Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)

What is AAC?


Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is an umbrella term that encompasses the communication methods used to supplement or replace speech or writing for those with impairments in the production or comprehension of spoken or written language.

•  Augmentative – add;  Alternative – another option

•  AAC includes all forms of communication (other than oral speech) that are used to express thoughts, needs, wants, and ideas. We all use AAC when we make facial expressions or gestures, use symbols or pictures, or write. 

Our role is to be a communication partner. This is a very important role, one that will help our students. What we do counts; what we think is important; how we respond matters; every interaction is an opportunity to grow language and communication.
Some of our learners need additional support with their communication skills and AAC can support their production of speech and their comprehension of another person's language.
Examples of AAC :

- used at Sommerville Special school -  Gail Arriola-Bagayas  SLT.

We use the term AAC to describe various methods of communication to get around problems with ordinary speech. Some kinds of AAC are actually part of how everyone communicates: for example, waving goodbye; giving a “thumbs up’ instead of speaking; pointing to a picture, or gesturing in a foreign country.

However, people with speech difficulties have to rely on AAC most of the time. Some AAC tools “add on” to verbal communication – simple methods such as pictures, gestures and pointing. Some people need more complex help to communicate, such as powerful computer technology.

We can best support our learners using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) by creating a learning environment where they are immersed in the use of their own communication system. Modelling with AAC involves highlighting (pointing to or activating) symbols in an AAC system as we speak so that students can experience how their AAC system can be used to communicate for real reasons. Modelling AAC may also be referred to as Aided Language Stimulation or Aided Language Input. 

Developing Vocabulary

I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Jill Ritchie Literacy Consultant from Impact Learning Consulting.

Jill had some fabulous ideas about embedding vocabulary into our teaching programmes.

The teaching of vocabulary is a vital part of our Literacy programmes but must be all taught in all curriculum areas.

We need to review, reteach and checking in regularly that our Learners have the required vocabulary and the correct definition.

Explicit acts of teaching vocabulary is vital for our learners.
We need to reference this new vocabulary in multi contexts through out the week to ensure our learners understand this new vocabulary especially specialised specific vocabulary.

I saw a fabulous example of this when working with Robyn Anderson from Panmure Bridge when we discussed her maths lesson introducing new maths language to her learners.

Knowing your learner , digging a little deeper.

Supporting our students to acquire literacy skills can look very different, according to the context, the desired outcomes and most of all, our learners. Knowing your learners is vital to teaching and learning. Once we know each learner, we can scaffold their learning and put in place for most appropriate programmes and teaching strategies that will help our learners stretch to reach new levels and gain appropriate necessary skills.

When I work with teachers, I have noticed how challenging it is for these teachers to identify exactly what the learner needs to learn when they are well below their chronological peers. To be a competent reader we need a range of skills, it’s like a big jigsaw puzzle. For some of our learners, there are pieces of this puzzle missing which means they are not able to use this knowledge to be competent literacy learners.

Recently, I have noticed the need to go back to basics. Our learners need explicit teaching of strategies and knowledge. One common area seems to be a need more focus on Phonological awareness such as rhyming, word families and onset rime.

eg :     The "onset" is the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat) and the term "rime" refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final consonants (e.g. at in cat).

• ·       They help our learners learn about word families, which can lay the foundation for future spelling strategies
• ·       Teaching our learners to attend to onset and rime will have a positive effect on their literacy skills
• ·       Learning these components of phonological awareness is strongly predictive of reading and spelling acquisition

Our working memory

Encouraging reading

Writing opportunities - Mark making

Supporting writing development.

Our young learners need lots of experience in writing and developing fine motor skills.
It is important that these activities have purpose and are fun.

Auditory discrimination

Auditory discrimination is the ability to recognise differences between sounds. Particularly, auditory discrimination allows people to distinguish between phonemes in words. Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in any given language.

Phonological awareness is often referred to as phonemic awareness, but there is a crucial difference between these terms. 

The term ‘phonemic awareness’ comes from the word ‘phoneme’, which is a single sound in language.   This includes the following individual skills:

·        Identification of initial, final and medial sounds in word

·        Segmentation (breaking words into individual sounds)

·        Blending (blending individual sounds to make words)

·        Phoneme transposition (ability to ‘swap’ sounds)

The term ‘phonological awareness’ comes from the word ‘phonology’, which is the sounds and sound patterns of language.  Phonological awareness is therefore a broader term than phonemic awareness and encompasses the following:

All of the above aspects of phonemic awareness   PLUS

·        Onset + rime

·        Rhyme

·        Syllabification

·        Word Retrieval

·        Auditory discrimination

Storyline online

Online reading resource
check it out   https://www.storylineonline.net/
storylineonline

Great selection of books that are read by celebrities and has the story written across the screen.

Good opportunity for our students to hear and see literacy.

                                                                                                               

Early literacy.

Early literacy research states that:

• Early literacy development is a continuous developmental process that begins in the early years;


• Early literacy skills develop in real-life settings through positive interactions with literacy materials and other people.


Therefore a broad, deep and rich curriculum as advocated should ensure an environmentally rich literacy context, which gives children many opportunities for:


• Movement and developmentally appropriate experiences of both large and fine motor skills;


• Exploration of three dimensional props and books; 

• Real experiences of books, rhymes .

The development of early language and literacy begins in the first three years of life and is closely linked to a child's earliest experiences with books and stories. Young children come into contact with a range of materials including books, paper, and crayons. Together with the adults in their lives they are the important building blocks for language, reading and writing development. Current research demonstrates the critical role of these early experiences in shaping brain development.


For our students who have complications in the early years, whether that be medical issues, complex family dynamics or other situation that have limited the normal development of language we need to find ways to build on their language development. Opportunity is needed to build their developmental stages and experiences before we expect these learners to gain an understanding of formal literacy.


Views on learning literacy:


Learning to communicate and to read has changed dramatically and most recently due to digital technology. Vygotsky (1987) states that learning is a social phenomenon and emphasises that the learner must be involved in the whole activity as a meaningful context rather than discrete parts. This view supports the holistic approach to learning literacy based upon the fundamental assumption that reading and writing are learnt from whole to part (Goodman, 1986); (Goodman and Goodman, 1979). Learners should understand and experience the purposes and functions of language before learning to manipulate its constituent parts. Oral and written language have to be learned in meaningful and enjoyable circumstances, and thus children construct language as they use it. So in holistic approaches the child has the lead and the approaches vary between individuals in multiple contexts and via multiple interpretations. Harste et al., (1984), Cambourne and Turbill (1987) suggest that certain conditions support this approach with children, such as immersion in print, demonstration of how print and books are used, and encouraging children to explore through approximate and practical ways of using reading and writing meaningfully whilst giving supportive and instructive feedback.

Shared Reading Opportunities

Shared Reading Opportunities 

Impact on children’s conceptual knowledge and reasoning skills.

• Builds vocabulary and language comprehension.

• Exposes children to specific components of print and book conventions which 

  facilitates the learning of letter names, shapes and sounds

Emergent literacy print concepts should including: 

• Book orientation knowledge 

• Understanding of principles involving the directional arrangement of print on the page 

• The knowledge that print, not picture, contains the story 

• Understanding of important reading terminology such as word, letter, beginning of sentence, and top of page 

• Understanding of simple punctuation marks

• Key factor is the conversation that  takes place around shared storybook reading.

Our goal is to maximise interactions page-by-page .

This a great opportunity to introduce important vocabulary and extend our children language and understanding.

Where to start with our Emergent Literacy Learners.

Where to start with our Emergent Literacy Learners.

I am often asked where to start teaching a child to read or are they ready to learn.

The main goal when working with our young learners or students who have additional learning need is to encourage a positive interest in learning and reading.

I believe we start to learn the skills for reading when we are very young if we are provided with the  right opportunities.

So what should be included in a literacy programme for emergent learners?

Give your learners lots of opportunity to hear you read to them and with them.

Let your learners see you writing, write together, write for real reason and purposes.

Raising Student Achievement Throught Targeted Action

How do I know that the programmes , professional development are making a difference?

When making changes within a school around curriculum development , assessment and student achievement I think we need to look at four important areas:

• What do our students need, what we doing for our students?
• What do our teachers need, what are we doing to help our teachers?
• How are we supporting our Whanau to be on this learning journey with us?
• What is our assessment data telling us?

I am responsible for Literacy and Numeracy across Sommerville Special School, including arranging professional development and gathering school wide data.

I wanted to review  what actions we are taking and who was responsible for what areas. This has proved to be very insightful and allowed my to review and plan for the future. 

Alternative assessment - Bracken School Readiness Assessment

Bracken

School Readiness

Developed by early childhood experts, this readiness assessments help you evaluate early literacy, language, and academic skills to determine whether kids are on track for school success, and enable you to identify youngsters for whom early intervention may be appropriate.

I have been carrying out this assessment on a range of students who have additional needs. The RTLB service use this assessment as part of their screening criteria for High Learning Needs support for students who can not successfully complete standardised test eg JAM, Running Records etc.

I have found this assessment very useful for students with communication needs. As the resource provides visuals to use for the assessment students who have limited oral language can point to the correct answer, this allows me to assess their knowledge without restricting them due to their verbal output.

Several of our students at Sommerville use AAC Augmentative and alternative communication(AAC) as a way of communicating with others. This assessment allowed me to assess their early maths and literacy skills including alphabet, colours, concepts of size and shape etc.

With two students it allowed us to create a whole new maths programme for these students as we have a better understanding of their knowledge and what their next learning steps should be.

For two other students who are completely non verbal, they could demonstrate their knowledge through using their AAC and pointing , where other assessments have been to complex or frustration for the student.

Reflection:

I would like to take the visual principles and easy access of this assessment resource and adapt other assessments we use better meet the needs of our students.

Language development and Reading Comprehension

Are your students struggling with reading comprehension ?  
Do they have the language skills and vocabulary to answer the comprehension questions during reading?

We need to be offering our students opportunity and stimulation to help their Oral language development.

We need to teach the language and the skills of comprehension.

Gail Arriola-Bagayas  our speech therapist at Sommerville has shared this fabulous resources that makes it very  clear about the developmental steps in understanding questions.

Blank-handout.pdf

Check the great ideas in this handout.

Sometimes we need to unpack the learning goals.

Please get in touch with me if i can help with your reading programmes or helping develop your students comprehension skills. 

Book time with Donna 






Verbal reasoning -  the big picture.

Differentiating our Assessments in Literacy

Literacy Assessments at Sommerville.

Sommerville Literacy assessment

As part of my on going Inquiry into using appropriate assessments

Questions

Will using fine-grained assessments improve teacher capacity for setting appropriate goals for students who fail to register on standardised tests?

I have put together a overview of assessments we are currently using at Sommerville to help us establish exactly what our students know and inform how we set appropriate learning targets and goals for the students next steps.

The teachers at Sommerville now have a range assessment to chose from . It is important that the assessments used give the teacher as much information as possible not just a pass or fail!

Developing Language Skills in our students.

All the research tells us our students are arriving at school with low oral language skills. The oral language children have when they start school directly impacts on their ability to think and to learn. Alison Burge presented findings from the "Welcome to school project" in Tamaki schools showing 53% of New Entrants assessed had significant concerns in Communication.

All students who enter the school environment need to learn about a variety of conventions and routines of talking and listening in a context that is unfamiliar to most of them. Students’ oral language improves through practice, that is, when students talk regularly for different purposes and with different partners.  (Ministry of Education. (2009). Learning Through Talk: Oral Language in Years 1 to 3. Wellington)


At Sommerville we extremely fortunate to employ our own Speech language therapists who work directly with students and provide on going Professional development to our staff.
Francesca Bierens SLT has shared her Verbal language development Summary for how language is developed and the progress

 'Assisting Students with Language Delays in the Classroom  - A Practical Language Programme'

                                Published:  In 2015 by Speechmark Publishing Ltd, London, UK,

I have attached Oral language resources from Francesca that are worth a read.

Oral language development and abilities have significant impact on our students ability to access the curriculum in all areas.

Additional support at Writing time.

Do your students need additional support at writing time?

Sometimes using writing plans and frames at the planning and draft stage help our learners remember their ideas add more information to their stories.

 Sentence starters and models scaffold the students writing until they understand the structure needed and have developed a memory for their ideas.

Writing involves alot of thinking and processing  as well as good language skills.

"Planning takes the writing assignment and long-term memory as input, which then produces a conceptual plan for the document as output. Planning includes sub-activities of generating (coming up with ideas), organizing (arranging those ideas logically in one’s head), and goal setting (determining what effects one wants to achieve and modifying one’s generating and organizing activities to achieve local or global goals). "  Hayes and Flower (1980)

Let's make it easier for our students to experience success!

Reading is a real challenge!

Learning to be a confident READER. Have you stopped to think about all the cognitive and linguistic skills it takes for everyone to do this ?
Have you stopped to break down all the parts that have to align to make us into capable confident readers?

Let me list some components of a skilled reader. 

• phonological awareness
• word recognition processes 
• vocabulary
• syntax
• decoding accuracy
• learning to read, children start out acquiring elementary decoding skills and learn to apply these with greater accuracy and speed.
• comprehension processes
• concepts about print
• spatial awareness
• cognitive performance
• fluency
• visual modality 

In addition to these:
 attention, perception and working memory are extremely important aspects of information processing and significant in children’s reading development.

https://www.gemmlearning.com/can-help/reading/skills

If we could assess these different components and see where our students have specific difficulties could we then provide more support for their specific learning needs? 

Do we currently digging deep enough to help our learners?

Alternative assessment for students with additional needs

Assessment in the classroom

It is necessary for New Zealand schools to design and shape assessment in our classrooms so that teaching and learning is meaningful and meets the needs of their particular communities of students?

Are you aware of this assessment for students who need  additional  support?

The frameworks, or matrices, expand and enhance Level One of the New Zealand Curriculum in literacy and numeracy, following national matrices and leading directly into Level One. Holistic learning progressions are set on a continuum, identifying the fine-grained progressions that some students make.

The matrices were developed to help teachers identify the key features of learning, achievement, and quality in relation to each achievement objective. Teachers are able to use the matrices to place each student on an individual starting point, identify next step planning and teaching and hold suitably high and realistic expectations for achievement.

Do you have students who need support to remember a task sequence?

Some of our students need additional support to remember a sequence they are suppose to follow during a class learning task.

This checklist is kept inside the students writing book. She self monitors as she has completed each step. The checklist are individualised to each student's needs and to match their specific learning goals. These check list stop a lot of repetition, wasted time and frustration by teachers and students.