Event ID: 2134279
Event Started: 5/23/2013 7:18:05 PM ET
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[ Captioner standing by waiting for event to begin ]

Okay, we are at the appointed hour. I am going to start off with a little bit of housekeeping. Even with a small group, I think I will go ahead and mute everybody's phones. That way, if we have any late arrivers, they will arrive muted and we won't pick up background noise -- background noises during the presentation.

You can press star-six to an mute your phone -- unmute your phone at any time. Remember this will be recorded. Anything that you put into the chat box or say well talking, it will be recorded. The first step will be to mute the phones.

All guests have been muted. You can un-mute your line -- un-mute your mind by pressing star-six. This meeting is now being recorded.

Okay, we are set, go ahead Sherry.

Welcome to the National Family Association for Death-Wind -- Death-Blind.. My name is Sherry Sanger and I am a current board of NFADB. I have been on the board for 14 a half years and we are excited to have our purpose and Nancy Steele -- Barbara Purvis and Nancy Steele to discuss the literacy website. The NFADB measured -- the NFADB mission is to empower individuals that are death-blind -- deaf-blind.

We are thrilled to have you join us today as we learn to navigate and better understand the literacy website and its application. Literacy is an important topic with far-reaching implications for all of us as it goes beyond deaf-blind was strategies that can be applied to many children.

We have people attending this webinar from different backgrounds. We have parents, professionals in the field of deaf-blind and people from the parent training and education centers. We are all here to learn. This is a great opportunity for our organization to let you know what we can offer two families and to those that serve families.

NFADB is the only national organization created by families with members who are deaf-blind to support families with members who are deaf-blind. We provide information, resources and referral services and we advocate for all families of persons who are deaf-blind. We provide training, support and we collaborate with the state deaf-blind projects. We are a unified your voice -- unified voice that advocates for national policies.

We offer information through a newsletter, website, list serve and a Facebook group. We also have an affiliate program was state family organizations to grow our network of information, advocacy and support. NFADB has a strong commitment to the empowerment of families . Collaboration with professional organizations such as NCDB improve our commitment as we care for someone who is deaf-blind whether it is on a personal level or a professional level. NFADB believes that members who are deaf-blind are members of their community and should have the same choices.

NFADB drives the effort. We welcome members and knows who are new to the community and we encourage you to more -- to learn more about NFADB. We welcome your support and membership. I welcome you again and I believe you will find this webinar informative. Thank you for joining us this evening and I will introduce -- Gibby to our presenters Nancy and Barb.

Barb, I think you are muted.

Is that better?

Yes.

Kim, you introduced your self and you were talking to Susan who is a parent from Timothy. Nancy not -- from Tennessee. Nancy and I know her and that is why we were chatting with her.

Chemistry teacher in Pennsylvania.

We are -- Kim is a teacher from Pennsylvania.

We are glad you are here.

Just to let you know who we are, I have a background in general and special education starting back many years ago as a first and second grade teacher. Literacy is something that has always been an interest in a passion of mine. I also work in early intervention with the birth to three population. I have been part of the NCDB staff now for almost 11 years.

Nancy, why don't you go ahead.

I am a former teacher and I have a regular and special ed background. I was an itinerant teacher for the hearing impaired for 17 years. So, I went into their eating classrooms with lots of kids into various classrooms with lots of kids with General. Ed and special ed , all over the place. Both [ Indiscernible ] and I have been with NCDB for 11 years. We came on at about the same time.

We have been fortunate to work together for the last several years as part of the literacy workgroup with focus on literacy. This website came out of those efforts. You will learn more about that as we go along.

Let's get started. First, let's think about literacy for a minute and also think about how it relates to language and communication. One of the things that we know is that language development includes listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is not something that you need to think of separately. All of these things are interrelated and happen at the same time.

The learners that we are talking about have strong communication needs and that is something that is always at the forefront of our teaching and instruction. I think it is important to remind ourselves right off the bat that literacy and communication go hand and hound. This is true for children -- all children, not just children with disabilities.

The next slide is a demonstration of this relationship. Whether we are talking about listening, or some other form of hearing. There is some kind of communication going on and speaking is how let -- is how individuals let us know what they want. I think we are pretty good on the listening and speaking part, but sometimes we are not as intentional about the reading and writing part. I will hope that everybody will kind of think of these things as an interrelated and interdependent way.

These pictures show some of the ways that literacy develop begins -- development begins to take place in developing children. I think that what the pictures illustrate is that for the most part, literacy happens naturally. It happens in every day activities and in most families routines. The learning takes place incidentally without a lot of intentional effort on our part.

Also, this literacy learning happens in a holistic way. Literacy learning does not happen in a vacuum and you cannot separate it from communication, motor development or social interaction. All of these things happen at the same time.

Another thing about literacy development is that it happens in stages. Chewing on a book turns into looking at the pictures in the book. That leads to sitting on somebody's lap to have them talk about the pictures or the stories in the book. Then it is not long before the child starts to read to his or herself. The children see adults in their lives that are engaged in reading and writing activities such as making grocery lists or paying bills.

Before you know it, they are scribbling on the junk mail and pretending to write their name. It is a natural progression of happens as part of everyday life.

Now I want us to think about each of those activities in relationship to the learners we are talking about. Remember we are not just talking about little ones here, this can happen at any age.

When you're thinking about listening, if you don't here at all, or if you hear differently than most of the population, you are still going to be taking in information. Whether that is by watching someone sign, or using your other senses.

Speaking and for -- formal language often means speaking, but for children with combined hearing and vision loss, their way of letting us know what they need and the way that they it -- that they express themselves may sometimes be using words, but it could be using signs or objects. It could be using some other form of augmented communication.

Reading happens in regular print, large print, braille and again with tactile symbols or touching actual objects. There are a variety of ways to read about what is going on in our environment.

Writing might be conventional handwriting, but it can also be braille. It can use a computer or a typewriter or some other kind of word processor or other assistive technology. We know that the methods and the possibilities for that kind of other assistive technology is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

So, you saw some pictures before of typical activities. Here are some pictures of children engaged in less conventional ways of reading and writing. This is what literacy looks like for them. Sometimes it is something to assist them so they can see the materials better and have access to them. You can see the young boy on the right speaking and listening with his communication partner. The little girl with the roses is using her sense of smell and touch to learn about things. You can see some alternative forms of attendance charge and ways to -- charts and ways to label the preschool chairs. You can see the little guy on the left using his hands along with large text to learn about the objects in front of him.

Barb, there is [ Indiscernible ] there in the middle, you should recognize.

I don't know who's kid that is.

That is Susan sun in the middle using the whiteboard.

-- Citizens son -- citizens -- Susan's son in the middle using the whiteboard.

Limited access to literacy materials or activities is related to disability or disabilities that these children are dealing with. This access can be limited by vision or by hearing, or by physical challenges or processing challenges. When things are not working at all, or not working the same way as for a lot of people, it is not as easy to access the things in our world that help promote literacy.

The second one, limited knowledge, here I am not talking about limited knowledge on the part of the learner. It is limited knowledge on our part. If your education comes primarily from special education, you may not have had opportunity to learn about typical literacy development. Nobody showed you what to do or how to think about it. So, you have limited knowledge about it. -- About it and potential strategies. Even if you are wanting to do these things, you don't know how to go about it. Nobody has shown you. If you have a learner like the ones we are talking about, it may be the first and only time that you have encountered someone like that.

Another barrier is an emphasis on prerequisite skills. This is a trap that many educators fall into thinking that we can't do this unless the child has learned to do this first. How can we work on literacy if we haven't taught the alphabet yet. Or, if this person is not able to hear sounds.

Sometimes our attitudes or aspect -- or expectations affect a person's ability to engage in literacy activities. I hope you have not heard this or setting yourself, but possibly you have heard things like, well, those kids cannot read. Or, this child will never learn to write. He is already nine years old, or 19 or 29, you fill in the blank. We have missed the opportunity. Why would we even start, there's no reason to think about this.

The last one is limited opportunity. It kind of relates to limited access. But, if you don't know what to do and the learners have difficulty accessing activities, then you might not be providing activities for them. So, we really have to think about those opportunities and the activities that we saw in the first slide and think about how we can provide opportunities for similar kinds of experiences if the person we are talking about cannot see across the room -- see me across the room balancing the checkbook. Or they are not aware of the brother or sister in the -- at the table using the coloring book.

So, we want to look at literacy from a new perspective. When we do that, we really need to broaden our definition of what literacy is. We need to begin to think of it as something much more than conventional reading and writing. We also need to recognize that literacy is a right for all people. It is not something that you earn because you have gotten to a certain skill level or age. It is something that is a right for every individual.

When we look at things from this new perspective, there are assumptions that we need to adopt and beliefs that we need to hold. I will go over those in just a minute.

Then we have to increase our own knowledge about how literacy learning takes place and how it -- and how to think outside of the box so we can provide literacy instruction.

When thinking about literacy from a new perspective, literacy is a functional skill. I cannot think of anything that is more functional than the eating literate. Sometimes you will hear somebody say, or you may have even thought that we cannot do that in our classroom because we don't have time for literacy. We have to concentrate on functional skills. We are talking about being able to read emergency information and being able to express doubts in writing and being able to find yourself -- your way around an order from a menu. That is what literacy is all about. I can think of more functional skill then literacy.

So, as we did our work, we looked at research from first about typical learners and how reading develops for typical learners.

We looked at literacy research around individuals who were blind or visually impaired and we looked at children who were deaf and hard of hearing. We looked at children with physical challenges, multiple disabilities and also children who are deaf-blind.

As we read and studied and digested all of the information, there were assumptions that became important about literacy and we felt they were foundational in guiding our work.

The first was that all children can become and are becoming literate. That is part of the live -- the attitude and expectation.

That literacy development is founded on experiences and concepts that begin early in life. If those experiences are not provided early in life, we need to know that they can happen any time and begin to think about how to do that at any stage or any time in life.

Literacy instruction has to include a strong emphasis on communication and socialization. We have talked about communication. Socialization, I think it is pretty easy with literacy activities that you are involved in to realize it does not happen by yourself. It requires someone to read with, read two or write to. So, -- read to or write to. They need a literacy partner and somebody that is on this journey with them. It helps to make it a jerk -- enjoyable for them.

Lastly, literacy exists on a continuum. It starts with emergent literacy and goes all the way up to independent literacy. In the past, you may have heard the words pre-emergent literacy skills. We choose not to use that term. Most people do not use the term because it is a recognition that everything from birth is part of emerging literacy.

Maybe the mothers -- the baby learns to read the mother signals and when they learn to recognize signals. That is all part of beginning emerging literacy.

We also learned some things about what makes for effective literacy instruction, both for typical learners and for an individual with disabilities. Here are some key things for that learning. One is motivation. We know that nobody does anything for reason -- unless they have a reason that make sense at the time.

We look at what will motivate a child and what makes things interesting to them and make them want to learn.

Active artistic patient. The learners that we are talking about to not learn by listening to us or watching us, they have to be involved. You have to put -- plan hands-on learning activities. Those kinds of activities may be difficult for children with multiple disabilities, but it is not impossible.

If we cannot get total participation, we need to think about and try for partial participation. To think about which parts of an activity the children can be involved in.

Multiple modalities. We have -- we apply multiple modalities and art literacy. We get our written information in a variety of ways and are reading in a variety of ways. We also know that the learners we are talking about use multiple modalities, not just for literacy activities, but to take in what is happening in the world around them and to enhance their learning.

We want to make sure it that we are aware of the modalities that work for individuals, particularly children. We want to make sure we use all of those modalities. Sometimes we need to provide multiple modalities because we don't know yet what works for a particular child. By providing lots of opportunities and methods for accessing literacy, we will be able to find out and discover what does work.

We also know that learning takes place most effectively in the context of the meaningful event. It helps children relate what they already know to new information. It provides opportunities for practice and it gets that functional skill piece that we are talking about. We want the receipt to make sense, have a purpose and be meaningful for them.

So, if you are going to be planning for effective literacy instruction, one of the first things you want to do is to get to know your learning. -- Learner. You want to know his/her communication methods. You want to think about what area of literacy you want to focus on. You want to be aware of the preferences and interests. Again we all learn better when it is something we are interested in.

You need to know what kind of adaptations and accommodations are needed for each learner. It is a heart -- is at a high contrast background or a certain font? Is it a certain color or does it need to beast wanted a certain way -- to be slanted a certain way?

You want to plan meaningful activities that make sense to the learner. That may be different than what we think makes sense to us. If it is not meaningful for the learner, it is not likely to be as effective.

You need to provide the appropriate environment and materials. You need to make sure that things are accessible and you need to think about where you place the books and how the child can get to the books. How often they can pick up something and explore it and make sure that things are adapted if they are materials that have been adapted to all kinds of experiences and for all kinds of learners.

So, knowing how important literacy is an learning some things about how to go about it, that led the group of us that was working on literacy with NCDB to create this literacy website .

This is the homepage and you can see the link right there that takes you to the literacy website. You can go to it now, or you can go after we finish talking about it. We will be showing you screenshots of what you will find so that you will know how to make it work. It was important to us to make sure that we developed something that was practical for families and for teachers. We know that all of you are very busy, whether your role is as a parent or an educator.

We want things to make sense and we want to be practical. We wanted to be set up so that it would work for people who knew very little about literacy development and want to start at the beginning and go through.

We wanted people to be able to zero in and focus on a particular area that was important for them. So, you will be able to see some of the things that we have done to make that happen. Before I turn this over to Nancy, the last piece is kind of theoretical information that I will provide. It is just an overview of how the website is organized and the framework that we use. Conceptually, I we put all of this information together.

I already mentioned that literacy develops and stages. You will see the stages of literacy development title different ways, but these are some of the basic. This is one that -- the basics. This is one that takes you through from earlier merchant, through emergent, and up through independent and expanding literacy.

It was important to think about how you build the foundation for literacy. At the bottom, you will see some of the things that really are not unique to the learners that we are talking about, but are extremely important to the learners we are talking about. You want to be sure those things are import -- in place and that you were working on those and paying attention in order to be successful in the literacy instruction.

The first thing is struck -- is trusting relationships, especially for the children with [ Indiscernible ] vision and hearing loss.

We have talked about concept development. If you are going to begin to teach vocabulary and reading stories, you have to concentrate on how you teach the concepts involved with all of this vocabulary and the stories you are reading. How do you teach what is a tree? How do you teach what is a spoon? There are plastic spoons, metal spoons, serving spoons, baby spoons, ice tea spoons, they need to touch and have experience with those.

You will be more successful at the child is interested. You will use books and writing materials. These are things that may not have happened with some of the materials we are talking about. They do need to happen. Just like a baby needs to handle a book, chew wanted and Terry that. These learners need to do it as -- tear it up. These children -- these learners need to do it as well.

You cannot jump into trying to having them tell you what is about and tell they have gone through these other experiences. You really do need to start at the beginning. You need to find tips about how to do that in age-appropriate ways. Typically we think of young children handling board books and some of the big books. We have some ideas for you about how to make that age-appropriate.

We have overlaid 2 pieces of literacy. One is this idea of the stages of literacy development and the second piece that also comes from how literacy develops for typical learners are the five components of reading. These have been put together by -- after research -- review of research and effective practices over the last 25-30 years. These are five components of reading that are recognized throughout the field and literacy instruction. People are paying attention to these and making sure that they have these things embedded into their literacy instruction.

Phonemic awareness may not be happening for the students we are talking about in a conventional way, but it is the idea of the beginning, middle and end. Putting things together and taking things apart. Knowing that if you need to learn the words -- that words are made up of letters and sounds, it is no different from our learners. Sentences are made up of different words and there is a flow to language. That there are different parts to a sentence in different parts to a story.

Pontus is something you will not see any information about on the literacy website because it is one component that really -- phonics is something that you will not see any information on on the literacy website. Because it is one of the component requires the ability to hear. For learners with more complex challenges, we want to expand their vocabulary and also expand how we think about vocabulary. It is not just words that can be read in print. It is worse that are recognized by touching and by feeling parts of the objects. You will see the list their -- there of the ways -- the ways children learn vocabulary.

We want children to be fluent and it is not just reading, feeling or paying attention to one word. But, to the big picture and how things fit together and knowing that a story really flows.

Comprehensive and -- comprehension. It is really important that we do not just teach learners to recognize certain words, but that they understand what they mean. In the past, some of the efforts around literacy for individuals with disabilities has been focused on site words and those emergency words and some keywords. We find out whether they recognize them and whether they can say them and sign them, but we don't -- we don't check to make sure they understand what it is about.

If you take the components of reading and overlay those with the stages of reading, those are the content areas that you will find on the literacy website.

At this point, I will turn things over to Nancy who will show you where to find these things on the website.

Thanks Barb. I get the fun part because I to show you the website. Where I want to start is with the shifting of perspective page. Since Barb has lay that out beautifully, I want to point out a couple of things. That would be that down here on the bottom is the assumptions that she was talking about earlier. And that we broaden our definition of what literacy is which is what we have already been talking about.

We recognize that literacy is the right of all individuals. It is not something that you just do for children at a certain skill level. Up here at the top is a literacy Bill of Rights that you can download that our friends in North Carolina have put together.

The assumptions that Barb was talking about our down here at the bottom. There is also a continuum that she was talking about earlier. It can be found, and it looks like this.

What we have put on there is typically developing, this is what would happen in the stages. We went on with where this would happen with infants, toddlers and on to preschool and whatever. It is more important that you reflect on what is happening in that stage of literacy. So, that is in there and you can find it on the shifting the perspective page.

Another thing that you can find, which we feel is key, we are in a place with the literacy website at this point where we are shifting a few things. This will probably end up on the homepage once we move that around. But, this is really the roadmap of how to get around if you are that teacher or parent and you don't have that much time. You are really looking at all of this information and wondering where to start. What about this kid?

We have developed a checklist that is a checklist that you would go with -- go over with your team. It will provide guidance about where you will begin on the website. It is a downloadable PDF, so you can go through the checklist and what about it -- and whatever you come up with, that will tell you that this is the place to start. That does not mean that you would not look at some of the other stages or whatever. But, if you are looking for a particular child, that would be our recommendation.

So, on the left side of the page, we have the content area. I don't know if any of you have been on this before. We launched the site about a year ago and we only had the home about the website, shifting the perspective, building the foundation, early emergent, emergent and a little bit on the writing. Now we have expanded. Before that we only had these other topics that were under development.

Now they are developed and we are excited about the possibilities. The new content areas that we have recently added are writing, vocabulary development, comprehensive and -- comprehension, increasing literacy and planning. These were developed with a partnership with the deaf-blind and classroom teachers.

This becomes the network website and it does not just NCDB. We really have a lot of deaf-blind projects. They have sent us thing and -- things and we have talked with classroom teachers. They have helped us to develop these things.

We are hoping that it never ends. We are hoping that we will continue to have more pictures and content as things further develop. So, if you look at any of the content pages, which would be the building the foundation on down to the [ Indiscernible ], it is all the way down in pretty much the same way.

You have the opening which just describes that particular part of the website. The first paragraph may talk a little bit about that stage or the content area. Then, the second paragraph would talk about what it looks like for typically developing kids. The third is what it may look like for our kid.

We also have the strategies that are associated with that particular content area or stage. Those are always found on the right side.

These are all research-based and evidence-based and they are provided for every content area. Those all came from our digging through all of the research that we did.

If each of these strategies opens to a separate page, that is where -- each of these strategies opens to a separate page and that is where we try to think about people's time and energy. I have a classroom through -- classroom full of kids that just told me that I am getting a new student that is deaf-blind and I have 15 minutes. What do I do and how to why do this? We try to shape this. -- Tried it to shape this with the strategy and what to consider.

You do a task analysis, how do I teach this? How am I going to get this point across? Then, the things to consider are those, if this doesn't work, then are you doing these things? It is the ownership back on the adult. We as adults are quick to sometimes say, this kid could learn -- Learn, I tried this and this didn't happen.

A lot of times it is because we have not considered things like positioning. Or, am I going for his -- the vision in his better eye? Am I in the framework you can see me or the material? Or, am I giving those cues that he needs? Have I set this up in the right way? Those are the things that are to be considered.

Then, that -- then anything that is to be considered might be pop-ups. Anything in blue is a link. In this particular one, the likes and dislikes, it goes to not just what he likes. Usually parents and teachers will say, he likes music. This will define it more as to what kind of foods, textures, smells, people that he really likes. What are the dislikes? It looks the same way, but you are still looking at all of that and really digging in. This is just one example of one of the links that would be in some of this.

Then, on each page, there is the always ask yourself. How that came to be was that as we were developing this and we got to the things to consider, these same items Coming up. Instead of -- kept coming up. Instead of having a laundry list, we decided to put it onto one sheet. Then if people are really looking at these things any time they have -- anytime they initiate any conversation or have instruction with kids, if they are thinking about these things, then instruction is already going to increase. Just by doing these things, no batter what it is -- no matter what it is. Whether it is teaching are just having a conversation with a student or child.

Then if you go back to the main page of the content pages, they are what we lovingly refer to as the green bar items. In these, there are four or five different green bars. The first one is related skills. We know that literacy instruction should not be taught in isolation.

Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of sensory time or tactile time, or whatever different kinds of times. Unfortunately, that is what we do with IEP. We dissect. This is showing that with literacy instruction that you are also getting to those -- those IEP goals. You might also be working on attention or response to others or some of those IEP roles that we would typically -- goals that we would typically see while you are doing literacy instruction. You are killing two birds with one stone.

Then we have examples. We all know that a picture is worth 1000 words. We try to put as many pictures and examples of different things, and we want to put more as this grows.

So, people can have an idea of what it looks like. Okay, so that's what they are talking about. That is what that would look like. That sparks creativity.

We also have some video clips which once again we are trying to build that repository so that we would have hopefully one day within the strategies video clips that would show exactly what that would look like.

But, there are video clips within and they just show various strategies or things that [ Indiscernible ] with instruction.

These are the [ Indiscernible ] down in this part. They are more of your down and dirty one two pages that you might share with a parent, teacher, OT or PT. Maybe the principal. It might give them an idea of what we are talking about. Those little bits of information that are very powerful. So, with each one, they link to the article. We also try to give descriptions so that as you are looking through, you're not having to click on every item.

Then we have additional resources. That is a variety of things. A lot of them are websites and some of them are books and how you can access and get those books. Some of those are different checklists from different places that have to do with the particular stage or whatever.

We also have examples of resources related to communication. One of them is with Washington Sensory Disability Services. Their project has a lot of little videos that are very good. They are small, short amount of time, but they are very powerful. They have a communication map on there and a communication matrix so that you can look at the tools and be able to see where your student or child is. That would help you with literacy and instruction.

Then, there is a planning section. This is for teachers and seems to start planning instruction. It starts with unit planning and then looking at a whole year. The way that it is laid out is to be able to do literacy instruction with units. So, looking at units around science or social studies that also can pull in those common core math, English and language arts areas. So, you are fully instructing your child for a classroom through the use of units.

They also pared down into tiered planning. These kids are not taught in isolation and they are usually part of a classroom full of kids. It is looking at that instruction and trying to plan for all of the kids, no matter what level. And, how it would look within a unit.

There are also daily planning templates that go with that and collaborative planning.

I know that down here at the bottom, Randy has uploaded files. First of all, this webinar plus also a flyer, a literacy flyer. Speed --

, Please download it and copy it and show others. We would love for you to do that.

I think we are at the end. You can deaf-blind your phone by pressing star-six if you have questions or comments.

-- You can un-mute your phone if you have -- by pressing star-six if you have comments or questions.

There are only 3 of you, so don't everybody jump in at once.

It looks like most people are still you did -- muted.

I am un-muted, except me a while. This is camp -- Kim. While you were talking, I had a second browser opening -- open and I was browsing around. There was a lot of stuff there. I think this is going to be practical. I am excited.

Now, I am moving on. I am one of those that gets a lot of prerequisite skills and don't know the appropriate answer. [ Indiscernible - low volume ].

What you can do, there is a button on the top that says contact us. That is where you can find Barb and might e-mail addresses -- my e-mail addresses. You are welcome to contact us to walk through and talk through this.

Part of our job is to provide technical assistance about the website. So, we each have done conference calls with a family, teacher or educational team or school district. It depends on our schedules and availability. But, it is definitely part of our job to provide technical assistance. We know that the stuff that is here is great and useful, but we also know that if you are going to really implement new strategies and be successful that you also need some coaching and guidance along the way.

That is part of our job as well.

Okay, great, that is good to know.

The first thing I would do, you said you have 4 students.

I have 4 in the classroom and I also have 3 -- three others in various places.

Are they all on the same level being nonverbal?

The first thing I would probably do is take out that worksheet that we showed you, the checklist and go through their -- there an answer the questions about each of the kids to kind of give you that idea about where are these kids on the literacy continuum.

That might help you to start paring information about each one. This is the best instruction or this is the level where they are. I think that will help you with the roadmap.

I would agree. It will also help to peer down -- pared down -- pair down all of the information.

There is a lot in there is more coming. We don't want to overwhelm you. You need to take chunks.

[ Indiscernible - low volume ]. There is a lot to think about, thank you very much.

You're welcome.

We also do technical assistance with teams in Kansas where I am. We gave them to her like we have done with you. We did some face-to-face stuff and each team filled out the literacy checklist. They focused on one area, like we said, get to know your area. Then, they each selected a strategy or 2 to work on. Then, we have been in consultation with them through the deaf-blind project . We have checked with them throughout the year to see how they are doing with implementing the strategies. Problem solving together and coming up with ideas and then going back. If one strategy or skill is completed, then they move on. I think they have had good success with that.

First there is the checklist and then that will point you to a section on the website. Then, pick what you want to try. Use the examples and instructions to get started and then go back and see how it is going.

With the examples, you know I am dealing with such a small population and I don't think my parents have ever had the opportunity to really -- you know, they haven't seen a child with similar challenges been successful. They haven't seen the end product. We throw all this out at them, but we can kind of sort of see -- if they see it actually working and having positive results. I think one way I would like to do it is to give them access to --

If both of you are working on, let's agree to work on this strategy. I will work on it at school this way and how could you do it at home this way? That will make it stronger for the kid. I also want to tell you that I very strongly feel like the strategies are the underpinning. If you work on the strategies, that is going to help you get the common core.

So, it is kind of the roadmap. These strategies are the underpinning to help when you are going toward the common core.

We all know that that is coming down the pike if it is not in your neighborhood.

It's in my neighborhood.

It's knocking on your door. This is a way to start thinking about it and getting her. -- There.

The planning section helps with that. If you are looking at how to tie things together, it will give you some nice guidance about that.

All right.

Susan, I know you have something to say.

I just have a quick question. When will the recorded version be available? Will it be available on the NCDB website?

Yes, it will only be on the NCDB website and it will be available [ Indiscernible ]. There is an opportunity to review both recordings. We will see which one we need to archive. They will be available by next week.

Do you know if anybody from Erin -- Erin's team was on the earlier one?

I don't know.

This was just discussed yesterday.

Well, the recording will be ready pretty quick be on the website. -- Quickly on the website, they can access it.

I was going ask if anybody on the coal -- the on the call knows who Victoria is? We did not have a chance to find out who she is or where she is from.

I don't know.

All right.

All right, with that, I guess -- we certainly want to thank you all for coming and spending your our with us. -- hour With us.

I guess if there are no other questions, we will close. On behalf of NFADB and NCDB, we would like to thank Barb purpose and Nancy Steele for providing wonderful information on the literacy website that will benefit our children.

Thank you for joining us this evening and we hope you will join us for future NFADB NCDB webinars.

Good night everyone.

Thank you everybody.

Tonight.

[ Event Concluded ] -- good night.

[ Event Concluded ].