How do we communicate school-wide?
As a special education teacher turned director, I have lots of conversations with my team about what our classrooms are lacking. This fall, the word “communication” came up in more ways than one! With our students returning to in person learning, we quickly realized that we had to reestablish functional communication within our classrooms and school. While some of our students are oral speakers, most of our students use AAC devices or communication boards to speak. As we took an inventory of what each student used to speak, we found that a lot of our students were limited to first-then boards and small choice boards, mostly used for selecting a reinforcer. As director, it was hard to realize we were really dropping the ball when it came to accessing our students’ voices. We decided to grow our functional communication school-wide using many resources, including some from
Virtual Resources for Gym Class
PE Teachers were provided Virtual Resources for Gym Class. These provide first-then visuals with a variety of activities, social stories, and ways for students to communicate how each activity makes them feel!
Student Communication Books
Students who do not communicate orally, or are continuing to grow their oral communication, received a communication book. This book is laminated and placed in a tabbed binder. Each tab represents a different subject like, “I want,” “I feel,” “I want to play,” and “I want to eat.” We included pages from Interactive Describing Visuals to create individualized boards based on each student’s current communication level.
Classroom Large LAMP Boards
Our speech therapist selected LAMP Words For Life (featured at the top of this post!) but any large board would do! In each classroom, a large board is now posted to allow teachers, paraprofessionals, and students, whether oral speakers or not, to communicate to each other using the board. Our classrooms are using these large boards during whole group instruction and small groups to model and practice communication using a language board. Check out this blog for an example on how to implement a language board during read aloud.
Check Back in Spring!
As we work to boost communication around our program, we are implementing blocks during each student’s day for focused practice using their communication binders. This will allow us to start first with mand training and make these new tools highly reinforcing for our students! After lots of material creation and hands-on training, our staff is ready and excited to communicate effectively with our students. Look out for an update this Spring on how our functional communication has developed school-wide!
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