once again welcome to this AP access Academy building literacy if I could say the title right I apologize with building literacy with the sensing and learning approach uh I would like to turn it over to our presenters Tristan Pierce and Stacy Chambers okay thank you can everyone hear me okay yes okay this is Tristan and uh Stacy is going to introduce herself in just a second uh so what I will do is see if I can't Advance my screen I'm not sure we practiced that before we were doing this there we
go okay so um this is um I'm Tristan Paris I'm an AP product manager I've been here for uh what is this 2024 now so over 23 years I guess I started in 2000 November 2000 and um I worked along with Millie Smith who is in the center of our photo here um developing the first SLK and several other products as well and when we got ready to revise the okay Millie met Stacy Chambers who is uh also in the photo there and she and Millie collaborated on doing a case study of SE of four I believe uh Stacy
students and she can tell you a little bit about that and AP helped support that by providing the videographer and then the time to creating all the videos and stuff here in house so um it's been a great collaboration it's been wonderful to work with Stacy the photo I'm showing you here is the three of us Stacy Millie and myself at aeer down in Florida one year presenting on the preliminary results of that research so uh Stacy would you like to say something at this point absolutely I Stacy Cha
mbers I am currently an itinerant teacher of students with visual impairments in Capel Texas and it's just been my absolute honor to get to work with Christ and Millie for the past several years on sensing and learning it has completely changed the way I understand students with significant disabilities and cognitive disabilities and it's given me so much confidence in my role and how to help students make progress I've been able to dive in kind of head first working with Millie for about 10 yea
rs now and training teachers all over the country on this approach and it's just every time it makes me more passionate about this work because I see the impact that it has so I'm grateful to be here any chance I get to be able to share about this work and connect others to this incredible resource I'm just so grateful so thank you for having me okay as you can tell Stacy's very very energetic about this so and I appreciate that so much so first I'm just going to read off our uh objectives for t
he session and this is the second time Stacy and I have done that we originally presented this at annual meeting last October so uh objective one this session will help participants examine the research behind the sensing and learning approach number two this session will help participants identify the key components for instruction for a learner with a visual impairment and severe disabilities and number three this session will help participants access digital tools that support successful appl
ication of the sensing and learning approach so um I guess a lot of people when this first came out if you had used the SLK or the Sensory Learning kit for any time at all when this came out you were probably screaming like you know what no kit you know where's the kit so um I just thought maybe I needed to explain this a little bit here on the screen I'm showing you the front cover of the new book called sensing and learning and then we have a the book open to a chapter uh chapter seven and it'
s a photograph of Millie Smith uh speaking with a teacher in Texas uh Janice Jefferson and that was a wonderful time uh I spent down there with them when we were filming and photographing all of this so that was in yeah forco Texas yeah so um so just let me say the reason we don't have a kid it it was for a numerous things okay um the production floor here had kind of been asking us to to pair down some of our kits because they were getting so large and one of the things that we were experiencin
g and this was prior to covid okay covid just sealed the deal but just prior to covid um whenever an item in a kit goes on back order it holds that entire kit up and so nobody gets their kit you know if a products on back order for one month or two month or something because maybe you're you're waiting for one item um you know nobody's benefiting if it's just sitting you know back on the production floor waiting for one item to come in so the majority of the larger the bigger items that were in
the SLK that AP actually designed and manufactured which was the environmental control unit the power select our switches our vibrating pad we we developed those are items that were also available as individual products they were a standalone own product you could order as many vibrating pads as you wanted separately you know could you could order as many stick switches as you wanted so those were already available for you to order but this way if we were holding up the kits because one of those
were on back order then you know like I said no one was benefiting so we decided to really focus on the methodology and uh Millie really felt like uh changing the name to sensing and learning really really described what this whole new learning approach was about so um like I said you can still get all those big items you know just the small little items we we just continued and you know I always ask everybody how many of you really really really needed that pin wheel you know was that pin whee
l just absolutely you know the the most important thing in your kit so it were was items like that we felt we could go ahead and do without they're very very easily found in in dollar stores and places like that but it's very hard for you to get a vibrating pad that has a casing on it that is completely you know water protected and uh could operate with a switch so that that was our our whole reasoning as to why we no longer offer a large kit and as as we'll go through this and Stacy will be ver
y happy to tell you I'm sure that it's not all the items in the kit that were the most important thing it's it's the the assessments the the learning strategies and the use of routines so that's really really what we want to to get through with this new book to everybody so I think if there's no questions about that I will turn it over to Stacy yes as Tristan shared back in 2014 Millie came to do a training with me and my team and Capel and it was at that time that she was really looking for a d
istrict to partner in a research study and so of course we jumped on that opportunity and we were able to partner with her um to take four case study students from assessment through intervention and really take data on the improvements and progress that we were able to see and I want to introduce you with this photo to one of those students and this is Arna and she is kind of our star of sensing and learning you will see her examples all throughout the book so we thought it would be great today
as we go through the different pieces of the approach to really highlight her videos and show you those examples today as we go through and I believe in your resources there'll also be a link to the article that we published from that research in the Journal of visual impairments and blindness in 2020 so it's exciting to have that research to be able to know that it is fueling our interventions and that we have the data to back us up on the impact of this work so that's really exciting and a lo
t of those pieces really help helped inform the updates and sensing and learning that we'll talk about today yeah and and I just would like to add that um the the videos and the documentation that Stacy is talking about that that's a a very very important key component of this and we'll be probably asking you some questions later on in in this presentation about if you're actually using stuff like that so we'll move on here okay so today as we talk about the sensing and learning approach we real
ly want to recognize that this is geared towards the students on our case load with the most significant physical and cognitive disabilities these are the students functioning at the sensory motor stage of cognitive development and this is really key because it's important as teachers to really understand where our students are cognitively developmentally so that we know what kind of skills we need to teach them and help Dev develop so I really like this infographic it's of PJ's stages of cognit
ive development a little refresher for us even after all these years PJ is still our gold standard for how we understand cognitive development and I really like how this has it laid out we have at the very beginning a child in a high chair he's representing the sensory motor stage that birth to two level and they're interacting with a glass of water if this was a live video they'd probably be splashing in the water spilling it over throwing off the high chair putting their their face and hands a
ll in it their work their job at the sensory motor stage is to interact with objects to really take in as much information as they can using all of their senses to really experience those objects and learn about what they are and it's not until the next stage the child next to them that represents the pre-operational stage it's not until that stage that we really start to see the symb olic understanding that language development really take hold we have a picture of a student and there's a littl
e thought bubble and a water droplet really representing that symbolic understanding that's taking place and as the picture continues we have an older child really helping um really demonstrating a a more abstract and um more integrated thoughts about these objects and so it's really important as we think about and and assess our students for this and learning approach that we recognize the sensory motor stage learner and the foundations of communication that are built at this stage that's reall
y what we're going to be focusing on with this approach okay so this here uh as Millie was working on this new book she would send out chapters as she got them done to tvis that she knew who worked with this population M and um who she knew had used the original uh Sensory Learning kit for for many years and so as they reviewed her chapters before she even sent them to me she would send them out to people and uh they came back asking her to provide a type of a graphic like this to kind of demons
trate how it kind of goes in that Circle of assessment and teaching you measure the progress and you revise and expand and all of that you know you have your assessment which we're showing in the pink here and then your teach your measure progress and your revise and expand they all use that that strategy of routines like the original SLK which was colorcoded we've also colorcoded this kit so that if you're looking at your book and you want to flip through your book you want to find anything dea
ling with assessment you look for the pink on the bottom of your book that color bleeds off the book and then teach measure progress and revise and expand that's all part of your teaching you look for the purple pages in your book and then if you want to go straight to the routine uh templates that we provide you go to the gold pages in your book so that's kind of how it's all outlined trying to just make it um easier to use for you uh we know you may be in a hurry when you're you're working wit
h people and you need to be able to access something quickly so you can just go to the bottom of your book and grab that color and and hopefully that that will help you uh move on quickly so okay and I do have up here a link here that will take you directly to the shopping page for sensing and learning and it takes you directly to the tab that allows you to download an Excel format of all the assessment forms if you would like and even including the medical uh form and that's not an assessment f
orm of course but um that link will take you to a tab where you can access and just download that form and then you know save it under each Student's name or code or whatever and you'll have a form for each of your students okay I think we're ready to really dive in and take a closer look at this approach and what you'll find in sensing and learning we talked about the fact that we're really focusing on our students at the Sens motor stage of cognitive development so the first assessment that we
are going to do as part of this approach is determine the students present level one of the things that sensing and learning does is break down the sensory motor stage and give us even smaller targets to look at they've defined some zones within the sensory motor stage you can see here it's extended States attention Zone exploration Zone and function Zone and we're going to break these down what this does is really help look at our student what are the micro skills that they need to learn to mo
ve through the sensory motor stage what do we need to teach them to help them develop these skills and the very first thing we need to do is determine where they are within the stage and that's going to be our present level process but we're going to take a little closer look to really understand these different zones the first Zone in the sensory motor stage is attention you may have noticed on the previous slide we had extended states listed there and that is technically not a zone of our sens
ory motor stage but many many of our students with significant physical and cognitive disabilities often are experiencing a lot of time in an extended States these are students that are maybe fussy tired sleeping agitated they're very difficult to engage or alert and this is pretty common especially for our students who have a lot of um medical needs and just complexities that they're battling against various points in their day medications and things like that so for those students we are going
to be really focusing on helping build attention level skills and so let's talk a little bit about what this attention Zone involves students at the attention zone are showing us that they have the ability to main maintain attention on a person an object or an action so these are the students when you present an item maybe a a red pom pom or a fun musical toy that they alert they show you that they are maybe enjoying that object and they're looking at it their body's moving they're listening to
that object they're showing us that they're able to engage and maintain attention maybe they're beginning to anticipate something that's going to happen next um they're they're showing a little bit of that emerging anticipation within uh regularly occurring routines they're able to to have mutual attention on an object and and engage with that social experience with another person they're responding to a partner um and maybe they're continuing they're requesting some continuation of that activi
ty maybe when you're showing them the pom pom and you stop that they um open their eyes a little brighter or move their body to kind of request some more of that activity so these are some things that we might observe a student doing um and if they're doing this already then their present level would be at this attention Zone if not and they're mainly in that Extended State then these are the types of skills that we can Target within our instruction Tristan you can move on to the next slide we a
re going to be talking about the next Zone which is exploration Zone hang on it's not advancing so maybe I have to yeah there we go just had to really hit hard that's all good okay so we have a student who is showing us that they have the ability to main attention they are um alerting to objects and once that is established they have the ability to learn and go to the next Zone and so that is when we start to begin seeing students take the initiative to interact with objects in various ways this
is probably what you might have in mind for a sensory motor stage learner um these are the students that are reaching out they are um grabbing objects they are banging two objects together they're squeezing objects they're putting objects in their mouth they're exploring the textures of objects in a variety of ways and this is the really really important work of a sensory motor stage learner this is a big big place where we we can come in and help teach and facilitate through hand underhand exp
loration strategies and teach them the ways that they can explore objects this is really important because um this is teaching them the cognitive skill of understanding their B's ability to interact with objects and that's the foundation of cause and effect this is also when we begin to see them IM imitate your actions um and maybe request more of something by reaching for it by by making that um movement towards expiration and this is really important because when we're talking about building t
he foundations of communication and literacy this is the foundation of understanding what objects are our students with significant physical and cognitive disabilities may have a lot of barriers that come into play when it comes to their ability to explore they're pretty limited to the items that are brought to them um maybe they even have physical barriers that prevent their exploration maybe they don't have a lot of movement in their body to be able to explore objects so this is where it's rea
lly important for us as Educators to come in and help facilitate and teach these strategies one of the really important kind of aha moments I had I can remember when Millie first came to work with our team we um you know we shared well how how do we help our students explore how can our students explore if they're barely able to move their hands or they don't have the ability to explore in these different ways and so this is where this aha moment um when Millie shared that you know this we have
to think about it in a different way when it comes to cognitive skills and growth because exploration for many of our students is really more of a cognitive skill than a physical skill we're trying to teach the cognitive skill of exploration of cause and effect of body toob interaction and we can do that through modeling we can through do that through the routines that we're going to talk about later and what we're looking for is students ability to initiate even with the most minor movement in
their body an action to explore an object and we're going to show an example of that with Arna in a little while and and Millie's quote that she always says is exploration is more mental than motor and that's a big takeaway I want you to remember about the exploration Zone but as we begin to assess our students present level we want to be looking do our students already show the ability to explore are they initiating these kinds of interactions with objects if the answer is yes then their presen
t level is going to be this exploration Zone if they're attending to objects and not yet initiating exploration then their present level is going to be the attention Zone and we are going to be teaching exploration Zone skills so I want you to be thinking about that as we talk about these different zones what is their present level and then the zone that follows that's going to be our instructional level that's where we are going to Target our IEPs and our instructional skills that we're going t
o teach in our routines so exploration that's the the second zone of the sensory motor stage Tristan you can move it to the function Zone that's our next Zone I am trying I don't I you know I'm having I'm starting to have in this fear like is the battery gotten got bad in my keyboard that's my big fear come on all good all good we are not working there too fast okay going bad okay no worries okay so we have a student if they're a able to maintain attention on an object and they are initiating Ex
ploration with objects we're reaching for things we're we're exploring them in different ways or for the student with pretty significant disabilities even if they are moving their body or initiating an action with an object that we help facilitate and execute for them if they're showing us expiration cause and effect level skills the next level that comes after that is function this is the function Zone this is when we begin to see that students show us they understand the purpose of an object a
n object that has an intended use they're able to demonstrate their understanding of this this would be the difference of if you had a hairbrush and you hand it to a student in the exploration Zone they're probably going to take that hairbrush and bang it on the table and feel it with their hands or put it in their mouth they're exploring it they're learning about it they're doing a lot of important things in their beginning stages of exploration once they have a function level skill they're goi
ng to take that brush and they're going to brush their hair with it they're showing us that they understand what this object is and what it's for again many of our students may not be able to fully execute the actions of an object and its function and that is okay as teachers we can facilitate teaching them what those motor actions are like and then we can look for the initiation of the movement that we're looking for for a student with a hairbrush maybe that means when they um are holding the h
airbrush with some assistance they move their head down towards it because they know that's what it's supposed to do or maybe they slightly move it up towards their head and and as a teacher we can help facilitate that action but we're seeing the connection we're seeing the cognitive understanding of the object in function Zone tool use is also part of that and this is where we begin to see intentional switch use Beyond cause and effect but switch use as a as a tool to make something happen with
an object for a purpose so we're really thinking that next level of using objects for a specific intended purpose this is also the Zone where we begin to to kind of see some emerging maybe um symbol recognition or um word association with an object okay so we're beginning to see some reaching for objects be of uh with request um for having an object symbol in a calendar box and reading that symbol and moving to the location of of an activity or routine so we're beginning to see those connection
s and that's really really important as we are establishing these foundations of communication so these are our zones these are the different places within our sensory motor stage that we are looking for as we do our present level assessment it's so important that we take the time to look at our students and understand where they are um the sensing and learning approach and the the tools that Tristan shared with the links and Excel spreadsheets are going to help us take the data for this present
level assessment what we're going to do um when we do the assessment is that you're just going to observe your student in some everyday activities with a teacher that are pretty highly preferred and you're going to take data on which of these zones the student is engaging with you're going to take some data about how they're responding with objects and with people and at the end you're going to pull that data and decide which zone is the student spending the most time in and that is going to be
their present level and again this is critical because especially I've been working with so many teachers and teams working with students and I find that a lot of us are spending time teaching students skills that are far beyond their current developmental level and we're not seeing the kind of progress that we're hoping for with them and so by determining where the students's present level is we know exactly what skills come next we know exactly what skills to teach them next so that we can re
ally see the progress take place and that's called the zone of proximal development under understanding a student's present level gives us an indication of the students zone of proximal development this is based off the work of voty this is the understanding that we need to teach our students just beyond their current level just beyond their current Horizon of understanding as Millie would say um so that we can really teach them obtainable skills and move them in the right direction so these are
our zones this is what we're looking for when we do our present level assessment I believe next I'm going to be showing a video of Arna she when we did her present level assessment we did some observations of her just a little background she's a student with CVI she's a student who is a homebound student so we did our present level Assessments in the home she's doing a little lotion routine with her teacher mallerie and we are just taking our observations of which zone are we observing ARA in d
uring this routine so just go ahead I don't hear it just I don't know okay so what we're going to need to do is if you will stop the video for just a moment we can troubleshoot this very quickly what I'm going to need you to do for a moment Tristan and thank you everyone for um just your patience with this do you want to stop your your screen share okay you guys don't hear the video when I turned on the the audio no but I'm going to walk you through the steps of what to do so that we can hear ok
ay so I have stop screen sharing for a moment then go back in and go to screen share again but this time uh before selecting your screen please look at the bottom left and click and check two boxes share sound optimize for video clip and if you check both those click the screen you want start the video it should work from the beginning lotion to her fingers and hands ARA demonstrates attention by visually fixating on her teacher at times and by becoming still while lotion is applied she demonstr
ates that she likes what is happening by smiling and vocalizing okay perfect so as you can see this is ARA engaging with her teacher in a lotion routine and it's just the perfect example of a student at the attention Zone ARA is happy about what's going on she's awake she's alert she's engaged she's indicating to us that she's enjoying the lotion um with smiles with eye contact with um some movement of her mouth those are all things that we know about ARA and that help us know that she's attenti
ve she's showing us those attention level skills what she's not doing is reaching out and touching the bottle she's not rubbing her hands together with the lotion and that's okay by understanding her present level we know that those are the kinds of things that we could work on with her of of having a more intentional interaction with objects and understanding what objects are for but establishing that present level is key and this is what we established for ARA that attention zone is our presen
t level December establishing Baseline attention level homebound teacher mallerie Duncan engages ARA in a familiar lotion activity Arna sits in her wheelchair while miss mallerie applies lotion to her fingers and hands ARA demonstrates attention by visually fixating on her teacher at times and by becoming still while Lo is applied all right okay so step one for sensing and learning assessments is the present level the second assessment that we need to do is determine their learning media and for
our students at the sensory motor stage of development really what this boils down to are which objects are going to be the most highly motivating and engaging objects that we can use for learning for our students again some of our students are going to be work working on attention level IEP goals so building the ability to maintain attention on an object we have to make sure it's something that they absolutely love some of our students are going to be working on exploration skills initiating b
ody toob contact and this is a lot of work for some of our students it has to get a big positive reaction and be worth all of that physical effort others of our students are going to be working on understanding function of objects and so we need to think about what types of objects are going to get that reaction and be something that we can use in a daily routine for learning so the learning media assessment Again part of those links that Tristan has shared and will be in your handouts what thos
e assessments look like and you can move to the next slide Tristan when you get a chance um we'll show you what arnas look like basically we're going to be considering very various Sensory Learning channels coming up with some really great objects that we can use that may be new or different for our student we want to expose them to some different kinds of things that they're not regularly engaged within the classroom and we want to see their reaction for things and I will say one of my favorite
parts of sensing and learning is brought forth from the SLK is Millie's learning media assessment menu it's in the appendix and it just has some great ideas for types of materials you could use for your assessment you're going to introduce the assessment item to the student you're going to indicate what system it is visual auditory gustatory whichever system it is and then you're going to indicate if it's a plus or minus did they like it or not like it and then how much did they like it or not
like it and you're going to mark that with a one two or three and so you're going to get that information uh from the student and then you're going to look at the accommodations that you shared when you shared that item so maybe anything about the visual presentation or physical supports um anything about the room or the environment and then you're also going to take a note of any delay that was observed so all of this information is going to be really helpful to you as you pull the information
see some Trends and really try to look for items that have a plus three um reaction I see a question in the chat about students that run and walk away and all of this is going to be and brings up a great Point as you do any assessment with the student for a learning media assessment or present level you really want to work closely with the team of professionals as you do these assessments you want to work very closely with the classroom teacher if you're itinerant you're going to pull in your ph
ysical therapists OTS your speech professionals paraprofessionals you're going to bring everybody together to really talk about what are the best times of day what are the best ways to present these mat materials who's the best person to do this assessment and a lot of times that information can help set the student up for the best opportunity to engage and get a good reaction and some of those students who um like that movement and who have that reaction that could be something that you conside
r as a media item as well um some of that those vestibular type activities also if your student is not engaging with any items because are avoiding and maybe disengaging with what you're doing their present level might be an extended state they're they're having diffic difficulty engaging so all of that information you're going to utilize and and take data in your assessment documents and and use that to see are there any Trends here um for the learning media assessment you're really looking for
what plus three items does my student show us that they really love we're going to pull out any of those things and that's what we have here um this is our um observation record and then we pull out information into a summary for ARA of the things that she really really liked I do want to make one note about as we're doing these assessments one of the strategies that my team consistently utilizes is video observation because we work within such a tight-knit team and we want everybody's opinions
and feedback about these observations we try to take videos every single time we observe and we introduce items for the learning media assessment um because we can take those videos and then look at them later to compare and also get everybody's feedback and that's so critical especially for these students who maybe have really minor reactions to things or maybe some of us might need to kind of discuss and collaborate about if those reactions are really positive or if they're not and so and tho
se are really really important um factors to bring in in the videos are a great tool that helps us to do that Stacy this is Eran I have a full question that is framed around videoing lessons to gain information okay and we are launching that maybe I'm sorry we're having technical difficulties here I'm me try one more time here we go to the PO questions asking do you video your students to track their progress yes definitely interested in um people's responses here um obviously when I present on
this I often get questions about consent and things like that and so anytime that we're taking videos of our students we open always make sure that we have consense and we have a really safe platform to share that um with our team and so that's definitely something you want to consider before you utilize video with your students if if you're not already yeah and and I think also Stacy that it's so important if you have that video when attending IEP meetings it not only shows the administration u
m that you know the good job your team is doing but it also shows the family members of that student that they can actually see the progress um throughout the quarter semester or school year absolutely you know we're talking about the assessments at this point and I heavily utilize video for assessments but we use video as well to track progress as we begin doing those interventions um as an itinerant teacher I really rely on video to be able to see my students routines taking place um just beca
use you know there's days when I come to observe and the student is asleep or there's a fire drill or somebody's not feeling well it's just the nature of how things go so videos can be helpful for me as somebody Consulting on a goal and then a huge way to celebrate with families um when we see that big St student progress so we have about half I'm sorry fairly close split but a little under half of our part participants do not uh video use the videoing um but then we have real close between um y
es I do video and I do not video my lessons um we've got about 30% who do video and we have about 24% who do not video and I apologize I said that wrong the nose re reference using those videos for Progress tracking gotcha thank you for par ipation definitely and then I have another great question in the chat about this learning media assessment tool um the ratings for plus one two and three scores all that is described in the book so we are just kind of highlighting um some of the key pieces um
here for the book um it really goes into a lot of great detail about how to do it how to score it and there's even some other assessment pieces you can pull from the present level and learning media to take a closer look at sensory efficiency and positioning and there's a lot of great information and it definitely goes into great detail about how to conduct these assessments and score them so that will be very very helpful to you for sure but this is just an overview so the main assessments tha
t you're going to need for designing your instruction which is going to look like an instructional routine is going to be determining a present level because that's going to help you identify what kind of goal you want to work on in your routine and then the learning media assessment is going to tell you what kind of objects am I going to use as a topic for my routine so you can see how this assessment is really helping to guide our instruction that we're going to develop for the student okay so
we're g to kind of talk now about what that instruction will look like so we've talked about how routines are really the main key instructional strategy for students at this stage of development routines in general you know these a routine is a term that we talk about a lot in education for a lot of different reasons we use routines with students of all ages and um with all kinds of sensory and developmental needs because it helps us it helps us kind of know what's coming what's going to be exp
ected of them and things like that and they do help with um Behavior with understanding and so we know all the things about why a routine can be important for anybody but for our students with significant physical and developmental needs especially our students at the sensory motor stage of development routines are going to be absolutely critical this is a strategy that can be used so that our students really can become more coherent with what's expected of them in that situation and we're going
to need to be even more specific about making sure that these routines have very clear steps very clear accommodations and really clear beginning and ends um to really help set the student up for Success within this instruction um you know these students are going throughout their day and so many different things are being done to them and for them and they're being moved and um you know they're probably a little bit stressed um at a lot of points in their day but when it comes to when we're go
ing to be instructing on new skills and teaching IEP goals we want to make sure that they feel safe and ready to learn so we are going to utilize this routines based instruction approach for them what's going to make it instructional is that we are targeting skills within the learner zone of proximal development so we have a routine a clear beginning and end and logical steps that we're going to follow but we're going to make it instructional because we have an IEP goal that we know is in that z
pd that we're going to Target in the routine so if they were at the attention Zone as a present level we're going to have some skills in that EX at the exploration Zone that we're going to Target in our routine that means that we can expect them to make progress because we know it's within the zpd it's also going to be instructional because we're using highly attractive learning media we're not just choosing random objects random items we we are choosing something that we've taken data on that w
e know is highly engaging and motivating and that's good teaching and so that's how we know that that is going to help this routine be successful it's instructional because it has really carefully considered accommodations and supports we are pulling in team members we are collaborating with our OTS to make sure that we're providing really good physical support to get the best engagement with those objects as possible we are working with our physical therapists to make sure that the positioning
is going to be just right to help get the support they need to be alert and engaged we're bringing in our VI expertise and making sure that we have opportunities to to look at objects and to engage with the objects in a tactile and meaningful way working with our SLP to make sure that we are using a a great object symbol for the beginning of our routine that we're considering the language that we're using to support um those early communication skills um and that we're being responsive listeners
throughout the routine so we're really bringing in all those accommodations and we're designating it really clearly within our routine and then it's instructional because we're doing it in a consistent strategic way and we're doing this on a regular basis so that we begin to strengthen and establish these neurological networks and doing so time and time again is really where we begin to see this progress and when we did our research study with our students this is truly what I believe made the
difference each of these different things that we did were were taken so seriously and done so strategically and we did it consistently for many many months that for the first time we saw really significant progress in each and every one of the students that participated so this is this is really um what our research showed that needs to happen to make your routines instructional and so that we can expect to see that progress that we want to see so I'm going to show you an example of what the ro
utine template looks like when we're creating an instructional routine based on the sensing and learning approach and this is also provided in the book and it's also provided in the links this is how we design the routine to make sure that we're incorporating all of these key factors that I just discussed so the top part is going to be where are you really plan out um who's going to do the routine what supporting members are going to be observing the routine those other related service providers
and instructional service providers where in the room or where in the school is this going to take place what materials do you need the position the frequency and duration and so that top part is kind of the planning and then on the bottom part this is where you are going to really plan out each and every step one of the things I absolutely love about the sensing and learning routine template is that it begins with the learner steps so the first thing we want to consider at every step of the ro
utine is what is my student going to do what is my student's job in this step and that's really important because we want to make sure that we are setting them up to be as active a participant as possible and then the next column is where we're going to indicate what accommodations are needed for them to participate at that maximum participation level so again those visual impairment accommodations supports words we're going to say positions anything we need to take into account as we present th
at opportunity for the student and then in the third column this is where we're going to put the embedded skills this is where we're going to State one of those skills within their instructional Zone and in the book sensing and learning there is an amazing scope and sequence of skills for each zone of the sensory motor stage and this is where I pull my IEP goals from in the book it even talks about how to turn some of those skills into a goal um how to write that in a measurable way and we can p
lace that right in the routine template so that we can take data on it we can look for the skill that we are trying to teach at each and every step so this is just a beautiful way to script the routine lesson plan and have it really clear for the teacher who's doing the routine for any observing team members or administrators that are coming to observe and it really ensures that we're doing the routine in a consistent way every single time so this has been a great tool for my team when we're doi
ng our routines okay so now I want to show you I want to put this all together we talked about can you pause it okay thank you um we talked about our student Arna and you saw her assessment at the beginning for her present level and she was at attention and when we did her learning media assessment one of her plus three items was Bells she really loved the sound of bells it really um got a kind of a big positive reaction from her and we knew that we wanted to use that for a routine since her pre
sent level was attention we knew that we were going to Target instructional skills at the expiration level because she has pretty significant physical um disabilities we really struggled with what can we do to get her to participate with these objects how can we um find a way to really teach her that her body can have an impact and effect on an object so you're going to see here the routine that we scripted for her that really focuses on teaching her those expiration body to object skills using
a highly motivating object um and I just want you to think about what you notice in this routine about the accommodations maybe that we considered um and and how we really structure the routine to maximize her participation the Bell is on your hand move hand in phase one of the routine Miss mallerie places the Bells on ARA's hands knees feet and head she labels each body part and tactually models movement to make the bells ring the bell is on your kn me move me the Bellows on your foot move foot
the Bell is on your foot move foot Bell is on your knee move knee all right the Bell is on your head move head all right ARA it's your turn in the second phase of this routine Miss mallerie places the Bells on each body part and gives ARA ample time to move them herself in order to make the bells ring get ready the Bell is on your hand move hand good job the Bell is on your hand move hand good job all right the Bell is on your knee move me good move knees all right the Bella is on your foot mov
e foot after 12 seconds with no movement Miss mallerie gives Arna a verbal and physical prompt move foot after waiting an additional 12 seconds she provides Arna with physical assistance for movement I'm going to help you move foot Miss mallerie moves the bells to arna's other foot all right the Bell is on your foot move foot Miss mallerie uses concise verbal instructions and remains quiet during wait time so that ARA can focus her attention on her movement while miss mallerie is exposing Arna t
o basic body parts vocabulary the main goal of the routine is for ARA to learn the cause and effect relationship between moving her body and hearing the bells [Music] ring Arna move me after sufficient wait time Miss mallerie provides ARA with verbal and physical prompts okay I'm going to help you let's move me all right last one the Bell's on your head ARA move head move head all right I'm going to help you move head yay all right [Music] move is finished all done May hopefully you loved watchi
ng that routine with Arna I've watched it a thousand times and it never gets old to me um because I can remember being part of that team initially as we plan that routine unsure whether Ara would ever make those bells move because we hadn't seen her initiating movement like that before so it was so exciting with the routine how carefully we planned it out how carefully we considered the accommodations really thinking about what we expected her to do within the routine and then seeing it happen a
fter Miss mallerie did that routine with her over and over and over again um just beginning to see all of those things emerge was really really Incredible's exploration AR um some of the things that I think really made it really impactful were just um some of the accommodations just thinking about the pacing that we did in the routine how much thought we put into you know how much time we wanted to wait in expectation of her moving her body um and just the limited amount of talking that happened
within each of those steps just the the thought behind that and making sure that we were giving ARA the opportunity to think about what she needed to do with her body and move the parts of her body that she could in the best way that she could possible so those were some of the things that I still notice um when I watch the video and hopefully you noticed some of those things too and that you could see how we took the components of her assessment and developed this routine I just want to make a
couple comments about um you know as we watch this routine as a team kind of how our role came to be obviously we are part of this assessment um part of Designing the routine and planning that out and then we also helped as we continue to consult um to observe to notice when we started seeing her initiating those movements with the bells and really as a team what we were looking for especially was when we started to see Mastery of those skills and that's really important because we want to make
sure that when our students are showing us that they have the understanding and the ability to execute those steps of the routine that we are hoping that they would we need to make sure that we are continually expanding the routine um we want to make sure that then when she's achieved those expiration level skills we can move her to the next zone so for Arna as you see she was able to do the movement with her body she's showing us she has the the concepts of cause and effect with her body we kn
ew it was time to move on to function level skills so what we're going to show next is the routine that we developed for her using her iPad as um a book reader um and actually I think we're going to show first the one with the music um and she's using the switch to make the music play on the iPad and that switch in this case is a tool that she's using to activate the music on the iPad so it moves from an exploration level skill to a function level skill so this is just a great example of how we
took the routine we observed it we saw the the progress and then we expanded it to create a new routine teaching a new skill so we're going to take a look now at Arna with the iPad get to see it in rewind there we go iPad Rufus reading routine with head switch function level routine Arna learns means Ends by using a switch as a tool to turn pages in storybook is this the one you wanted Stacy that is perfect I I I like this one the best that's great okay Arna moves her head to activate the switch
which turns the pages of the iPad story Rufus was a monster a very very big monster Arna listens to each page of the story before activating the switch again Arna looks to miss mallerie and then Taps the switch with her cheek again to turn the page was one of the nicest monsters around Miss mallerie provides ample wait time and remains very quiet so ARA can focus on her movement Arna looks to miss mallerie and vocalizes [Music] Miss mallerie provides a simple physical and verbal prompt you can
do it try again after thinking for more than 30 seconds with determination Arna looks again to miss mallerie and then turns the page was also very polite he almost finished Arna looks to her teacher and vocalizes again is it funny you like this one last [Music] page Arna yawns vocalizes and turns the last page suddenly rus' frown became a great big beautiful smile a yay the end good job reading Rufus ARA demonstrated the cognitive skill of means Ends by using a switch as a tool to turn pages of
her book she demonstrated understanding of the function of the iPad for reading sequential Pages by laughing and smiling in anticipation of hearing favorite Pages read aloud all right so I think that's just a great example of how we really intentionally chose to use the switch after Arna demonstrated that she had body to object understanding we then use the switch as tool use instruction struction um if you remember from the bells routine we use the Bells on all different parts of her body and p
art of that too was really looking at which parts of her body had the most movement ability um what seemed to be have the biggest responses from her and her head was the most consistent part of her body that we got a response from so that's part of the reason too we were looking for what could be the best place to use a switch in a functional way so that's where it kind of turned into using a head switch for Arna so just love this example because it kind of just walks you through the whole proce
ss of the sensing and learning approach it takes us from the beginning with the assessment determining their present level finding something they love with the learning media assessment and then using those pieces to to design a really powerful instructional routine we had a routine with Arna that we did with the bells teaching those skills when she mastered those skills we moved on by expanding to a new routine with new skills so that's just kind of sensing and learning in a nutshell really enc
ompasses all of the key components that make up this approach and again each and every student that was part of our research study showed this kind of progress throughout and in the handouts there's links to each of their videos so you can see them from beginning to end as well and these can just be really powerful as you think about your students um thinking about their present levels what makes them motivated to engage and then how could you design a routine to Target those things in a really
meaningful way um so hopefully that really resonated with you all I know Tristan has some really neat things to share about some of the materials as well available um from AP that can support the different routines and things that your students find motivating okay thank you Stacy I thought I had oh there we go okay at one point I I changed the batteries in my keyboard while you were talking so hopefully it's going to work better now so um like I had explained earlier that a lot of the items tha
t were in the original Sensory Learning kit they were always available for you to purchase separately so here I am showing you the uh stick switch we have a a little fellow here who has the vibrating pad on his feet he's resting his feet on top of it and when he activates the stick switch um his feet receive that vibration so the next to it we have a young toddler with her father and she is activating A's Joy player using the scallop switch now the joy player uh itself was never part of the SL o
kay but we created it specifically for the personal music routine that was included in the SLK so that is why we designed it so it would accept um all the switches your standard switches and you can also if you have a sip and puff switch you can activate the joy player using a sip and puff switch as well and then next to that we have our tactile switch and here it it comes with a bumpy surface but it also comes with two smooth plates that you just snap on top if perhaps you have a student who do
esn't like the bumps they have an aversion to the bumps and so you need to snap on the the smooth plate or those two plates can also be used as um putting um like an object or a symbol on top and they can be used in a choic making routine in whichever one they choose you snap that one onto the the plate and they do that particular activity with the switch okay next we have our power select and this is our AC environmental control unit um it's been around for years and years but it's a good Workh
orse and I will say the one thing that makes the power select different from other environmental control units is that we use GFCI Outlets because we know a lot of the Learners they can be involved in kitchen routines like uh making pudding with it or uh one of the SLK videos we have online is from a a young man in Frisco Texas and he is doing a blender routine so whenever you're working around any kind of liquids or anything just for safety you should really have GFCI outlets and then next to t
hat we have our um adapted fan that also comes with an adapter so that you can use it with the power select so that white adapter that comes with it we pair that with it the honey well fan itself does not come with that wide adapter we get that wide adapter we pair the two together and this way the honey well fan can operate with the power select using AC your outlet on the wall or it can also be used with the um just straight a regular switch just a standard switch all on its own okay and then
also with this um if you look over left here to the right I think it's to the right here um you see the small green and yellow switch and that is a combination switch and environmental control unit so um it will also work with that so what I want to really point out again is on the on the left left you have the power select that you have to plug into your wall and use it and the one on the right is battery operated so if you are don't have access to an outlet you can just use it using the batter
ies but they are both environmental control units so you can see the two black knobs on top of the power select you see those same two black knobs on the back of that switch so it is a combination switch and environmental control unit and here here we are showing it hooked up to the vibrating pad now earlier I showed you the little boy uh operating the vibrating pad with a stick switch that at that time the vibrating pad was plugged into a power select that we had on the floor next to his wheelc
hair that is how the vibrating pad was designed it comes with an adapter so that you can plug it into the power select but we had requests from teachers who would like to use it in a location where they did not have access to a wall outlet so here we have the vibrating pad and we have the battery power select switch and connecting the two is our DC supplement adapter that's been out for a little over a year now and it allows you to use something that was originally switch adapted um just using a
n AC with an adapter you can now use it using DC or battery power so you have that option now of being able to use your vibrating pad either which way here also we always had in the SLK we had the flashlight with the different color lenses and we also have always sold that as a separate product it's actually called the variable beam flashlight kit and that book is under uh modernization right now because we are changing out the old SLK routines that were written in the color beam book and we're
replacing them with the new sensing and learning routines so hopefully that will be available soon and then next here we have um an item that was not actually part of thek but it's very very crucial to the whole methodology behind the new sensing and learning and the old SLK and that is using an anticipation box or a now box perhaps you're calling it to let that learner know what next is going to happen in their life so that way they can be prepared for it they're not surprised they start to dev
elop that anticipation for an activity that they truly enjoy um this um is a photo that we also have a video of it online it's such an adorable uh video to watch um it was done in New Mexico and I can tell you that that's little Max and that's his teacher Mary vaugh so um that I recommend you watch that little video as well and one day well now Max is older so he could advance from using his anticipation box to connecting two boxes together so he has now in next and so he learns that concept and
then he would connect a third box to it and now he has the beginning of a daily um activity calendar there so that was never part of thek but it was a very very Cru part to the whole methodology behind the SLK and now the sensing and learning and um I had discussed earlier the The Joy player and we're showing that here with a A young a young guy who is in the middle of an SLK routine using the joy player and next to it I have an adult with her um her uh teaching partner and she is learning to u
se use the joy player for the first time and we really really want to bring home to you that sensing and learning it is a methodology or a an approach that you can really use at any age uh any chronological age okay um fitting into what uh the uh zones of proximal development that Stacy us spoke to you earlier okay so um we would like to thank you and I have something on this slide here which gives you the information if you would like to access the JV IB article that uh shows and outlines the r
esearch that uh Stacy had talked about earlier that Millie did with her and her teen in Capel and is there anything else you would like to add at this time Stacy I don't think so I just um you know it's just a passion of mine of I know that the Sensory Learning kit was just such a beloved kit and resource for so many teachers um and also that so many teachers knew about it but maybe didn't know how to use all of those materials in the kit and so my hope for sensing and learning is just that thro
ugh these access Academy um webinars also the AP Hive is available we have another course on this material we have so many of the digital tools that I just really My Hope Is that teachers and their teams will really take the time to learn the approach and really be able to put it into practice because not only does our research back it up but my experience every day and working with my own students and the teachers I work with um I just see the impact and the difference it makes so I'm really ho
peing and you know what um I did not allow Aaron time to give out her her one of her questions um is Aon is it too late to pull out that question about the DC supplement adapter no it's not and as a matter of fact I tried to get in there to do it but I could I know I talk fast I'm sorry no that's okay so I'm going to launch this now and our question is do you know that AP or sorry did you know that AP has a DC supplement adapter and have you used the suppl DC supplement adapter if you have one a
nd um yeah and we also on the hand out that we turned in for this uh session it has links to all the products it has links to the videos um and I I I believe they are recording this so any other links we put on here like I know I had a slide with all the assessment forms but again you can go to the shopping page and go to downloads and you will see the links uh to access those uh those forms so we do have that about um 72% did not know that AP has the DC supplement adapter and those who have it
have not used it at s about 77% as well okay okay um if we have a few minutes the only thing I could do is that if people want me to show them the uh Excel sheets I can do that they're opened on my computer I have they may they may have questions if they want to use this time for questions yes please put your questions into the chat if you have questions now there have been a lot of amazing thank yous already in the chat but if you have any particular questions now is the good time and I just dr
opped into the chat a link where you can find the resource document referenced um you will just need to scroll down to the bottom of that page under the heading resources you will find the document building communication links and that is the document Tristan has referenced with all the products and of various other links there and this has been recorded and typically we uh will post on our YouTube channel within a week or so but um you know should if all goes well and the handouts and um PowerP
oint will be up on the access Academy website soon in the chat we have a question at what point did you know that it was best to move from the bell's routine to the iPad switch routine yes that's a great question as a team when we originally wrote the bell's routine we did discuss to us between us you know what did we feel like um Mastery would look like for Arna when we felt confident um that we could move on and a question I often get when I show that video is just you do notice that some body
part s are easier for her to move than others so we weren't necessarily looking for consistent Mastery with every single body part moving the Bells but just overall that she had consistency in moving the bells um within the routine and and typically I I tend to really like an 80% consistency for Mastery and so that's usually what we go for when we're looking at Mastery of a skill so once we began to see that that consistently the team felt it was time for a new routine I will tell you that we k
ept the Belle's routine it didn't go away we still utilized that within her time with mallerie we just also added a second routine for her and so if you go and look at some of the other videos of the students you'll see that there's times when we start to see Mastery and we need to expand a routine that we do create an entire new routine focused on new skills sometimes we actually take the same routine and add some additional steps so that's another way that you can expand to new skills is takin
g your existing routine and adding some new steps for higher level skills within it so it's just important as a team that we're we're communicating we're talking we're collaborating and we're observing and once we start to see that consistent progress that we're thinking okay now what what can we expect her to do next and so um I think that's a great question and just something as a teacher we need to be constantly looking for collaborating about thank you and another question is do you find tha
t there is some overlap between the role of the tcvi and the role of the OT what a great question and honestly the more that I work with this population of students I see how my role overlaps a lot with a lot of the other service providers you know many times we're talking about how we build the foundations of communication for these students and so many crossovers with our slps and with the OTS as we look for use of visual vision and motor and access um and all of the other service providers ea
ch of our little areas of expertise we can we can collaborate and build together and I think we each have valuable information to share and also it's okay when there's some overlap one of my favorite parts of the process with this whole research study and with my team was you know as we spent so much time observing routines with our students and working um with these students and with each other one of my favorite things was when we'd be in a meeting and you know maybe the physical therapist wou
ld say you know Stacy I don't know but I don't think we're providing enough visual contrast for her to look at that object I'm like yes I guess we've been doing my job you know and sharing those things when other team members can start to recognize that um within our collaboration so I think there are times when we have a crossover um and I just kind of tend to think the more collaboration and the more conversation about those things the better we can each kind of bring our background and expert
ise to strengthen our our role and our impact with the team but that's a great question and I think some of these tools from AP are great ways to kind of bring in our other team team members and helping us each understand our role within the team and how we can support the students so sharing these links to these webinars can be a great way to help educate other team members about this product and this approach and another thing that I'll say is that in sensing and learning in the section about
the scope and sequence of skills for students at the sensory motor stage there's a great chart where it breaks down the skills based on cognitive communication motor and social skills so that's also another great place to see where each of our areas and roles kind of fit into the process and how we can collaborate and learn from one another as we work with these students and I would just like to give a shout out to Stacy because she wrote the section in sensing and learning on the team collabora
tion and how important it is and how you do it so great job Stacy thanks and we have one other question in the chat and that is do you utilize the ukat to assess body movements that are the best to utilize switches Etc you know I'm not sure if I've used the ukap before I will say that our OTS and our at Specialists are always heavily involved in that process um so I'm sure they're well aware of that resource or have something similar but um those are great things to bring in as we're looking at
assessing for switch use we want to make sure you know and we T kind of talked about it as we talked about when to introduce switches for the the purpose of teaching the function tool use function of objects and so we just want to make sure that it is Meaningful that it's purposeful and so having that data to back up not only are this is the student cognitively ready for that skill but where is the best place to place that which all of that data is really really important all right wonderful I'm
going to uh pause the recording is listen
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