Build a frame

In the video, you just watched children build separation walls with “6-Car Parking Lot” activity and observe the complexity and abstraction skills involved.

As a practitioner, in many pre-braille and braille activities, you will have to build a frame: it can be a simple line, the outline of the plate, columns or separation walls.

Don’t forget that, at the beginning of the activity, it will take time for the child to discover this existing frame, time to explore the base plate, to take information from what is under their finger.

This discovery is fragmentary and the image of the whole takes some time to be reconstructed by the brain, from all the sensory informations it receives.

That’s why, we often suggest to build this frame with the child. There are several options:

• Work together on the same plate

• Give the instructions verbally

• Make a sample plate to be reproduced on another one

This could be the first part of the students activity! Even with an older student they will have to practice manipulative activities, to gain more abilities using the bricks.

We should never underestimate this construction. It is not so easy to make a straight row without the help of the sight. Building this framework calls upon notions of geometry, symmetry!

Please share your experiences: for which activities have you built a frame?