so everybody's doing the best that they can with these with these ideas but understanding the zones gives us a more clear Direction because if we have a student who's in extended States and we're going to try to teach the blender routine we may not see a lot of progress because that doesn't that's just a little too far beyond their current level but if we start with attention and builds kind of sequentially on those skills the idea is that we're going to see the progress much more quickly times in in the chat um I always just like you're saying Stacy I always think about how many students are being pushed and expected to use symbols when they aren't clearly not ready right and so organizing our efforts of understanding where student is um with that Readiness to then know what is appropriate versus you know jumping straight to the blender um Shannon also adds this is new for me the difference between the extended state and the attention Zone how to get students out of extended state is a question I have yes and we're definitely going to talk about that um and you know when you say that too I just think about so many times you know early in my career and I would go to see these kiddos on my case load and I'd have a bag of things um and I would just try everything right like I just was like if I could just get them to like look at this light up toy you know then I've done my job I've gotten gotten their attention for a second and not that there was anything wrong with that but having routine sorry if y'all hear my dogs I think somebody just knocked on the door I'm so sorry um but you know having the structure around building some routines to intentionally build that attention is what we're going to be looking for and again moving them through those zones I also actually had a great conversation um this morning with Robin Clark if any of you know her she's like 1 of the ECC my uh ECC soulmate um we always say but um she and I were talking about what do high expectations look like for kids with complex needs and I think sometimes people misunderstand that by you know maybe working on symbols or communication devices or things like that thinking my expectations are high for them I I believe they can do this and um the way that I see it is I do believe they can do that so I'm going to teach them the skills they need at the level that they're at to move them towards that to me that's having high expectations because I'm not just arbitrarily like throwing something to them and hoping that they're going to absorb it I'm teaching them in an intentional um way to build this skills from where they're at and that's what we do for all kids right and we're going to kind of talk about about that a little bit too with that scaffolding from their present level uh to where we want them to be so we're going to start just thinking about present level present level and sensing and learning thinking is what zone are they in right now in most of their interactions when they're engaged with a person or they're you know engage in an activity that's something they generally like how do they interact with people and objects and actions are they attending are they exploring are they showing us function and so what the uh assess now I will say in sentencing and learning there's a lot of different assessment forms there's a lot of different things that you can pull from and do I'm going to kind of simplify it today just for our kind of time sake so that we can move through but um I think if you have have kind of this basic understanding and then go back to the book you'll see how the additional tools can just support this idea but for the purposes of present level we are going to do some observations of our students engaged in some some things that they like right like we don't want to observe them during you know while they're being changed or something and expect them to be functioning at their highest level or you know when they're at the gym during a School wide pep rally like I'm not probably going to see their true engagement level so I'm going to be talking with the team to say what are some good times of the day or activities that we can come observe and and look for our students engagement and just kind of as a side note I as I'm doing these observations I highly recommend videotape for that um just because I think it's so helpful for the team to kind of come back later and look at those videos of our students and how they're engaging I think you can sometimes see more um see different things and when you're just in the moment and again it kind of leads towards good collaboration as well not just um you know in the moment this is what I saw but so if if we're looking at it live great if we're looking at videos even better and we're going to take our notes on this uh document here where we're just kind of going um minute by minute or kind of interaction by interaction and noting what zone are we seeing and we're just going to code that attention exploration function or extended state and so we're just kind of going down on each observation you know through those different activities what we what we're seeing and it by minute and then we're going to describe what that looks like for that student so you know maybe they're attending because they're um you know SM styling and reacting to the music that you're playing what is that uh response look like and then you're going to make some notes about what does the media look like what are you presenting to them at that time what are you doing that got that response and so that's going to be really helpful later when you're coming back to say you know are there things that gosh that really got a strong positive reaction or hmm I noticed every time you know we moved their body they kind of went into an extended state so that's going to be kind of helpful information to pull out later and then the last column are the conditions so you'll also write down anything that's like kind of a Environmental Factor um you know just especially if it's leading towards a particular level of response so um we're really going to be looking for those standouts of like whoa every time you know the lights turn off the student goes into an extended state or vice versa or maybe the position that they're in you know whether they're laying down on a mat or they're standing in a walker or um sitting in a in a wheelchair whatever that is we want to make note of that um because this is our present level observation form but as I mentioned there's some other tools that kind of go back and pull that specific information so there's like a um positioning um summary and and some different things where you can really pull out that specific information to help guide the team towards you know really discovering what helps our students be successful and what is going to set them up for failure and and I think it's important because when we talk about students at this level with with these complexities of needs it it really does come down to sometimes these very specific accommodations or conditions um and we really want to do everything we can when we're providing instruction through the routines to set them up for Success um we know that you know the whole day isn't going to really be the perfect condition conditions for them but when we're teaching a new skill um for kiddos at this level we really want to to know what's going to work best so to me I think the present level assessment is pretty simple because you're just observing you're just observing them in in regularly occurring interactions and you're you're just taking notes about what zones you're in and then at the end you're just gonna tally it all up you know do a little bit of math and say you know the majority of the time was spent and the attention Zone and that's our present level or the exploration Zone whatever it is you're just looking for where we mostly uh spending our time what do most of our interactions look like that's going to give you an indication of where they're currently at and point you in the direction of where you want to go show just a couple videos these are these are real students um that our kiddos that I've worked with with other teams I've been doing some different trainings um throughout the country over the past couple years working with teams that will take some case study video and we'll really break down that together and so I like using these just because I think it's it's nice to see I think we can all relate to kiddos um that we see and think about kids on our own case load list so I'm going to show this video um of a student and working with her teacher with some jello on a tray and what I want you to do is just think about what zones do do you see her her displaying and and maybe what her present level would be if you had maybe completed that um assessment so we're just going to take a look at that um and I can this some of these are not um captioned so I'll kind of describe um a little bit of what I'm seeing as well just in case anybody needs that so the teachers kind of scooping out some Jello onto a tray and the student is looking at her so I see some attention and then she takes her hand and is uh putting it in the jello and her mouth a little bit this that was a big phone for a sweet girl she's looking at the jello watching the teacher use the little shovel she's eating the jello it thinks I'm still driving it thinks I'm still driving it says safe driving yes so the teacher is trying to um show her that she can use that shovel to kind of scoop the jello she kind of bangs it and puts it in her mouth a little bit so what are some things um that you all see what what zones are you noticing um with this little 1 and and her jello when we broke it down um with the team you know we looked at a lot of this really closely you know kind of getting nitpicky about every interaction obviously she has some good attention um on the objects and the jello she's she's pretty quick to initiate some exploration so we're seeing a lot of Exploration with her hands and the jello and putting in her mouth um and then her teacher was wondering and later in the video I'm not going to show the whole thing but she tries to introduce some different little tools of playing with the jello and scooping it and so we don't see a a lot of understanding of of those different tools so um Terry that's kind of where we were at we're we're somewhere between expiration and function she kind of maybe is using the shovel as a spoon we weren't sure that could be of a function level skill um what we decided as a team we ended up um having her at exploration as her present level with emerging function level skills so that was really helpful um again we watch several different uh activities with her interacting with some different types of objects and materials and and tallied up all those scores of what we saw to get to that um but kind of similar interactions to this and what that did was really helped our team be able to not only write a beautiful plastic statement because we're able to really describe her ability to to initiate interaction with objects and describe what that looks like for her and then some emerging skills that we're seeing in function and then what that did was guide us right towards the types of IEP goals that we we knew we needed to work on for her so it really helped to make sure that we were headed in the right direction of teaching her some new skills I know we talked about it just a minute ago but you know I think it's just so common that we get sort of stuck too with kids not only sometimes do we teach kids maybe too high but sometimes we just continue to work on the same thing with a kid for for too long and so for this little 1 we really wanted to make sure that we could teach her some function level skills really intentionally teaching her how how to use that shovel to scoop the Jell-O onto the plate could we teach her how to use that what are some other routines that we could use to teach her uh those function level skills so that was really helpful for us and determining um where her present level was and where we needed to go and with that present level document we're able to kind of include those percentages and include that in some of our paperwork as well and so I think that's helpful too for parents um and for teams to see you know we're basing these decisions off of of data and and what we see in the way she's interacting with objects okay this next 1 is Elsie um LC is using some Bells with her teacher you fix your voice is your foot it's me then what do you all think about Elsie what do you see she is um listening to some music on her iPad her teacher has some bells on her foot and the teacher kind of helps her shake her foot to make the bells ring and then pauses and waits for Elsie to initiate um some movement and you do actually see a little bit of movement in her foot and so then the teacher kind of rings the bells for her um and so this this is 1 you know I think too as you're you're having I see a lot of good attention for Elsie as well um and kind of a side note here this this routine kind of came after a little bit I think this was not her present level assessment that we did but you know Elsie was hard because she didn't have a lot of intentional movement um that the team was able to observe at first it wasn't sure what to look for in terms that and so we played around a little bit with with where and and how we were going to start to see that but also just being able to recognize that Elsie's attention was strong she was looking towards her teacher um she doesn't give a lot of facial expression to know her responses but it's there um her eyes are opening she's moving she's looking towards the teacher especially when she's she's maybe wanting some more bells to ring or thinking about ringing the Bells on her own and so um she was kind of similar to the other we had her as her present level was attention was some emerging exploration and so we really wanted to kind of work on on expanding her exploration skills and continuing to to get her to move her body to make some some effects some things happen with some of the objects in her environment any questions about Elsie all right and then this last 1 is Payton the teachers telling her to go check her schedule so she's walking over towards an object schedule what's first it's time for Joy there she drives grabs a little cartridge and walks towards the joy player got a thing in that was so she might already be anticipating I'll help you you're ready ready can you help me put it in but in here she get in there but she's kind of placing it sort of towards where it goes now you can just play this month as you'll see we um forgot to turn it on that's why it's not starting so it'll turn on turn it off oh it's probably not on watch um just like when you watch her the song is playing okay I'm going to pause there um hopefully you're able to see you know when we are observing Payton here we see definitely some strong function level skills um she is recognizing a symbol moving to the location of where uh familiar routine is taking place she's kind of understanding this cartridge is going to um you know get get me some music she's trying to press play um definitely some good expiration her teacher is working on some turn-taking in this routine with the Shaker and and trying to teach her um kind of more specifics of the function of This Joy player so in terms of a present level at this point we do see patents a function level and that's also important for the team to know um because we don't want to get stuck here to either we want to um make sure to continue building her interaction with objects through different routines expanding in those function level skills but um our team with her is ready to move on to some of those higher level uh symbol systems and move more towards that pre operational level so in sensing and learning we're really trying to see where they're at currently how are they interacting with objects people and actions what zone are they in and that is guiding us towards where where we're going um with our instruction and it's pretty um simple in my my perspective of in terms of different assessments you can do um you know don't have to tell Millie this but you know she's a little bit more um particular about the forms and I'm not I'm like okay our main goal here is to figure out what zone are they in so that we know what to teach them so so kind of however you take the approach in terms of these forms and the different tools the main goal here at present level assessment is determine what zone they're in so that that points us towards where to teach and so on that I have have to just make a note about why we do this just to kind of give you um just a little encouragement of of the point behind that behind it is just focused on this zone of proximal development idea that I know we all learned about in our teaching degrees this is based off of tried and true teaching methodology of vati vygotsky and the zone of proximal development so there's this kind of chart here and again this is exactly what we were talking about um with the comment in the chat as well we need to make sure we're teaching the right skills so that we make progress we have the blue 2 little circle says z a d and this is where we are doing something that is way too easy and is not engaging and they're bored and so we're not going to see progress because they're bored they're not learning something new um it's kind of unproductive it's kind of same old same old and then in the yellow is too far beyond its fresh frustrating it's kind of too far beyond a skill that they're able to get and learn and use independently and so our Focus needs to be right in between there in The Sweet Spot the zone of proximal development and this is an activity that we truly expect them to be able to get and to learn so it's just beyond their current level of understanding their current point of present level just beyond that into the zone of proximal development um Millie describes the zone of proximal development as just Beyond the Horizon of their current understanding and I really like that perspective that's how we scaffold teaching that's how we start to see progress we can't teach skills that are too easy we can't teach skills that are too hard but understanding what that looks like for kids at this stage with with additional disabilities is the challenge and that's where I think the sensing and learning uh approach really comes in to help guide us I think 1 of the best tools in sensing and learning is the scope and sequence and so um this is just kind of a little snippet of it here but for each Zone Millie actually describes exact little micro skills in terms of cognitive communication motor and social for each Zone so once you've determined their present level you can then kind of look at the scope and sequence to say are their skills here in that zone we need to build we can look towards that next Zone their zone of proximal development and and look for skills here as well and this is this is where I get my IEP goals based on the data that I've taken during their present level so I think this is really critical to this process of understanding where they're at so that we know where we're going and what we want to teach um in the book there's a scope in sequence kind of you know laid out over several pages I took that information and put it into a spreadsheet and so my team actually has a a spreadsheet that we have for each and every student that's in this stage and we use that every year at their their IEP meeting to kind of update where we're at to kind of see the progression to help guide the team and really have good conversations about our progress um and it's very helpful when you do have situations or you know maybe a parent or an outside therapist or another team member who says oh you know maybe we should did introduce this communication device or should we be working on this skill and so this scope and sequence is really helpful to say you know that what a great idea let's kind of look and see where we're at um in relation to that goal or thigh and see what skills you know maybe we are there and that makes sense or maybe there's some skills we need to work on to kind of give us a better Foundation to be successful um in that new skill so this scope and sequence is a really valuable to tool for teams to use um for those conversations and collaboration for goal setting and things like that the other thing I really like about the scope and sequence is that I think it really clearly shows different team members roles on the team because you know we're we're really working alongside our classroom teachers who have these kind of academic ideas we have our speech and language Pathologists who are thinking about about the communication and and those skills that need to be built we have physical therapists occupational therapists are on Ms who are thinking about the movement and the motor skills and so how do we kind of all come together based on our present level data and look at the types of skills that we can support and so this document I think really helps guide teams in those conversations and it really um gives us an idea of the kinds of things we want to work on as we build our instructional routines any questions about the scope and sequence or the present level assessment how we're kind of narrowing down um where our students are at anything about process feel free to chime in or put it in the chat for me it's really important um just to get this Foundation so that we can make sure we're headed with our students in the right direction okay feel free to chime anything in there if not we're going to move on to the learning media assessment this is kind of the second piece uh we know where they're functioning we kind of have an idea of their present level now in terms of how to build a good routine for instruction we need to find something that they really like we need to find something that's going to engage them and motivate them them and um really grasp their attention to the maximum benefit and if you're familiar with the Sensory Learning kit um it was called in that book it was called the sensory response record so you might be familiar with that and the appetites and aversions list is what was being built and so this is the same thing but Millie just rebranded it as our learning media assessment which I also think is brilliant because for our students at this stage of development with complex needs you know a learning media assessment isn't really necessarily saying are they going to be a braille reader or are they going to be you know a print reader or how are we going to assess our learning the way that we're going to assess our learning is through our recommendations on very specific objects like we're going to say the actual learning media is uh a red pom pom or the sound of their mom's voice right because for our kids specially those kids in the extended States who aren't giving us a whole lot of Engagement interaction we have to be really specific and we want to save these like awesome engaging exciting activities for our learning to the biggest bang for our buck so the learning media assessment is just guiding a team to think about different sensory input channels from you know obviously vision and and auditory to vestibular and Rio receptive if they eat you know we want to incorporate you know eat and smell as well and we're going to think about what are some different things that we can bring to the table and we're just going to see if our student likes it or not and we're going to take some data so we're going to write down we're what all the different items that we use what sensory system is involved and did the student like it or not a plus or minus and then how much did they like it or not and you're going to rate it 1 2 or 3 3 being the biggest reaction so what we're really looking for hopefully is finding some plus 3 items that our students really love for some of our kids this is not going be that hard we're going to find like 100 things that they really love and they have a really strong positive reaction and that's awesome for some of our kids we're going to be like pulling our hair out like what what could I bring that they're going to really enjoy joy and really like and again that's where you kind of have to get creative and I'll point you um to the book in the appendix there and this is actually in the original Sensory Learning kit um it carried right over its in an appendix that is Millie's learning media menu it's all of over her years all of the kind of creative outside of the box ideas of things that you could bring to try to engage with your student and see if you can get a potential plus 3 um and kind of side note on that just um so that you all know the Sensory Learning kit there are not selling it anymore through the American printing house now that we have the new book but you can download the old guide book in The Archives on American Printing House website and some of these key pieces like this learning medium menu um you know all that's there for free so it's there but obviously I highly recommend the new book 2 available on quota funds and all that good stuff but um you know the more resources the better so learning media assessment the goal here is we are getting plus 3 items things that we really love so I just wanted to show an example of uh a student that I recently worked with a team and I just thought it was cute her team put together to share with me kind of a little video of some of the learning media materials that they use and um you know they're overachievers here and we're not going to look at the whole thing but just to get an idea of what their um learning media assessment looked like and I like some of the different materials they use they brought her like a cool little chime um almost like prisms with some little bells and so if you were doing this assessment you would write down what that little object toy is she's got a little smile um you'd have to know the student and kind of collaborate like to say to what level of excitement this is for her right it's all subjective it's all comparative to um where that collaboration comes in but but you know I don't know maybe a plus maybe not overly excited here I'm gonna scooch forward they've got a ball kind of a squishy ball they're showing her her hands are kind together she doesn't look really excited about that 1 it lights up with some vibration they turn the light myself I think to try to highlight the colour the the lights there can't see her face real great but she doesn't look like really happy um so again that might be kind of oh there we go now we get a smile so they really took their time to see if they could get a reaction better if you have um this is when she did not show a lot of interest in this bead morocca thing really do it yeah I'm gonna put it in your hands and they can Mary this is actually called a kabasa so she's actually pulling away um so on a learning media assessment that might be negative um if they're they're not showing interest so that's something to look for there's this little Elmo singing toy about his hand so um you know maybe not a big reaction there either so these are the kinds of things I also just wanted to make note like you see um this team and all the stuff that they have there on the side table so they're just trying a lot of different things to see you know what can we get that's maybe different that she's not seen before that's going to be a positive reaction maybe something new that we could use to build a routine um to really bring out some new new new skills and new engagement um there are some recommendations in the book of like maybe how many things to do at a time you know where can you do it to get the most engagement and those are all things teams can kind of talk through um together but I just thought this video was kind of nice and showing some different engagement um we'll kind of pause there because um I want to make sure we get through the other slides but just to kind of give you an idea of what that process will look like and you're just coding what is she like the whole main goal is that you're finding something to build your instructional routine this is what we're going for routine is a word that we use a lot in our field and um for a lot of different purposes but I just kind of want to clarify what makes a routine a routine um as opposed to maybe other activities and things like that that happen in a classroom a routine is something that has a clear beginning and end we're using the same sequence every time with the same supports every time and consistent pacing so kind of you know recurring theme Here is that it's consistent and it's the same um and we're giving real clear parameters of what we're doing why do we do routines especially for this population routines provide consistency coherence and confidence um you know when you think about these kiddos who are probably um pushed around or carried or moved um a lot of things are done to them and for them they have very little control over their environment and what's happening and who's doing what routines are going to provide a sense of safety and um kind of an ability for them to be able to begin to anticipate and know what to expect it allows kids to kind of relax to feel less stressed so that they can really engage and take risks and trying new things um I think we all know why routines are important for all kids right we use them for for every kindergarten class all the way to our um you know kiddos at home for their bedtime and time routines we know that it helps kids when they have this consistency but for these kiddos on your case load with these significant multiple impairments just take that and you know multiply it by 100 right we know that it's even more important that we provide this consistency particularly when we are trying to teach them a new skill we want them to feel safe we want them to know what's expected of them we want them to be able to take risks and try new things so we know routines are important but what makes a routine instructional right we can do routines for a lot of things we probably you know we probably have routines that are already built into these students day maybe lunchtime routines right um you know getting to school routine get our backpack out and put it in the cubby we have routines built into our day but what makes these different than all of those other things are already doing there's 3 things first and we've talked about all of these things the first is we are targeting new skills in their zone of proximal development so it's not just a routine for the sake of being a routine but we're teaching something new and we know that that new skill is appropriately chosen based on their present level okay so we're teaching them something new that we've determined through data is an appropriate skill to teach number 2 we are teaching something based on their highly motivating learning media we've specifically chosen a topic for a routine that is engaging it's motivating um we know that our students really love it um and we're using it specifically to keep that engagement and motivation High um these kids you know they are they're going through a lot they got a lot going on and so we really want to make sure that if we're asking them to stretch themselves and push themselves that um it's going to be for something enjoyable and something that is worth it for them to take that effort and then lastly um this routine is instructional if it's individually accommodated and we're really you know again we I kind of mentioned it earlier but we know these kids probably have a lot of different factors to consider so as we've been taking the data on her present level assessment as we've been looking at the ways that they're interacting in their learning media assessment what can we notice about factors that really helped contribute to high levels of participation um that they're positioning was it something about the environment was it the ways that we're presenting the materials um do they need a particular amount of time to wait before we expect them to interact so we're going to think of about our pacing and um prompting and supports that they need to participate and these accommodations are going to be considered so closely at every single level of the routine because our goal is in an instructional it's focused on everything the student can do to participate at every level we're specifically designing it around our students skills desires motivations and and ways to participate ate as independently as possible um okay I don't know if any of y'all ever watched the show nailed it before have you all watched that show it's like or have you seen those um the like memes or posts of like Pinterest face there's like a cake that's you know somebody that's professional made and then there's like the version that didn't turn out exactly right like I have a unicorn cake that you know probably somebody bought at a store and then a version somebody tried to make it home and honestly it's kind of creepy looking it didn't turn out so well got a little um a lamb a beautiful lamb cake somebody made and then again a nailed it not so good version that's creepy um I can't I have to change a slide because that just creeps me out but the idea there is just to give you a visual of like I think sometimes we do routines and we we think we're doing routines but we're not thinking about all of the different aspects to make it the way we want it to be and I know in my first 2 minutes I said that connection over perfection is important and I I do stand behind that when we're riding a routine for a student at the sensory motor stage with complex needs we do have to be giving a little extra effort to carefully consider all of the steps because just like in baking and I'm known to do this when I'm baking I'm like that looks about right like we're not measuring it off exactly and baking is 1 of those things that needs to be precise if you want it to turn out correctly um you're going to come up with that Pinterest fail if we're not really being careful to look at every single step and and really think about what the student needs to be successful so as you're writing a routine this is the sensing and learning routine lesson plan template this is what will guide you in how to script that routine out thinking about all these factors we've discussed um on the screen there's a top portion and it has like kind of that basic information of the student and what what you're doing and who's involved but at the bottom there's 3 columns the First Column is the learner's steps and I really like that that's our first column because it's just reminding the team that this routine is focused on what the student is meant to do at every step in this routine it's really not about us and what we're doing for them but what is the student doing so we're going to think about you know let's just take for example I'm going to show you next a video of a student that was part of our research study his name's Freddy and um we were writing a routine for him involving um getting his hair brushed and done he really liked head massage that was his motivating uh learning media so we thought okay we're going to build in this like hair brush thing and um we were wanting to teach function level skills some some object recognition of those objects and what they were for so as I'm writing the routine I'm thinking about what do I want Freddy to do at the beginning of the routine when I present Freddy the brush I want him to reach for the brush okay eventually I want him to put the brush towards his hair um I want Freddy to reach for the mirror I want him to look at the mirror what do I really want him to do what is he showing me um to help me under know that he's understanding what those objects are for since that's what we're focusing on in the second column that's what is Freddy need to be successful with that what am I doing am I um presenting the brush a certain way am I saying something like get your brush or you know what am I saying what am I doing um and what accommodations does Freddy need to do that you know does he need you know some of our kids this is really where those like CVI accommodations come in really key you know are we adding some uh high contrast are we adding some light and some movement is there a particular peripheral field or a way that we're presenting that visual material tactily do they need some hand underhand assistance do they need um you know uh tactile model uh for for that particular step so again every single step going to Think Through the routine we're going to think through what the student needs and what we're going to do and then in the last column we're going to put what skill we're particularly working on or looking for in that step and this is where you could kind of cross-reference with that scope and sequence this is where you could put your IEP goal um and maybe you have 3 or 4 that you're working on in that routine and that really shows the correlation between what we're doing and why we're doing it and what I love about this routine template we call it kind of a lesson plan template is because for a kiddo at this stage of development with these needs if you take the time time to write this routine and collaborate and get your whole team together and make a great routine and you're going to do it regularly this could be your lesson plan that you keep with that student you keep in the classroom if you're a classroom teacher your administrators walking through you can pull out your lesson plan you know exactly what you're doing you know what goals you're working on you have your accommodations there such a great tool to facilitate um you know showing the why behind what you're doing and also what we're looking for in the student and also what your administrator is looking for from you in terms of the support that you're providing in the accommodation so it becomes a great tool um to have there and also shows the team collaboration that went into that instructional planning so I think it's just a great way um to have that all there it also provides you know a little bit of accountability to making sure that when we're doing these routines we're doing them the same way and and all that good stuff so um my team really likes this part of the process after you know we get the data and the assessments when we get to kind of script routines out together and talk through that we think it's you know of the fun part of putting it all together um I've kind of with my team sometimes it's me and 1 other person that usually the classroom teacher we kind of read it together and then share with the rest of the team so that they can make comments about the accommodations um you know our OTS and PTs always like to kind of make comments about oh we should make sure there's a a little stool under their feet um since they're sitting at the table you know or let's use this chair or let's make sure you know all these little details everybody has a way to support coming from their area of expertise okay now the fun part so I want to show you guys Freddy and this is um a student that I mentioned was part of our research study so if you um get your hand on that article he is 1 of the students that's referenced there and just kind of as a side note we had 4 students that were part of our research study and all 4 students showed significant progress through the different zones during our time together and so it was so exciting because these students we hadn't seen a ton of progress from our perspective before we started doing this approach so we we were just thrilled that we we saw the process uh you know all go through all of those zones if you go to ap's YouTube and you search AP YouTube and you search SLK several all of our students that were part of that research study come up it's Freddy and Adam Isaiah and ARA and so there's 4 videos they're really long um like Freddy's here is 20 minutes obviously we're not going to watch a whole thing but it shows the progression from the very beginning all the way through the study so I think they're really great resources if you're interested in this and you want to kind of dive in more or see different examples um and kind of see you know how we got to where we did there it's a great resource I think it's really helpful okay this 1 is described and has some captions so we'll make sure it's there I'm gonna fast forward so just kind of as a side note we um assess Freddy his current present level was exploration he easily reached out interacted with objects um explored in a in a variety of different ways we wanted to teach him function of objects and we made a hair routine as I mentioned because he really liked um having his head massage who doesn't right um so here's Freddy inspiration Freddy learns to identify unfamiliar objects Freddy chooses his hair routine symbol on his iPad registered trademark you want to browse Miss prey presents Freddy with his hair routine box got your water can you help me after she Taps the bottle to the table and gives Freddy elbow support he grasps the spray bottle Miss prey is water into her hand with elbow support Freddy touches the water in her hand em prey guides his hand to his head and after he touches his hair she massages the water into his hair Freddy's love of massage is the motivation for this routine to Wild Hair it's a wild hair Miss prey holds the SLK mirror for ready he attends to his reflection for just a second Taps a brush on the table and Freddy eventually plays his his hand on the handle you regret that wild hair using hand under wrist support she guides his hand and the to his head and then she brushes his hair clean up but look handsome hair Freddy looks in the mirror for a second with arm support Freddy drops each item into the box he demonstrates improved grasping skills we're gonna put our brush away you ready so you can kind of see you know we really thought about what are some different objects that we could bring into the routine and model for him with they're used for um we were really careful about you know kind of how to present that to him what his teacher could do and say at every step what kind of physical supports and what we were looking for you know in terms of you know the brush we didn't feel that he had the physical ability to to fully brush his hair but we we were looking for him to bring it pretty close to show us that we're um that he's understanding what 4 and so we had kind of thought about all of those things and scripted it out on that template that I showed you but really for Freddy I think what was what made it the most successful was the consistency that the routine was done the routine was done every day if not 2 times a day from the teacher really working and building these skills and it was worth it though for her because she had several of his IEP goals embedded into that routine so she was getting you know a lot of bang for her buck in terms of the time spent and the amount of data she was able to collect and also the fact that we're seeing a ton of progress so kind of want to fast forward um there's several different versions of this routine on here I think I'm going to go to the next 1 um here I'll stop here I'll do this 1 Freddy now lifts the bottle of water out of the box without arm support ready consistently holds his palm open to receive water Freddy has difficulty bringing his open hand to his head watch the teacher conference chapter to learn why he makes it with a little assistance he enjoys his head massage Freddy pulls the mirror from the box independently and looks at his wild hair Miss prey presents and turns on a hair he had been doing so well at this point we added an additional um object here would you like to dry your hair ready looks to his teacher for conversation and then picks up the dryer Miss prey helps Freddy hold the hair dryer straight but he keeps a good grip on it she plays is the dryer back on the table would you like to dry your hair Freddy picks it up immediately as you can Freddy enjoys drawing his hair and waves his free arm up and around to the sound and feel of the hairdryer you got it he likes that part Freddy completes his hair routine with brushing his hair and hair looking at his handsome hair he is now an expert at cleanup in goes the mirror we need to put our brush in the Box in goes the brush job we need to put our water in the Box got it in those the bottle of water in the Box and with a little hesitation because the hair dryer is Freddy's favorite he places it in the Box I know this 1's your favorite isn't it you put it in the Box nice job all finished okay so hopefully you can see the progress that he's made over those several months of working on that routine just how much more he's looking how much more he's initiating um grasping the objects you know getting better at moving them towards the location of of what to do with the objects um and that's what we're looking for that helps us to see that he's not only interacting with the objects for the sake of exploration but for understanding of their purpose so we have moved him through that zone um into the function zone of the sensory motor stage and that was exciting for us to be able to see that progress so for somebody like Freddy we you know can build several routines throughout his day working on these skills and really begin to Target Target you know more of that vocabulary and moving towards the symbol recognition and things like that so it's taken us from just a place of let me put you with some toys and you're exploring them to Now using them for a purpose and even being able to to recognize them and potentially know them by name and so I think that's what we're going for with these kids um and for some of them it just means we have to do it intentionally uh strategically with pinpointing the skills that they need to work on and then utilizing these consistent routines that are designed to meet their individual needs um so kind of just as a recap of these different factors you know we've talked about the zones um determining the present finding a preferred learning media building a routine individualizing their accommodations and taking the team into collaborate these are all of the main factors of our sensing and learning app approach and this is what we this is the approach we utilized in our research and like I said we saw growth in every single 1 of our students and you know in a field and in a in a specialization area in our field that as very little research it's empowering to know that we can go to our team and say maybe what we've been doing hasn't been working great or we're kind of hitting a a plateau with our kids you know what about this approach that is research-based that has shown to be effective um it brings in so many key elements of what we know is good teaching and so um I just encourage you to kind of think about if this is something that could be applicable to your student um I can kind of pause here I do have 1 more video if we're interested in looking um or I can kind of open it up for some questions if if folks have any questions we have about 10 more minutes so um definitely want to make sure to to address questions if we have them um I anything specific about the process or um how you might apply it with with your students otherwise I can show 1 more video kind of open it up anything you got guys we Ellen says more videos are great anyone else well let me ask a question that I am curious about because I think um first of all thank you so much again so well organized and presented it makes so much sense and feels so much more accessible in terms of how to implement this approach to working with students and so with a kind of with that in mind Stacy what has been your experience in um uh you know organizing educational teams around using this approach is it has it been difficult to get by in or do you feel like with enough explanation of of what you've really just shared with us um people do feel like they get it they're they're able to they feel like this is a very tangible accessible makes sense kind of approach it's a great question and I mean you know the honest answer is that any of us that work with a variety of different team personality of so different so I think it really depends on um the team you're working with and kind of where they're at with the student I think for my team we were kind of at a point where we all sort of felt unsure about where to go you know I mean I think when we were all kind of honest about you know I'm not you when you sit down to write IEP goals and you you're just not sure um that's a great opportunity to come in and say you know I have here's here's something we could look at right um another great opportunity is if you have a student who has a a 3 year reevaluation coming up or a brand new student coming in and we know we're going to be spending some targeted time you know focusing on this student these evaluations are so collaborative by nature and there's really a piece for everybody that it it's a great opportunity to bring it to the table then too to say you know went to this training there's these resources is um thoughts on kind of trying this together and seeing if we can get some different information about a student we've not got gotten before so sometimes that initial Buy in um that's the part but I've seen that once a team tries a routine and kind of sees how well it works and sees how well everybody's role fits into the process and how effective it can be in targeting multiple goals Within 5 or 10 minute routine we can we can build in all these different goals I think that part's the easy sell right I think once they kind of get their heads wrapped around it and give it a try I think most of the time they see the value with it um and the impact sometimes it's just harder part of bringing something new to the group and and certain teams are more receptive of that opportunity I will say you know obviously this video is going to be recorded and that's an option there's a a training that's on API that's uh a version of this and then also um some other uh continue they call it the communication continuum of you know students at different levels I'm launching a course this summer um through my website as well and I do offer trainings to teams um a lot of times um districts can sponsor that or delene projects have been really instrumental um in supporting a a team training on it and so those are all kind of ways that you can share the information with teams and kind of bring teams alongside 1 another to learn together because that that can be helpful in process too but definitely especially as an itinerant I can I can help support a team in this but it's certainly not going to be me um implementing it on a daily basis you know it really is that classroom teacher and and related service providers all kind of coming in to support that process so um but it's really special and fun when it when it does happen I see a couple other questions um I see Shannon asked about how many times I run a specific routine in 1 day have you found a number is too many um so I think on this 1 obviously it's kind of specific to a student but when you have a student that is let's say in the extended States working on an attention level routine those routines tend to be pretty short because you're probably working on building attention for you know just a couple of minutes right so those routines are going to be really short but you're you're going to do them a lot so they might have a lot of routines um or or uh a couple routines that you do a lot of times in day a student at the function level they're going to be probably longer routines with more steps and maybe a little bit more um involved from in terms of Staffing and kind of support to make that happen so there there those routines might be done Less in a day or or less often um I don't know that there's a too many um because I think routines are built on that consistency the more that you do them and you do them in the same way in the same supports in the same steps the more quickly those skills will come and I think that our job as we support these routines is once they're written and they're beginning to be implemented our job now is to observe and and to pay attention to when we see new skills take hold and once they do then we're going to continue to expand and add more steps or more routines because we always want to keep our students progressing and moving so like in the video of Freddy um we saw him doing a lot of the things that we were we were going for so we added another object into the routine the hair dryer to kind of continue to move him forward so he's not getting bored and and that we're continuing to teach new skills so that's kind of that um kind of a personal type of thing um but you know Staffing and and what kinds of skills the student working on and then if you're seeing seeing progress and then I think you asked earlier Shannon um a turn taking and a walk turn taking a walk into a routine um oh sorry you would like to turn taking a walk into a routine that makes more sense um yeah I love a walk routine especially for those kiddos who you see that that is alerting to them sometimes that movement kind of alerts them they're are engaged and I would say that based on what zone a skills they're working on um just making sure that you're incorporating steps for them to do in that routine so you know what what are just thinking about what are they doing are they initiating you know movement in some way to open the door are they you know taking a walk for a specific purpose are you getting to the library to get a book and go back or watering a plant or you know what are you doing and what are what is their job on the walk what skill are they working on and that's always going to be be our Focus um but those are great great great questions um I'm not sure we're gonna have time for Freddy's video but again those are all on the AP YouTube site and there's there's a lot of good ones on there just for examples um just to get ideas of routines and kind of what that looks like um it's kind of cheesy but in some of them they actually videoed our team collaboration meetings too just to kind of show how teams work together like um there's some good ones of our speech and language pathologist kind of sharing hers perspect of what communication she was seeing just to kind of those are good to show a team if you're trying to get um um that collaboration piece going you know just to show like this is this is how the teams are working together um to make it work um but yeah I really appreciate um just the opportunity to Come Share I'm hopefully you can sense my passion and excitement about the topic um you know being in the field and doing the work we're busy uh we have so much on our plate and everybody wants to make good use of our time and have an impact with our students and um I've experienced it firsthand with my own kiddos and then just getting to work with teams uh across the country doing this too it's exciting to see it making a difference and to have something that does work and um we know is going to help our kiddos move along so hopefully these are some good resources for you to to kind of investigate if it captured your interest and I'd love to connect with anybody in the future um so don't hesitate to reach out but I really appreciate the invitation to be here all right thank so much I'm going to stop recording

7:23 LEA Instructions for Completing Federal Quota Census Updates Featured
All LEAs with students who are registered with the RCVI should following the steps described in this video to complete student account updates for the annual Federal Quota Program census. Questions may be directed to [email protected] or [email protected]
Uploaded Dec 10, 2025
1:00:31 Bioptic Driving – Adult Perspectives & Tennessee Requirements (Panel Discussion)
Participants: Dr. Joshua Robinson (Vanderbilt University Medical Center), Arthur Humphrey, Joshua Harper
Date: 2/23/2024
TN VIVA 2022-2023
Session Description:
This session will present an overview of considerations of bioptic driving for teens and young adults with low vision. Panelists include a low vision specialist and adults with low vision sharing why they decided bioptic driving was or was not a good fit for them. This session is geared towards teens with low vision and their families, as well as TVIs, O&M specialists, VR counselors, and other transition specialists looking for a background knowledge of how to talk about bioptic driving with students and clients.
Uploaded Feb 24, 2023
1:46:30 Essential Assessments (FVA) Strategies for Students with Visual Impairments and Complex Profiles Featured
Presented by Suzanne Dinwiddie (TN Deaf-Blind Project) on 2/18/2022
Unity Virtual Academy 2021-2022
Session Description:
Project will share tips and
Hear about strategies that TVIs and O&M specialists can use when conducting functional vision, learning media and expanded core curriculum assessments with students with VI and complex profiles, including students with CVI.
Uploaded Feb 22, 2022
56:27 Social Emotional Learning & Crisis Support for Visually Impaired Students
Presented by Andrea Word, MSW (TSB) on 9/1/2021
Unity Virtual Academy 2021-2022
Session Description:
This session is designed for TVIs to learn more about SEL (social emotional learning) for students with VI, learn signs of when a student is in a mental health crisis, and discuss appropriate resources in and out of school to support students.
Uploaded Sep 07, 2021
51:27 Lightbox Stories & Literacy Programming for Students with Complex Profiles Featured
Presented by Dr. Adam Wilson on 2/17/2021
Unity Virtual Academy 2020-2021
Session Description:
Looking for ways to integrate literacy and lightboxes? In this session we will take a deep dive into the creation of lightbox stories and digital books, adapted so they are accessible for students with more complex profiles that include VI. We will also look at opportunities for meaningful engagement for learners so they become part of the story!
Uploaded Oct 14, 2021

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Sensing & Learning: A Research-Based Approach for Learners with Significant & Complex Disabilities

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