Database of Teaching Materials and Methods for Special Needs Education

Name of teaching material

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Target	Preschool, primary, secondary or high school students
Disability category	mentally challenged
Teaching units / Applicable scenes	Japanese　activities for independent living　teaching and learning tools, auxiliary aids
Specific purposes	The learners will learn the shapes of hiragana characters. The learners will learn the stroke order for each hiragana.
Considerations for disability characteristics	The instructor asks the learners to assemble the wooden jigsaw pieces and run their fingers over the grooves. Depending on the learner’s ability, the instructor may give the learner one piece at a time or indicate where it goes.
Expected effects and results	By running their fingers along the pieces, learners will gain an intuitive understanding of the hiragana’s shape and how to write it.
How to use	1. The learners run their fingers along the inside of the hiragana frames to learn the form of the hiragana. 2. The learners display the wooden jigsaw pieces one by one in the stroke order for that hiragana. 3. The learners are asked to run their fingers over the completed hiragana jigsaw as they would write it. * The jigsaw pieces are color-coded (red, green, blue, yellow) to indicate their ordinal position in the stroke order.
Related teaching materials and information	We based the puzzle on Casio’s 2.5 tactile series (Fumio NEMOTO).
Useful for other students

Informant Special Needs Education School for the Mentally Challenged, University of Tsukuba
Keywords Fill frame, differentiate, run fingers along