Cardinality in Blind Children

Children who have visual impairment usually have some vision; this can vary from each child. Some children may be able to see outlines of objects while others may only be able to tell the difference between light and dark. If a child has vision problems this nearly always initially delays their physical development. Their gross and fine motor skills would be affected because they would be unable to be as adventurous as children with good vision. Fine motor skills may not be in line with other children as the child would find it hard to do tasks that require precision such as threading beads or colouring a picture. Cognitive and language skills would also be affected, even if the child was able to read it would take longer to learn especially if it involved using braille. With the right interventions in place there is no reason why a child with visual impairment would not be able to catch up with their peers.

Children use numbers with daily activities eg. Songs. They also develop a range of flexible methods for working mentally with numbers. For example, when playing number games and flash cards.

The society questions why it is so challenging to communicate with foreigners. "The Country of the Blind" is a short story first published in 1904 by H.G. Wells. He is well known for his science fiction novels. This short story is focusing on sight and blindness and brings up the theme of prejudice versus learning. In the novel we follow a traveller, who ends up in an unfamiliar strange place, which set him in learning trail, figuring out who he really is. How does the writer illustrate the difficulties with foreigners in this short story?

When someone approaches the child to help him complete his task, he refuses it, saying “Me do it.” This child can also count to five but has no knowledge of how many each number word represents. He also knows the words “same” and “different” as well as the concepts behind them.

Uses key essential words but misses out connecting words (telegraphic speech). Develops an awareness of number names through rhymes and songs that relate to numbers. May say some counting words randomly. Attempt, sometimes successfully, to fit shapes into spaces such as jigsaw puzzles.

Development focuses on information processing, conceptual resources, language learning, and other brain development and psychology. A significant amount of research has focused on cognitive development and the deaf community because it is considered the domain for language development. In 1987, Abraham Zwiebel conducted research with three groups of deaf children—a) children from all deaf families that used manual communication, b) deaf children of hearing parents that used partial manual communication, and c) deaf children of hearing parents that used aural/oral communication-- and a group of hearing children. He studied cognitive development using three measures—teacher evaluations, the Draw-a-Person test, and the Snijders-Oomen Non-Verbal Test. The research concluded that manual environment factors are responsible for the higher cognitive development of deaf children of deaf parents (Zwiebel, 1987). Zwiebel’s research holds merit today because of his use of grouping and differentiating within the deaf community along communication

Casey, J., McLaughlin, T. F., Weber, K. P., & Everso, M. (2003). THE EFFECTS OF FIVE MINUTE PRACTICE, UNLIMITED PRACTICE, WITH SAFMED CARDS ON CORRECT AND ERROR RATE IN MATH FACTS FOR TWO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN WITH LEARNING DISABILITIE. International Journal of Special Education, 66-72.

1) When adding to the two numbers, this child started at hundreds place, the added the digits together without taking into account their value given by the place. The child then added the digits together for all numbers, but was able to understanding that the sum of each value should be “stacked” and added together. Although the child didn’t understand that a 700 was embedded within the number, the child had the number sense to know that answer wasn’t correct; the child said the answer should be 1000-something since the numbers being added were large. Once prompted by the interviewer, the child was able to apply place value understanding, but only with strong scaffolding. The child wasn’t able to independently identify the mistake and fix the tens and the ones without further prompting. The child was ale to correctly identify place value when asked, and could multiple the value times the digit to find the number (7 in the hundreds place = 700). When adding the 100s place, the child knew the answer was one thousand, but when adding the tens, the child said the answer was ten-hundred. However, at the end, the child was able to add the three

Bridge to Prior Knowledge: Recite the numbers 0-10 from number chart as a class. Than have each student count independently on the number chart or tell you how many counting manipulatives they have.

In Section A (Counting Growth Point), Daniel was able to state the sequence of number names to 20. In addition, he confidently counts a collection of around 20 objects. Daniel counts by 1s (forward/backward, including variable starting points; more/less). He can also count forwards and backwards from various starting points, knows numbers after and before a given number, and counts from 0 by 2s, 5s, and

In his memoir, Planet of the Blind, Stephen Kuusisto details his experience of living with a disability of sight, including his initial denial of his legally blind status. His tiring work at passing and his parents’ own denial and support of his refusal to be openly blind both stem from and reflect views of society at large. Members of Kuusisto’s life, just like many people today, ignore blindness and the challenges those with visual impairments have and continue to face. It’s not until he’s struggled for years pretending to see that he fully accepts his legal blindness and begins using a cane and a guide dog.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of blind is “unable to see; sightless” (Definition of Blind in English, 2015). However, I do not like to be put in such a box. I define blindness as merely a heightening of other senses. What do you think of when you hear the word sight? More than likely you think of shapes, colors, and objects. My idea of sight consists of many senses; smell, touch, sounds, those are the things that I “see” with. How about the word blind; what do you think of then? The most common relation to the word blind is disabled; however, we are a very abled people. Even though I carry a cane among my person I get through my daily life just as any other able-bodied human being (Question 1).

Children are now beginning to learn letter-sound associations and are able to expand on there auditory understanding. By the age of 6 90% of children would have mastered being able to use a variety of blends and self-monitored speech. Children are able to stabilize the correct usage of irregular plurals and past and tense/ irregular verbs.

After observing his response I am not sure if it was due to his visual impairments because he wasn’t wearing his glasses that he usually wears and the longer row made him come to the conclusion that it must contain more pennies. His memory wasn’t at the same level as Alexander’s and Enrique’s because I had to repeat the questions to him. However, he really tried to understand the questions I asked him. He is an English learner and I was tempted to do the experiment in Spanish but I didn’t. I believe that the language disadvantage was more to blame than the cognitive development.

Additionally, such students are not able to effectively use gestures (Fan & Cheung, 2005). Most of the developmental steps of such chilren are delayed due to lack of vison. In emotional context, they may feel helplessness while interacting with others. These children can develop congnitive impairment because they they lack the integrating experience of association and classification and the understaning of these experiences. The other challenge faced with such children to develop their vocabulary. Sighted children can easily acquire these skills by reading, watching facial expressions and movements, but visually impaired children are unable to expereince this and it hinders their capability to improve their vocabulary. Physically, a visually impaired student is constantly rubbing their eyes and is always blinking. Frowning, squinting and holding books at close range are other characteristics of visually impaired individuals. Lastly, visually impaired learners are constantly complaining of dizziness, nausea, itchy eyes as well as blurred vision (Fan & Cheung, 2005).