Patterns, Patterns, Patterns

Here are 6 FREE sample pages from Patterns, Patterns, Patterns  which is a collection of over 50 visual perceptual activities involving patterns. Children will be challenged to draw the patterns and find shapes, numbers or objects in a pattern. The activity pages are in black and
white.

Patterns, Patterns, Patterns stimulates:
visual motor skills
visual perceptual skills
visual closure skills
visual discrimination
spatial relationships
visual memory

Download your free sample pages at http://www.yourtherapysource.com/patternsfree.html

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Classroom Displays and Children's Ability to Focus

Is the picture above hard to read?  Of course it is - text on a busy background is difficult to see.  One thing that really bothers me in a classroom is excessively decorated walls.  I frequently walk into a classroom and am shocked at the visual overstimulation.  There are patterns, pictures and words hanging all over the place.  Sometimes not just on the walls but from the ceiling and "clothes line" rope across the room.  Now imagine you are a young student and need to focus on the teachers, it can be quite difficult with all the visual stimulation in the room.  Another pet peeve I have is when assignments are hanging on patterned paper - it makes it so much harder to focus on the information that a student needs to read or copy down.  Many times I may make a gentle recommendation to decrease the display for a particular student.  But, I am always careful not to step on any toes - at the end of the day it is the teachers room to set up not mine.  But, now there is some simple research to back up what us therapists may recommend in the school setting.   

Psychological Science published research indicating that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed.  The 24 kindergarteners were placed in laboratory classrooms that were heavily decorated or sparsely decorated and taught lessons.  The following results were seen: 

• children learned in both classroom types but they learned more when the room was not heavily decorated.  Children's accuracy on the test questions was higher in the sparse classroom(55 percent correct) than in the decorated classroom(42 percent correct).


• the rate of off-task behavior was higher in the decorated classroom (38.6 percent time spent off-task) than in the sparse classroom (28.4 percent time spent off-task).

Even though it is a small study and more research needs to be done, it is a start.

Reference:  Medical Express. Heavily decorated classrooms disrupt attention and learning in young children.  Retrieved from the web at http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-05-heavily-classrooms-disrupt-attention-young.html#nwlt on 5/28/14.

Modifications and Interventions for School - Reporting Forms provides pediatric
therapists with over sixty, reproducible reporting forms with hundreds of suggested modifications and interventions for students. Interventions are listed by skill areas such as handwriting, scissors, dressing, walking, stairs, wheelchair skills and sensory skills. This book is a great tool for all school based therapists and teachers to determine what modifications and interventions are successful for a particular student. Find out more at http://yourtherapysource.com/modifications.html

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Educational Video of the Beery Buktenica Visual Motor Integration Assessment

Dr. Alisha Ohl, a practicing pediatric occupational therapist and professor at SUNY Downstate Medical Centers occupational therapy program, worked with a group of students in the creation of an educational video that focuses on improving administration and scoring of the Beery Buktenica Visual Motor Integration Assessment. The video consists of video clips demonstrating the administration of the assessment to a nine-year-old child combined with presentation slides containing important tips from the manual to keep in mind during administration and scoring to reduce common errors.  The video is below for all to view for educational purposes:

Visual Processing in Low Birth Weight and/or Extremely Preterm

Pediatrics published research on the visual processing of 228 adolescents with a history of extreme low birth weight (less than 1000g) and/or extremely preterm (less than 28 weeks gestation).  Compared to a control group the extreme low birth weight and/or extreme preterm adolescents  exhibited the following:

• significantly worse visual acuity with habitual correction in both the left and right eyes
• poorer stereopsis and convergence 
• more problems with visual perception after habitual correction. 

Reference: Carly S. Molloy et al.Visual Processing in Adolescents Born Extremely Low Birth Weight and/or Extremely Preterm. Pediatrics peds.2013-0040; published ahead of print August 5, 2013, doi:10.1542/peds.2013-0040