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Injury

Spinal cord injuries may include minor to major disruptions of movement and/or feeling below the level of injury. As a general rule, the higher up the spinal cord the injury is, the more extensive the disruption or deficit. The following activities can be tried, keeping in mind how someone who can only use his/her upper body or have limited hand use would accomplish them.

Activity

• Borrow/rent a wheelchair for a week, especially during a theme week and have students use the chair for a full day.  Include travel to and from school.
• Transfer from a bed to a wheelchair without using legs, or abdominal muscles. Dance in the chair.
• Organize a sports event in chairs.  Invite a team of wheelchair athletes.
• Have students list obstacles to movement and create a design to make access easier.
• Plan a trip for someone who uses a wheelchair

Head injuries lead to permanent changes to your brain.  These changes vary from minor, such as alterations in concentration to major, such as difficulties with thought processes, expression, movement, and personality change.  Plan the following activities with varying degrees of these difficulties in mind.

• Create a game in which communication is difficult or in which you are unable to express ideas or complete actions
• Create a picture board. Communicate by picture board only
• Invite a speaker from the Head Injury Association to speak to your group.
• Imagine you are brain injured.  Write a story or poem…How does it feel?  What senses, skills, activities and relationships are changed.  How will you adapt?