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Friendships in Young Students with Severe Communication Problems: Are We Providing Enough Opportunities?

Happy children playing

“This student has no friends.”

I often hear teachers and therapists commenting that a particular student has no friends. These comments always make me wonder about how we see friendships developing in young students. What do we mean by “s/he has no friends”?

Do we mean that these students:

  • sit mostly by themselves?
  • do not seek out others in a way that we expect them to?
  • show no preference of whom to play with?

The comment “This student has no friends” generally signals the beginning of a discussion on how what we do in classrooms impacts on students’ opportunities to make friends.

Continue reading “Friendships in Young Students with Severe Communication Problems: Are We Providing Enough Opportunities?”

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Getting Things Done: Compliance or Active Learning?

I am often amazed at how the pressure of “getting things done” can prevent one from  meaning-making with others. The inability to take time to be with another can have significant impact on our well-being as parents and teachers.

A colleague and I were driving to do some training at a school. It was early morning, and we had had a late start. Getting back into the car with two cups of coffee for my friend and me, I felt quite relieved, as I had difficulty understanding the coffee attendant, who was speaking with a heavy southern accent.

Continue reading “Getting Things Done: Compliance or Active Learning?”

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Peer Interactions and Social Closeness in Self-contained Classrooms

Much of life can pass us by when we are too hurried to pay attention to it. This is not only true for us, but also for the children we work with. Realizing that small moments of interactions can add to our toolkit to enhance meaning-making and social closeness between children can be a major game-changer!

A document (Promoting Positive Social Interactions in an Inclusion Setting for Students with Learning Disabilities) by the National Association of Special Education Teachers focuses on the importance of promoting positive peer interactions: ”None of these (referring to positive and challenging experiences) will be more rewarding than helping children with special needs developing positive interaction with their peers.” Even though the same sentiment is frequently repeated in schools, I am often surprised at the gap that exists between intervention practices with students with severe communication difficulties and the idea that we need to promote interactions and friendships between peers. This gap is particularly evident in self-contained classrooms where students tend to have assigned seats and are engaged in one-on-one instruction for up to 95% of the school day.

When we address promoting peer interactions, the focus often lies on the type of behaviors (e.g., getting a friend’s attention, sharing objects, saying something nice to a friend ) that can promote peer interactions. Although these behaviors are important, it is equally important for us to be able to assist two children who show some affinity for each other to become friends. Teaching and promoting positive behaviors can facilitate the development of a culture of acceptance and tolerance in school; however, they do not necessarily promote the development of friendships between children. Becoming friends requires sustained interest between peers and the openness to become socially close to another. Hence, the development of friendships requires targeted observation and ideas that can be infused to enhance meaning-making between two children.

Continue reading “Peer Interactions and Social Closeness in Self-contained Classrooms”

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Compliance and Engagement in Interaction with a Child Who Is Nonverbal

I recently followed an interaction between communication professionals on twitter in which they commented on the difference between compliance and engagement in interacting with young children. It made me acknowledge that Twitter can be used in really constructive ways: These short messages can make you think! Please see the postings as well as the comments on the postings below (Nov. 13 & 14, 2020).

Twitter Postings and Comments on Compliance and Engagement
(November 13 & 14, 2020)

Communication isn’t about pressing buttons to get things. Communication is about deepening connection, meaning-making and engagement. These things drive us to keep communicating (Alex de la Nuez).

Let’s not confuse compliance with engagement. Doing something I don’t necessarily want because someone tells me to do it is compliance. Doing something I want to do because you’ve inspired me to make my own choice is engagement. (Chris Bugaj).

Comments:

• True, true, but we all have to do things that we don’t find engaging. (Cathryn Robbins)

• True. Compliance also isn’t always learning. Following directions doesn’t necessarily mean content is being learned. This can be especially true for students with language delays. (Mollie Kropp)

These postings and comments highlight some important concepts in thinking about the differentiation between compliance and engagement. I briefly summarize the primary points below.

Continue reading “Compliance and Engagement in Interaction with a Child Who Is Nonverbal”

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Story-time with Erna #3: For Parents and Their Young Children—About Turtles in a Pond

Turtles in a pont

Paying Attention to Detail : Enhancing World Knowledge and Understanding of Concepts.

Today’s narrative is different from the previous two stories as it focuses attention on observations made while watching a pond with turtles. This type of observational narrative encourages children to focus attention on detail. Encouraging children to look more carefully at their environment builds on their world knowledge and understanding. What we see depends on how carefully we look and listen. Careful observation is not only the basis for acquiring knowledge, it is also related to understanding concepts and making sure that we have something to communicate about. Having something to share with another is at the basis of developing communication skills.

Background to the narrative

I have friends whose house is next to a big pond. If you stand in their sunroom, you can see the turtles and fish swim in the pond and sometimes you can even see a snake swim in the water. When I first saw the pond I couldn’t see anything in the pond. However, after a while, when I looked more carefully, I realized you can see a lot! My granny always said if you look too quickly you can’t see anything, however, if you look carefully, you will be surprised at what you see!. Today I am telling you about the turtles that live in my friends’ pond and if you look closely at the pictures, you will see what I saw! Continue reading “Story-time with Erna #3: For Parents and Their Young Children—About Turtles in a Pond”

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Abundance in a Time of the Corona Virus: Is “More” Better?

Beach scene

A good friend of mine recently invited me to join in an online course focused on understanding the concept of abundance and what it means in our lives. At first, I thought I have too many other things that needed my attention, but then I thought: What better time could there be than now?

Communication BoardThe Cambridge dictionary defines “abundance” as a situation in which there is more than enough of something.  The opposite of abundance is scarcity, a concept that parents and teachers are most aware of. This awareness is prominent in our attempts to get young children to understand the concept  “more” to allow us to understand when they  want more food, want to watch more TV, or play for a longer time.

The concept is, however,  also frequently used in the context of abundant living, which relates to the meaningfulness of life. Continue reading “Abundance in a Time of the Corona Virus: Is “More” Better?”

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Augmented Input and Meaning-making

Child with iPad

Recently during a professional development session in the schools, we were observing a video of a teaching aide using augmented input by pointing on a student’s device. As we engaged in discussion, participants expressed some confusion about the assumptions underlying augmented input as seen in the video and questioned its role in promoting the student’s expressive ability using the device.

The video showed a group of children listening to a teacher telling a story. The teaching aide was pointing to some core vocabulary on the student’s device (reinforcing core concepts used by the teacher) while the teacher was narrating a story. The purpose of the augmented input by the teaching aide was presumably to enhance the student’s understanding of the narrative.

Participants’ confusion in observing this video related to the different ways in which the device was used: How is the teaching aide using augmented input on the child’s device assisting the student in understanding his role in expressing him/herself? Providing input on the child’s device by repeating concepts used by the teacher can be confusing if the child needs to learn to use his/her device for self-expression. This dilemma is not new to AAC intervention, and different solutions have been proposed over the years. Two of these solutions are discussed below. Continue reading “Augmented Input and Meaning-making”

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Professional Development: Are We Effective in Helping Teachers and Therapists to Grow?

Teachers with students in classroom

It is the beginning of a new school year. This is a time when educational staff—teachers and therapists—are trying desperately to engage with new students in their classrooms or caseloads. Questions, e.g.…

  • How do we get students to pay attention and focus on the lessons we prepare with great dedication?
  • How can we deal with challenging behaviors, different language and reading levels of students, as well as diverse levels of skills of classroom assistants?

…can be all-consuming and overwhelming as we search for external solutions to the interaction and teaching challenges we experience in the classroom. The challenge for those involved in professional development of educational staff is how best to support teachers and therapists during this process. Continue reading “Professional Development: Are We Effective in Helping Teachers and Therapists to Grow?”

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Are We Missing the Boat in AAC Intervention?

Ferry boat leaving shore

Over the past 30 years of working in this field, I have often had sleepless nights when meeting a student in elementary, middle, or high school who has no or very limited means to communicate in spite of having access to a device or iPad with a communication app. I keep asking myself how it is possible that a student can reach middle or even high school without the ability to express themselves when we have trained teachers and therapists to provide intervention and support? Despite these resources, it still seems rather easy for students with severe communication problems to fall through the cracks.

Although the reasons for these dilemmas are complex, looking at the way in which we formulate IEP goals can be illuminating. IEP goals are often written to reflect outcomes that show the student has learned or gained (that is, variables that are easy to measure, for example, how frequently students respond correctly to certain stimuli or use language structures correctly within context), without due consideration of how what they have learned impact on their daily interactions. Continue reading “Are We Missing the Boat in AAC Intervention?”