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Bridges Resource Library Crossing Bridges Together: Secondary Transition In the Field, A Reading Room For Educators

Resources For Secondary Science Classes

Updated as of September 18, 2024.

Overview

This is an area where it will really be helpful for regular education teachers to engage and collaborate with you regarding their curriculum. Some accessible assistive technology and tactile graphics resources can be exceptionally powerful ways to access information non-visually, but blind/low vision students will need both access to the tool and pre-teaching of how to use the tool.

Please encourage the regular education teachers to think “outside the box” and document all of the tasks and tools typically used in the class. They should also document the PURPOSE of each activity.

Sometimes, it is more appropriate to design an alternative activity in order to provide the blind/low vision student with efficient access to the learning objectives. For example, viewing microorganisms through a microscope provides rich information about their movement, but it may be very difficult for a student with low vision to accurately understand the lesson objective if the student is straining to use a microscope, especially if the student has poor central vision. More effective alternatives can include videos of microscopic examinations of organisms, interactive computer simulations, and hands-on tactile graphics, 3-D models, and more.

The information set forth below represents a starting point, not a final destination. Please reach out to us at the Bridges Technical Assistance Center once you know more about what each teacher does in class so that we can expand and customize these resources for each of your blind/low vision students. With the classroom teachers’ lists of objectives and activities, we at the Bridges Technical Assistance Center can help you locate (or create) tools and techniques to meet your blind/low vision students’ needs in science classes.

Scenarios and Strategies

Whether braille, print, or dual readers, many students with blindness/low vision encounter obstacles in their roads to science education and learning. These obstacles have multiple sources, including:

The resources listed below can help BRIDGE the gaps created by the obstacles listed above. We can lay the foundations and footers for those bridges by making the educational content accessible and sharing accessible and safe tools and methods with students, families, and science educators.

Scenario: Blind/low vision students resisting use of accessible tools and techniques

Everyone want to fit in, and blind/low vision students are no different. Some will prefer lack of content information to “looking different.”

Strategies for engaging/buying in to tactile graphics and non-visual techniques and tools

First, acknowledge your student’s feelings. Being different – especially as a teenager – can be overwhelming.

Note: Many of the tactile information in applies to students with low vision. From black-line and color tactile graphics to tactile graphing and laboratory techniques, students with relatively-high residual vision often benefit from understanding the same tactile skills and techniques as do students with little to no functional vision.

Bonus: Teaching these skills allows students with low vision to practice self-determination skills as they choose when and how to apply tactile and visual skills in their science classes and then in daily life.

Finally, consider trying to connect your student (and family) to blind/low vision peers and mentors. We at the Bridges Technical Assistance Center would love to help you, your students, and their families find the connections they seek.

Scenario: Inaccessible science content (text, tables, graphics, and videos)

Strategies to combat inaccessible science content (text, tables, graphics, and videos)

Provide access to accessible textbooks, including text, tables, and graphics

Provide access to high-quality science materials. The American Printing House for the Blind (APH) sells a wide variety of high-quality tactile graphics, particularly for science.

Scenario: Inaccessible computer simulations

Science classes include more and more computer simulations each year. Computer simulations allow students to engage in many “experiments” and experience the effects of many different variable changes at low or no cost and without risk of injury in a laboratory setting.

Unfortunately, many enriching science computer simulations remain inaccessible. A free favorite, Phet Interactive Simulations, offers one hundred ten simulations in Biology, Earth Science, Chemistry, Physics, and mathematics. However, only 24 (less than one-quarter) offer “alternative input … methods beyond mouse, touch and trackpad.”

Strategies to combat inaccessible computer simulations

Create videos of the simulations and verbally describe each simulation including:

  • Variables used
  • Results when variables change
  • Find out more in the Bridges Resource Library’s Audio Description entry

Offer hands-on accessible experimentation alternatives.

Scenario: Students without a strong foundation in science-related activities

Your student has little to no experience in formal science education. Their science and low vision/blindness skill levels may be far below their intellectual potential.

Strategies to combat lack of foundation in science-related activities

Download: Adapting Science for Students with Visual Impairment Advance Preparation Checklist

APH Tactile Graphics Image Library

APH Tactile Graphics Image Library

  • Available at no cost
  • Must register (but it is free)
  • Science Tactile Graphics (physics, chemistry, biology, and more!) available for downloading

Pre-teach missed concepts

  • Out-of-Sight Science Experiments from the National Braille Press
    • Designed for second through fifth grade, but may be appropriate for students who did not have the opportunity to learn foundation concepts and need those skills in the secondary science classes.
    • This book uses simple experiments to build concepts that are further explored in high school science classes.
    • This print/braille book also provides opportunities to engage in non-visual techniques to carry out the experiments.

Scenario: Student has little or no lab experience

Strategies to combat lack of lab experience

Information about successful blind scientists

Accessible laboratory equipment

Desmos (Accessible Online Calculator)

Demos provides online calculators that are accessible for screen reader users. These calculators are also built into many high-stakes tests, including Maryland’s MCAP and College Board assessments like the PSAT and the SAT.  Find out more in the Desmos (Accessible Online Calculator) Bridges Resource Library entry.

Additional Accessible Science Resources

Project INSPIRE

Project INSPIRE online courses

Self-paced, 6-week, online courses at no cost for targeted groups of professionals who support blind/low vision youth in grades 6-12. Currently available courses include:

WaterViz

Project INSPIRE and WaterViz have collaborated to make this water cycle curriculum accessible for The WaterViz lessons for Middle School students allow learners to engage with real water cycle data uniquely represented as art, music and scientific graphs. Water cycle data, collected in near-real time by scientists at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, USA, are represented visually through animated art, auditorily through music and scientifically as line graphs. The six-lesson sequence is geared toward middle school learners, with specific consideration for students with visual impairments.

Students of all backgrounds and abilities are exploring the nexus of hydrologic sciences, visual arts, and music through the Water Cycle Visualization Project (“WaterViz”).

This digital tool translates real-time data from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest’s watershed in New Hampshire into a variety of creative mediums. Funded in part by a Greening STEM grant presented by NEEF and the USDA Forest Service, the project helps middle school students explore the water cycle in a way that is most accessible to them.

Six WaterViz lesson plans for grades 6-8 are available online for educators to download. This includes a folder of digital lessons that may be printed, accessed electronically, downloaded as an accessible PDF, or translated to Braille.

Also, check out this article about the 2024 summer WaterViz course.

Nemeth in a Box Materials

Nemeth in a Box for Middle School Students, a series of seven lessons that teachers of students with visual impairments (TSVIs) or others (e.g., paraprofessionals, family members) can use to review and/or introduce Nemeth Code symbols at the middle level and review math concepts in a fun way. 

Mission INSPIRE

Mission INSPIRE is a set of activities that teachers of students with visual impairments (TSVIs) or others (e.g., science teachers, science fair organizers, family members) can use to provide students an opportunity to participate in hands-on science learning through an inquiry-based experience.

Mathlete Competition

The Mathlete Competition contains four rounds of competition during which mathletes demonstrate their ability to read, write, and proofread braille math. Competition materials are available both in Nemeth Code within UEB Contexts and UEB Math/Science.

Using the Desmos Calculator with Sara Larkin

Demos Calculator YouTube video

Demos calculator transcript (PDF)

Desmos Calculator PowerPoint Presentation (PDF)

NFB EQ Curriculum

The National Federation of the Blind, through its National Center for Blind Youth in Science, offers an accessible and meaningful engineering-focused STEM curriculum called NFB EQ. The curriculum is available online at no cost, and it provides materials for educators as well as for parents.

The NFB EQ for Teachers: A Nonvisual & Accessible Engineering Curriculum contains a curriculum and a collection of resources for educators who want to teach NFB EQ, the National Federation of the Blind’s week-long engineering program designed for blind and low-vision youth.

The NFB EQ for Parents: A STEM Learning Toolkit for Parents of Blind Children is designed to support parents of blind children in guiding their children’s successes in STEM and much more. 

Contact the Bridges Helpdesk for More Information

This unique project is being coordinated through The IMAGE Center of Maryland, a center for independent living in Towson, and it is funded by a grant from the Maryland Department of Education Division of Special Education/Early Intervention Services.

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