When to Add Supports to the Classroom:
- The child is not understood well by teachers and peers
- Child is not able to fully participate in classroom activities due to poor intelligibility
- Child gets frustrated in the classroom due to not being understood
What Supports to Add:
- Some sort of AAC device/system or a supplement of some type. This could be a full AAC system or just something to help him when he’s really struggling like an alphabet board or simple picture book
- Train the teachers to ask yes/no questions
- Train the child how to act out or use gestures to get his message across
- Train the teacher to use more visuals in the classroom and when communicating with the child so he can point to what he wants/needs
- Teach some basic sign language signs to help communicate common words/phrases
- Train the child how to use different words or ask a different way
How to Promote Carry-Over of What You’re Working on in Speech
- Create a list of words that you’re targeting in speech and have the teacher run the student through that word list one time per day (or more) in the classroom so he gets used to practicing good sounds in that environment
- Do some push-in therapy to work on target sounds and words in actual classroom activities
- Have the teacher focus on helping him say one sound or word structure correctly throughout the day (instead of targeting everything)
