Module 1

The National Federation of the Blind truly does have a fantastic site and I really like both the Braille is Beautiful and Braille Reading pals programs. Braille is beautiful is for sighted students to learn braille and I think that anything that increases student sensitivity to others is great. The Braille Reading pals program encourages Braille literacy which is an important aspect of visually impaired literacy. I did a research project on the visually impaired for another class and learned that phonological awareness is the same in sighted and visually impaired children, those who are impaired just may need to take more time to understand the individual letters because they have not had as much pre-training with Braille as sighted children have had with print. But once fluent decoding happens, blind children are no different than sighted children when it comes to reading. This means that Braille literacy is very important and both of these programs tackle the issue of literacy as well as understanding.