Thursday, March 13, 2014

Integrating Augmentative Communication in the Classroom, Home, and Community

In our early toddler classroom, it is obvious that the teachers are the examples for communication.  I can already see one of the little girls mimicking my intonation and animation quite well.  On the other hand, the students are learning to communicate quite well with eachother.  Two little girls are starting their own "language" basically that they seem to understand completely.

I have experienced Learned Helplessness on many occasions, sometimes even myself! It's something that is sneaky and easy to overlook because, as teachers, we always want to help! One way I've learned to combat it is to prompt the person along until they get on track.  It is hard not to, but taking a step back out of the "let me just do this for you" zone makes all the difference in the world.

Back to what I previously said about utilizing the iPod/iPad goes along with using communication devices at home and in the community.  They are instruments the everyday people are aware of and used to using to communicate at well.  So for them to read a program on an iPod would be much simpler than a PEC board sentence.  I think that is the route we should be focusing on for streamlining the user and community.

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