Lesson Plan and Student

Lesson Plan for a Hearing and Visually Impaired Student

Designing lesson plans for students with hearing or visual impairment is difficult. To design one for a student with both is even more strenuous. In this particular case, the fifth grade student has both conducive hearing impairment, with a 70% hearing loss and ocular motor impairment, where the student has trouble controlling eye movement. Yet, the student in question here is incredibly intelligent, despite having the handicaps of visual and hearing impairment. Despite these issues, the student has a number of strengths, including his ability to be very analytical in his thinking and responses, therefore showing impressive abstract thinking and argumentative abilities. Moreover, the student is very strong in his mathematic abilities. However, he does show some clear weaknesses as well. Reading comprehension is one of his worst subjects, and he believes that Braille will only make him more isolated from the rest of the class, which makes it even harder for him to practice working with Braille to increase his vocabulary and reading abilities.

In order to best address the student's current weaknesses, this lesson plan will focus on using reading comprehension to build vocabulary and reading abilities. The lesson plan has the direct objective of increasing the student's vocabulary and use of the alphabet in Braille. This will help expand his ability to use his abstract reasoning because he will have a stronger vocabulary bank to enrich his answer responses and arguments. Also, the lesson plan will focus on increasing the student's ability to understand and work with Braille. This will also help expand his ability to keep up with class reading through the use of Braille, despite his visual impairment which has held him back significantly up to this point in the semester. Still, there needs to be a series of accommodations which will modify the original lesson plan to better suit the unique needs of the student in question. Due to the hearing impairment, there will be included next to the Braille pictures of American Sign Language to correspond with the vocabulary words presented in Braille. With his vision being impaired, but entirely gone, this will help him better connect Braille words and phrases with sign language, which he is already quite fluent in. Thus, this lesson is essentially helping him gain more tools to help him read and increase his vocabulary to the appropriate 5th grade level.