Contributed by: Cindy Wang, MA

One of the hardest things I’ve encountered so far is finding a way to talk about low vision and legal blindness with my elementary school age low vision students. Like most students, they are aware they are different from their sighted peers, but they don’t really want to talk about it. The few times I’ve tried to have a discussion, it ended up being really awkward because the kids seemed like they just wanted me to hurry up and finish talking.

I decided to make these Q&A cards to help facilitate a conversation. At the very least, my students will learn some definitions and finally know what O&M stands for. 😄

For the lesson, I have the student choose a question card. Before looking at the answer card, I have the student brainstorm some answers. Then, we read through the answer card together and I provide more details. It’s not pictured here, but I also have some low vision simulators that I bring with me so the students can try them on and interactively learn about the different types of low vision. Depending on the student, I’ll either have an entire lesson devoted to these cards, or just pick a couple cards to introduce at the beginning of each lesson.