I would appreciate any practical ideas for working with a child who has difficulty discriminating between similar looking words. She has undergone a Vision Therapy program and still experiences much difficulty in this area.thank you.
Re: Visual Discrimination
What helped my dd was PACE (Processing and Cognitive Enhancement) as a follow-up to vision therapy. Website for PACE is http://www.learninginfo.com
Vision therapy is good for correcting visual efficiency problems — things like focusing, convergence, tracking — but doesn’t do much for visual processing problems. PACE does a lot of work developing visual processing skills — things like visual sequencing, visual short-term memory, pattern recognition, etc. For a child with problems in this area, the gains can be quite dramatic.
Mary
Visual Processing disorders are different from problems with sight. It affects how visual processing is interpreted, or processed by the brain. I found a site that has offers some help when working with a student with a visual processing disorder. I copied some information from the site as you will see, but there is still much more information if you want to go to the site. I hope this information will help you as well as this student. Good Luck!
Christy
The web site address is:
http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/process_deficit/visual_auditory.html
This is just a sample from that site:
For readings
Enlarged print for books, papers, worksheets or other materials which the child is expected to use can often make tasks much more manageable. Some books and other materials are commercially available; other materials will need to be enlarged using a photocopier or computer, when possible.
There are a number of ways to help a child keep focussed and not become overwhelmed when using painted information. For many children, a “window” made from cutting a rectangle in an index card helps keep the relevant numbers, words, sentences, etc. in clear focus while blocking out much of the peripheral material which can become distracting. As the child’s tracking improves, the prompt can be reduced. For example, after a period of time, one might replace the “window” with a ruler or other straightedge, thus increasing the task demands while still providing additional structure. This can then be reduced to, perhaps, having the child point to the word s/he is reading with only a finger.