

Pre-braille
Tic Tac Toe
Let’s play Tic Tac Toe with bricks that are awake or asleep.
Teaching braille: Lesson Plan 2
Teachers often don’t suggest column operation to their blind students because it’s very visual. But mental arithmetic is also very complicated for a blind child and requires considerable cognitive skills. With the right preparation and tactile equipment like LEGO Braille Bricks, it is possible to carry out an operation in columns.
But before teaching how to do an addition, the teacher must be sure that the student has all the
skills needed to succeed.
What do students need to be able to do before they start setting up an operation?
Understand the concepts of hundreds, tens and ones.
Know how to read and write multi-digit numbers.
Be able to follow a line or column with both hands.
This last basic skill is specific to visual impairment. All too often, children fail to perform operations because they are unable to follow lines and columns correctly.
A lesson plan allows the teacher to work on these skills so that the child can be successful in the particular task of making a column addition.
The following activities will help the child make progress while having fun.
1. TIC TAC TOE
This tactile adaptation of the famous game allows work on concepts of spatial organisation and orientation in a grid.
2. MYSTERY NUMBER
This activity builds on the concepts of the numbering table. It ensures that the basic elements of numbering are in place.
3. UPSIDE DOWN NUMBERS
By playing with 3-digit numbers, the child becomes familiar with the concept of number.
Once they have practiced these 3 activities, the students are ready to learn how to carry out operations in columns. This is done in the same way as with the sighted pupils in the class. The vocabulary used should be as precise as possible: columns, rows, tens and hundreds. We suggest leaving spaces between each brick to ease their manipulation.
It can be tricky for blind students
to write an operation,
especially when your sighted peers can use
a paper to write operation in column.
First thing, you take the number sign
and you place it at the top left corner
of the baseplate to indicate that it is a numerical baseplate.
Then it’s like on paper.
Let’s take an example. 43 plus 15.
And I leave a space between each line and rows. Equals…
3 + 5 = 8
4 + 1 = 5
43 + 15 = 58
We can also make more difficult additions.
Let’s take another example.
27 plus 38.
7+ 8 = 15
So I have 5
and one tens.
1 + 2 + 3 = 6
27 + 38 = 65
Understanding Symmetry with LEGO Braille Bricks
The use of LEGO bricks makes learning symmetry more fun and accessible for blind children.
Braille
Battleships
Missed! Missed! Sunk!… Who’s going to sink all the ships and win the battle?
Braille
The Mystery Number
How do you work out the mystery number? Arrange the hundreds, tens and ones to solve the puzzle.