Minspeak Academy webinar

“Do you have difficulty getting educators actively involved with their AAC communicating students? This presentation is based upon content from the researched strategies and long-term practices of including AAC into life & classroom events of ECT: Environmental Communication Teaching. Participants will be introduced to the basics of this planning process for implementing AAC into the classroom, and then taken through an activity that has them consider the communication context of school-based situations. From that activity, several examples will be given of students using AAC systems in common school situations. Through these examples and further explanations of ways to boost communication, participants should be able to analyze the situations that their students are in and plan for successful outcomes.

Another goal of this presentation is to have participants examine and expand the variety of communication situations that they have been providing to their students. Have they only been giving students vocabulary that is instructional or activity-based? How are they providing vocabulary for conversation and other interactive situations? Do their students have means for saying novel messages?

The final portion of this presentation is examining the behaviors of the communication partner and/or facilitators. In classrooms, the service providers are more often interested in compliance, good behavior and getting through activities successfully, then they are with how a student goes through the process communicatively. This should include how a student speaks with their AAC system throughout and in between activities. Support structures such as descriptive teaching, least to most prompting and aided language stimulation will be highlighted in their use in the classroom.”