What's for Lunch with Megan Connaughton.
Video

What’s for Lunch

Megan demonstrates how she adapted the book "What's for Lunch" using prompts, a student-activated switch,simple visual and tactile representations of food.

What’s for Lunch by Eric Carle
Adapted by: Megan Connaughton

In this Teachable Moment, Megan demonstrates how she adapted this book to meet the needs of the student’s in her class. Following a prompt to turn the page, the students activates a switch that says “What’s for lunch?” at which point Megan and the student explore the food item on the page. Megan describes how she constructed the book to include simple visual and tactile representations on each page using vivid images on a black background.

Read full transcript »

Transcript: What’s for Lunch

Megan talks about her adapted version of Eric Carls book, What's for Lunch.CONNAUGHTON:Hi, I’m Megan Connaughton. I’m a teacher at Perkins School for the Blind in the Deafblind program, and today I’m going to be talking about my adapted version of Eric Carle’s book “What’s for Lunch?”

The book is about a monkey who is asking the repetitive question “What’s for lunch?”

Each page of the book represents a different fruit choice that he has for his lunch. This book is a great opportunity for repetitive line use of a switch.

With the pre-recorded switch, the student can be prompted at the beginning of each page to hit the switch and have the monkey ask: [Voice on switch] What’s for lunch?

The monkey asks, What's for lunch? upon prompting the switch.After that, we identify what’s on the page, for instance, the first page is about a coconut.

So the monkey asks, “What’s for lunch?” The response is a coconut. No thank you, monkeys don’t like coconuts.

The student will be guided to reach out and identify the tactile representation of the coconut on the page.

Each page uses a bold visual representation, as well as a tactile cue, to encourage the student, who has Cortical Visual Impairment, to maintain visual attention, as well as develop their visually guided reach.

As we move through the book, the student is prompted to hit the switch and activate the line of the story.

As the student moves on through their lesson, they begin to learn that as I turn the page in the book, it’s time to activate the switch and start the new page.

Visual representation and tactile cue of the fruits that are in the book.They are then prompted to continue maintaining their visual attention with each item of the page. On this page, we’re looking at a red apple, which is a simple representation using a black background and red mylar paper, as well as a small tactile cue in the form of a felt leaf.

As we move through each page, you can see the different representations.

For this book in particular, I chose to first laminate plain black paper. I then created visual representations of each fruit described in the story and glued them on top of the paper. This allows for a more vivid image, as well as full access to the tactile representation on each page.

To create this book, I went to the Dollar Store and found different representations for tactile cues that you might not think to use, for instance, for the grapes, I used a purple loofah.

The Monkey receives his banana for lunch.For the orange, I used a simple combination of pipe cleaners and hot glue, and for the lemon, I used a yellow shiny gift bag.

I continued this pattern throughout the book, adding a simple visual and tactile representation on each page, until we get to the final page, where the monkey asks “What’s for lunch?” and finally receives his banana.

To complete the book, I bound it together using loose binder rings to complete a full book for the student.

And that’s today’s teachable moment.

Megan talks about her adapted version of Eric Carls book, What's for Lunch.

Presented by Megan Connaughton

Length of time to complete: approximately 5 minutes

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Colorful head shot of a leprechaun.
Activity

Lucky leprechaun lessons for littles

No one is perfect that's why we have braille erasers! classroom poster.
Download

Free braille classroom poster

Cartoon image of a man with an open book sitting in front of a city landscape with the 360 degree symbol representing the virtual tour of the city.
Guide

Touring colleges with virtual reality