Oregon CVI Conference: Literacy Abounds!

By Scott Wall and Claudia Swapp

A conference on Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) for Teachers of the Visually Impaired was held in Bend, Oregon April 4-5 of this year.  The conference was prepared and presented by a team of professionals from Columbia Regional Blind and Visually Impaired Team. Saaron Putnam-Almaguer, CVI Range Endorsed, led the instruction and presented on assessment, CVI & O&M, What’s the Complexity Framework, from Matt Tietjen, and interventions for CVI. Darlene Daniels also prepared presentations to share and inspire participants.  Scott Wall, Columbia Regional BVI Program Administrator, wrote a grant for the conference to cover hotel and food and helped organize.  As part of this conference, Scott also helped to create the Oregon CVI Professional Learning Team, which will explore future training and service models for students with CVI in Oregon. 

Conference Topics

The concentration of the first day was on assessment. A “Make and Take” at the end of the day provided teacher’s with 5 more items for their assessment “tool kit”.  The second day concentrated on complexity, being a frugal TVI, and interventions (especially adapting curriculum and literacy). As part of the second day “Make and Take”, over 130 CVI adapted books were assembled by participants. Examples of adapted curriculum were displayed.  There were also displays on various ways to present literacy formats for students based on their visual needs.

CVI Make and Take

Claudia Swapp and Deana Allen cut countless pieces of glitter cardstock, cardboard, and foam core board to prepare the CVI “Make and Take” portion of the conference.  Read more about the CVI Make and Take.

Over 90% of the Teachers of the Visually Impaired in Oregon attended the conference. This is a testament to the importance of CVI and the desire of our Oregon professionals to increase their knowledge about CVI and to do more for this population.