Recently I attended the Storytime for Children With Special Needs workshop presented by Wendy Kirchner, Librarian and Technology Education Coordinator at Meeting Street School. Wendy shared many practical ideas of how to help children with special needs engage in storytimes. Some of her ideas included using large props, laying them out in the sequence of the story, having props that engage many senses, not just sight or sound. She showed us how to make black frames to isolate areas of a page, projected onto a screen so children can look at specific areas of a page that are being explored during the storytime. She showed us pointers that allow children who have lower muscle control to participate in storytime question and answers. She also showed us apps that are helpful for students, including using ebooks with students that have mac switches or universal switches. The workshop was partial lecture and partial hands on exploration. It was highly engaging and I walked away with many ideas for how I could differentiate my library classes for my special needs students.
I happen to have one student, whom I have had for several years now, that uses a universal switch to communicate. Previously I had not known that a universal switch could be used to manipulate an ebook. The following day, after the workshop, I went straight to the teacher of that student and asked if we could explore the possibilities. It took three days of working with the universal switch, ipad, wifi, bluetooth, and different platforms of ebooks before we were finally able to find how to work it all. On day three, my dear student participated with her class in reading an ebook. Laughter abounded as this dear student was able to read along with the entire class, doing exactly what they were doing, for the first time in years. How liberating it was!
Weeks have passed and this student is continuing to utilize the universal switch to access ebooks that are being used in the classroom for instruction. If this workshop were to be offered again in the future, I think I would suggest one of my colleagues attend with me. I believe it would have been even more beneficial if my student’s classroom teacher had been there with me to hear all the ideas. She would have had a better idea of whether some of the suggestions would work in our building with our technology.