AAC Education within the General Education Classrooms

Communication Matrix Team

7/2/2018 8:21 PM

The following post was written by Sabina Walker (SLP):

I am an SLP who works with students who have a variety of disabilities and complex communication needs. I work with students in the k-2 and 3-5 Instructional Learning Program (ILP) at Grace McWayne School in Batavia, Il. Previously, I worked at a pediatric outpatient clinic where I thought I would be content working the rest of my life. However, while attending the University of Illinois-Chicago Assistive Technology certificate program, I spent a summer with Pat Politano out in the field where I assisted in the AAC evaluation process with adults with congenital and acquired disabilities that affected their ability to communicate effectively.  This experience inspired me to pursue a career in the public school system where a part of my work would entail educating others on the importance of supporting individuals with complex communication needs. Two years into this journey and here is how we are doing it so far:

Monthly Staff Training

Last year, the staff within the 3-5 ILP classroom stated that they understood the importance of supporting students who required AAC systems to communicate, but they just were not sure how to implement this within the classroom. We had a meeting with our Director of Student Services and the building principal. They agreed to allow us to meet once a week for 45-minutes before the start of the school day (paraprofessionals were paid to come in).

As a team- the ILP classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, and related service providers- came together to review each student’s communication, behavioral, and academic skills and supports that they needed. I also provided education on core vocabulary and the different AAC systems that students used. Although we came up with plans on how to support specific students, we realized that there were communication skills that all of the students could benefit from.

At first we started with a core word of the week within the ILP classroom so that staff could learn the location of target words, but quickly realized we needed to up the ante. We started a “question of the week” where everyone supported students in learning how to ask questions. Some questions were targeted more than a week.  I posted all of the pathways for the target questions outside the classroom door and within the classroom. Everyone worked with the students on these target questions across the day and the results were astounding. Students who overgeneralized, “I want…” were now asking questions to gain information and for items that they needed.  This year, we meet once a week and anyone in the school is invited to come and learn about how to use AAC and support students who use AAC. Staff members are provided with access to modeling devices to use with students or take home to familiarize themselves with the location of words and how to practice Aided Language Input.

AAC Education within the general education classrooms:

At the start of the  2016-17 school year, I signed up to be a Mystery Reader in a second grade, general education classroom. I read a book by Mo Willems with a speech generating device. At the end of the story the students asked a lot of questions about the device and if they could spend time to learn how to use the devices. Their teacher had been reading them “Out of My Mind” by Sharon Draper, so I went back into their classroom with an armful of devices, communication books and boards, and we talked about the organization of each system and how to use them. It was a great experience, so I went into some of the other classrooms where students who use AAC participated within the general education setting and provided education about a variety of topics related to complex communication needs and AAC.

This school year I teamed up with my colleague, Kellie Myers, who is the building level SLP and supports the students on my caseload through the Circle of Friends program that she and our school social worker run together.  Kellie and I went into each classroom and talked about the AAC systems, how to use them, and set up a station in some of the classrooms where they would have access to the AAC systems for a week. At the end of the school year, Kellie and I teamed up with our colleague Jennifer Duffy, who is an Instructional Technologist,  to create and AAC Breakout session (https://www.bps101.net/news/gms-students-use-aac-devices-to-breakout), which was the highlight of my year. It was really exciting to see students apply the knowledge about AAC that they acquired.

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