Maureen Lee Maderos & Meghan Aycock

It is the goal of our team to work to align books with actual objects to help literature come alive. The universal learning concept will help students with low vision, Braille users, English Language Learners and students of all abilities access literature.

Approximately 80% of what we learn is visual. We crawl because we see something we want and move towards it, we face another person when we are speaking to them because we see others do it, we know what a stop sign looks like and how high a building is all because we can see. What if you couldn”€™t see? Think about how we teach our students. So much of what we do is visual. We write on the board, blink the lights if we want quiet and use our facial expressions to convey how we feel about what”€™s going on. If you are visually impaired or blind, so much information is being missed. Direct instruction is required to know when to face someone, what a stop sign looks like and how high a building is. Incidental learning is less likely to happen as so much of what is going on around us is visual.

A Story Box is a way for a young child who cannot see learn by experiencing. A collection of items related to a story are compiled in a box or bag. One of my favorites is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The mouse in the story eats a cookie, drinks from a glass using a straw, makes a mess and cleans it up with a dust pan and broom and on and on.

Maureen Lee Maderos graduated from Boston College with Masters in Special Education and Teaching Students with Visual Impairments. Maureen has spent the last 18 school years working In the Boston Public Schools with students with various special needs. Maureen has spent thirteen years in a substantially separate classroom at the Richard J. Murphy School in Dorchester. There she worked with students with visual impairments. Maureen taught curriculum through various access points of Braille, technology, audio books, and taught functional academic skills.

She now travels all over the city to many schools and works with students in all different models-fully included, substantially separate, pilot schools, and innovation schools. It is a wonderful buffet of learning from colleagues and best practices from dozens of classrooms and how to best serve students and families all over the city. Maureen is a graduate of the Boston Public Schools and is very proud to work in the oldest public school system in the country.

Meghan Aycock graduated from Boston College with a Master”€™s Degree in Intensive Special Needs with a concentration in educating students who are Deafblind. She also attended Umass Boston where she obtained a M.Ed in the areas of Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments (TVI) and Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist (COMS). She spent 15 years as an aide and then a teacher at Perkins School for the Blind and the last 7 years working as an itinerant TVI and COMS in the Boston Public School System.

Meghan has an interest in communication and literacy for students who are blind or visually impaired including those with additional disabilities. Research has shown that using a total communication approach increases understanding and promotes learning for all children. Adding tangible objects to literacy experiences enhances concept development for children who are visually impaired.