Honoring Communication Attempts for Students with Complex Access Needs

(upbeat music) - Honoring communication attempts, even if their meaning to us is unclear. This can be done in a couple of ways. If a student may takes a vocalization or has a facial reaction, or even initiates the activation of a button on their augmented communication device, even if we don't know what they mean, we can say, oh, John it really sounds like you have something to say. So even without saying anything more, that's honoring that communication attempt. I also think that just like we might do, if a student made a comment in class and we didn't really understand it we could say, Mary I'm glad to hear you share your idea, I'm not sure I understand. So let me ask you, can you say that in another way? You could also say, I wanna really understand what you're saying. Let me ask you a couple of questions about that. Now, another way to shape communication is to use your finger, the speaking person's finger to scan across a row or down a column of possible communication messages that might be a reasonable one that the student wanted to say, when he or she first tried to communicate. So obviously the context is really important. So if it's in a place situation and the student with disabilities is sitting at the block table and the student tries to communicate but you don't know what they mean, you could do this, say, you know what Jeremy, I'm not sure what you were saying but I wonder if it was, you want to say something about blocks? You want to say something about the cars? Or was it something else? That kind of gestural and verbal modeling is one of the strategies to help students communicate.