Facilitation

LEGO Braille Bricks activities promote exploration of a page.

Assume that the base plate is a page, a sheet of paper.

Kids progressively develop exploration skills during a search for bricks on a base plate.

Guiding them, with respect to the direction of reading is crucial.

Progressively, they develop techniques to go faster and be more efficient: start at the top left, track line by line, always left to right and top to bottom.

With “Crazy Duck”, the notion of alignment and “tracking” skills are introduced.

Each row of ducks is a horizontal line, starting at the top left corner of the plate/page. Encourage kids to follow the lines from left to right (correct reading position).

They will gradually develop the habit of tracking lines, to prepare them for reading real lines of braille on a paper.

Adding several lines of ducks allows practice for returning to the beginning of the next line. It’s up to you to choose which technique you want to teach for learning this skill.

Here, are some suggestions:

• Both hands read the entire line, return together to the beginning and then go to the next line.

• Both hands read the entire line, right hand stays at the right end, while left hand returns to the beginning and moves to the next line. Right hand re-joins the left one.

• Both hands start reading, left hand stops at the middle of the line and goes backwards while right hand finishes reading.

What tips do you have to support children developing exploration and tracking techniques?