S-C-H-O-O-L!
I often find myself helping people who are brand new to AAC. This often happens in the school setting when a teacher gets a student in their classroom who either already has a device or is going through the process to acquire one. Sometimes, it is an SLP who doesn’t really know how to support the language development of a student with complex communication needs in therapy. With all of the things we need to complete in a day, it is sometimes a challenge to remember what to do or how to get started. So, I created an AAC mnemonic device to help you remember six key things for supporting children in the S-C-H-O-O-L setting:
Support learning and communication
Collaborate with others on the educational team
Have a plan
Opportunities all the time
Offer help when needed
Learn your student’s AAC device
Support learning and communication
Make sure that you create a positive communication environment and set high expectation for your students. This will help you focus on the positive outcomes of AAC and encourage more and better communication.
Collaborate with others on the educational team
The old African Proverb that says that it takes a village to raise a child is especially true when working with students with special needs. Good AAC intervention cannot be done by one person, so share your successes and challenges with other team members. Work together as a team to build success.
Have a plan
Make a plan and stick to it! Know when, where, why and how the device will be used throughout the day. Here are a few resources that might help.
Opportunities all the time
In order for AAC users to become proficient communicators, they must have opportunities to practice their skills. Planning will help identify opportunities throughout the day. See the resources listed above.
Offer help when needed
It’s OK to help AAC users when they get stuck. Make sure to use the Chain of Cues to encourage independent communication and reduce the probability of prompt dependency. Visit DynaVox’s Implementation Toolkit to learn more about the Chain of Cues.
Learn your student’s AAC device
You must become familiar with the content in your students’ devices in order for you to teach appropriate use. If you don’t know where the vocabulary is located then you can’t help your students when they get stuck.
This is such a great post. You really make a good point that effective AAC intervention cannot be done by one person- we’ve seen some teams work together to support some amazing successes! It’s always so exciting at this time of year to see teams pull together with motivation and enthusiasm for the new year. Hurray for S-C-H-O-O-L!