I recently introduced APH’s Tactile Editing Marks Kit to my son Liam (Age 10, deafblind). It was such a great first experience that I wanted to share how it went!
One of the goals I have for Liam is for him to write a story using a prompt. His prompt was, “Yesterday my pumpkin came alive” (Thanks, Paths, for the pumpkin story starter ideas!). I explained to Liam that we will be writing a short story using a prompt.
Procedure
Brainstorming:
The first lesson we discussed the prompt and came up with possible ideas for a story together.
First Draft:
After brainstorming ideas Liam wrote a first draft of the story by himself.
Editing:
The next day we revisited his short story. I showed Liam items from the tactile editing kit. I explained that we were going to reread his story and look for mistakes that we need to fix. This took two sessions to complete. We used some of the stickers to add punctuation, such as missing commas and quotation marks. We were able to use the labels to fix misspelled words and add words that were missing.
Final Draft:
The final lesson Liam was ready to make a final copy, independently, by reading his rough draft and corrections. His final draft isn’t perfect, but he made some good corrections from his first draft. It was a great activity to work on his English writing skills as well (since his first language is ASL).
Text of Final Draft
Yesterday my pumpkin became alive and the pumpkin said “I want to walk with you” and I said “yes” thank you for walk with me”
the pumpkin bounced on the driveway you said
We decided to dance and have a fun time.
He was very proud of his short story and loved using the Tactile Editing Marks Kit.
Further Use:
Our next time we will follow the same procedure with a new prompt. We will take it a step further by adding more details to the story and describing words.
