Encouraging Teachers to Use AAC in the Classroom

Kelly Fonner:

What are your students saying?

When are students more likely to communicate?

What seems to be holding them back from communicating?

We must be planful and strategic when teaching communication...just like when we're teaching reading.

Environmental Communication Teaching Training

Activity-Based Objectives

Environmental Arrangements

Prompt Hierarchy

Communication must be:

• fun
• motivational
• meaningful
• purposeful
• easy
• repetitious
• age appropriate
• cause a response or continuation
• natural to the activity
• given in small units

Focus on the student's interests and develop communication activities based on the interests with students who also have those interests

Communication is not to make a choice...making a choice is only the beginning of the conversation. Demonstrate with other students how to communicate with the device with other children.

Communication strategies come together IN CONTEXT.

Plan for Expressive Communicative Participation

RAISE EXPECTATIONS!

• Students need to know when to communicate
• Teach how to communicate, they need to learn to take turns in the context of the activity i.e. Science, paired reading etc.
• Initiate conversation and you as the teacher.... SHUT UP! Give the student pause time and processing time and response time
• Have more than one style of interaction depending upon the listener or situation
• Use multiple modes of communication

ECT Training Basics

• Activity Based Objectives
• Environmental Arrangments
• Prompt Hierarchy

Use the environment to design the communication activity

Art projects (i.e. one glue, one scissors for class which requires communication among the peers to request the non verbal student to communicate and participate)

Prompt Heirarchy

• Set a purpose to communicate (the purpose is not the AAC device) the purpose is what they are doing, how environment is arranged to communicate, partner)
• Activity, Environment, Partner - when communication breaks down it happens in all of these areas or one or two of these areas.
• When giving prompts to student do not tell them to "push this", "tell me this" you are not giving the student the opportunity to think, you create prompt dependency
• Have the student with AAC become "the teacher" and he/she asks the questions with the device, offer opportunities to choose the student to answer...

Activities have a Social Communicative Context

• Dyadic Interaction
• Joint Action Routines
• Behaviour Regulation
• Instructional Activities

Dyadic: social interaction: arriving, departing, breaks or transitions between class/lunch etc.

Joint Action Routines: common activities, snack time, developing joint attention, common action, clear beginning, middle and ending, Scriptable, Context Specific Vocabulary....COMMUNICATION is more than NOUNS

Behaviour Regulation: What the AAC user says to...direct the actions of the another, have basic daily needs met for hygiene, getting around, physical care, dressing

Instructional Language: how to participate in a discussion etc.

Activities can Target:

• Vocabulary expansion
• Automaticity of symbol locations or sequences
• Language Development
• Multi-modal Communication
• Replacing socially unacceptable communication behaviours

Target Activities:

• Process rather than product oriented
• Represents a class of activities
• More than on selection for activity type can be offered at any given time
• HAVE to have communication activities that are repeated daily and weekly with classroom staff

Choose a routine, revamp an activity with a communication thought behind it

Record Discrepancies between current and desired performance

Define Existing or new communication requirements and work towards those goals

Requirements for an Activity

• how is it initiated
• where does it begin
• what is the transition from the previous activity
• who begins it
• how is it begun
• what is said or done