Visual Motor and Perceptual Skills Therapy 1

Visual Motor and Perceptual Skills Therapy 1 This book is intended for use by eye care professionals, occupational therapists and special educational needs teachers. It contains a series of visual exercises, developed by Dr Nadia Northway PhD BA DBO SRO as part of a university study. The exercises can be used in a variety of ways and are suitable for use with children who lose their place when reading skip words when reading have difficulty following a line of text have visual perceptual difficulties such as poor visual discrimination, poor form consistancy or poor figure ground discrimination have performed poorly on tests such as the developmental eye movement test have left/right letter or number reversal The exercises also help to develop eye-hand coordination and gradually increase in difficulty enabling the student to cope with more complex visual environments. They have been specifically developed to provide therapy for children who have poor visual motor skills (Developmental Eye Movement Test) and or poor visual perceptual skills (Test of Visual Perceptual Skills Revised). Results from the study demonstrated an improvement in visual performance including increased reading speed following treatment with the exercises in this book. The Exercises Each exercise essentially comprises a page of symbols randomly chosen from a small, carefully chosen set of symbols, and arranged in a text-like manner (see example below). The student is invited to search for, and mark each occurrence of a given symbol, with the emphasis being on accuracy rather than speed. Within each exercise there is a natural progression in the choice of symbol being looked for (some are more easily discriminated than others). Moving from exercise to exercise, the difficulty is increased by decreasing the shape size and increasing the number, and variety, of shapes on the page. The exercises are suitable for children aged 5 and upwards. Usage The booklet contains multiple copies of each exercise with the intention that the practitioner removes the necessary pages and gives them to the student to practice. The author anticipates that this should allow treatment of between 4 and 10 pupil/patients. Note: The book is not licenced for photocopying (except for the Parents and Patients Instructions page). Each exercise sheet will be used multiple times by the patient so it is advised that they use a polythene pocket or clear plastic sheet to cover their exercise sheet(s). They can then mark the symbols using (e.g.) a dry marker and wipe the cover clean before commencing the next search. The exercise sheets can be used with a coloured overlay if the patient benefits from reading through colour. Also Available Visual Motor and Perceptual Skills Booklet - Level 1 : A slim booklet containing a selection of simple exercises and usage instructions, primarily intended for parents. Visual Motor and Perceptual Skills Booklet - Level 2 : A slim booklet containing a selection of more challenging exercises and usage instructions, primarily intended for parents. The two booklets together cover the same range of difficulty as Therapy 1. Visual Motor and Perceptual Skills Therapy 2 : A progression from Therapy 1 that is intended to further develop visual skills with exercises such as 'Find the Letter', 'Spot the Difference', 'Symbol Sequencing' etc.