- Assume that you are scheduled to do an Orientation and Mobility Evaluation on a student who is severely and profoundly multiply impaired. What areas will you stress the most? Where will the evaluation be performed? What information will you need before the evaluation begins? What will be the primary objective of your evaluation? If the student is unable to walk, why should you evaluate him or her? What skills might you teach? Why are these important?
- Explain how activity based routines can be used with clients who have Traumatic Brain Injuries. How can this programming technique be applied specifically to Orientation and Mobility training? Why is it so critical that this pedagogy be used within the first three years after the initial brain injury? Be sure to cite literature that supports your contentions.
- Describe in detail the sequence and activities needed for orienting a 10th grade student to a new school campus. Assume the student already has adequate cane skills to travel independently.
- In Foundations of Education, Griffin-Shirley, Trusty, and Rickard state
Orientation and Mobility is a unique area of the expanded core curriculum . . . in that a professional other than the teacher of students with visual impairments is largely responsible for instruction.” However, the Teacher for the visually impaired or blind (TVI) teams with the Certified Orientation and Mobility (COMS) specialist to educate students with visual impairments or blindness.
- Describe the role of the TVI for a student who is also receiving services from a COMS.
- Describe the role of the COMS for a student who is also receiving services from a TVI.
- Explain what skills the TVI may teach to a student who is blind or visually impaired that a COMS may also teach or facilitate and why there is an over-lap of instruction.
- At what point should a TVI recommend that a COMS evaluate and/or begin providing services to a student who is blind or visually impaired?
- Pick a basic concept and explain how you would teach it so your student understands it at the concrete level then at the functional level and then at the abstract level. Some examples of concepts you could use are big/small, right/left, cardinal directions, intersection, up/down, and buildings.
- Philip Hatlen (1986) identified unique instructional areas in which individuals who are visually impaired need to receive training to be successful in life. The field of visual impairment has embraced these areas as driving factors of instruction and planning. These areas are called the expanded core curriculum.
- Why is it important for an O&M to provide instruction is the ECC though it is one of the 9 areas identified?
- How can an Orientation and Mobility address each area of the ECC? (You do not have to discuss Orientation and Mobility as a separate area – discuss how the remaining 8 areas of the ECC can be addressed by a COMS)
- Pick an area of the ECC (beside O&M) and describe how you might provide instruction in that area and why it is important.