Communication Game

As a way to encourage accuracy of communication and increased knowledge of the communication system in an atmosphere of fun without the fear of making errors we created a simple communication game.
Using a home made games board the students are given scenarios that they are required to formulate answers to.
Examples of these scenarios include:
"if someone greets you in the morning how do you respond?"
"your head hurts, how do you tell someone?"
"you want to make a phone call, how do you ask to do this?"
The students then navigate independently through their communication book or use their electronic device to respond to the scenario. If they are able to correctly communicate what is asked of them they get to move their game piece along 2 spaces, if they require verbal direction or guidance they move 1 space.
After the round is over the teacher models a way of communicating an answer that the students may not have thought of. This means that they get to see many different ways of communicating similar information.
The students enjoy this game and already they are demonstrating an increased awareness of what is expected of them.
Our goal is to give them practice at communicating common wants, needs and phrases effectively so that they can communicate these to anyone, including people who may not know them well.
The video below shows today's game where the students were asked to state what they would say if a conversation they were having was winding down!

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Location:NYC

Weekend News

Monday mornings are a great time to report back on the weekend. For the most part the students are using pre-set phrases from their conversation pages. These include 'I think' statements, 'feelings' and activity pages created from parents lists of activities the students like to do outside of school.
The challenge now is to make this an interactive/reciprocal conversation.

While creating statements of three or more sentences is now becoming natural for the students; responding to their peers, asking questions or making comments is still heavily modeled.

The class teacher will respond using phrases from the students books. This models how the students can answer appropriately. We are working on this first comment stage before encouraging further responses.

Even this first stage of commenting on a phrase from another student is a challenge. This is understandable as in the past most communication with our students has been questions directed at them, requiring the simplest of yes/no comments or choice making. With such a limited expressive vocabulary they have been unable to continue a conversation beyond that initial response.

The increase in vocabulary and interactions they are now provided with via their communication book and/or device is opening up their choices and developing their expressive vocab. I am interested to see how they begin to respond to interactions over the coming months as we decrease the modeling and increase the number of interactions within the conversation!



Using the communication book to interact.



Using electronic devices to communicate.

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Location:NYC

Music lesson with an adapted instrument

Today is 'Fun Friday'! And today we were having a music lesson. We now have an adapted musical instrument in school called Beamz.
Check out their web site http://thebeamz.com/
This instruments allows my students to add musical instruments and vocals to background beats just by moving their arms, hands, head, legs etc through light beams in the bars on the side of the instrument.
My students here struggle to grasp instruments and then manipulate them successfully. This amazing instrument allows them to create music, record their own compositions and interact independently. And as you can see from the picture below, have tons of fun!




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Location:W 69th St,New York,United States

Journal Writing

Journal writing has developed over the past year.
Using a PowerPoint photo album which we update regularly. The students choose a picture they would like to write about.
When we initially started this activity they were free to navigate anywhere within their communication book to create their journal entry. As they have become more proficient they are being encouraged to use their sentence starters more often.
Sentence starters are short common phrases that begin sentences. They increase the speed with which sentences can be generated and decrease the number of navigations required to produce a sentence. They also introduce different tenses so the students can talk about past, present or future events
Examples of sentence starters include:
I like, I am, I want, I am going, I went.
The video below shows a student writing about a photo of herself in fancy dress!

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Location:NYC