We had a number of Valentine’s Day activities happening here at Newfield this week, making cards, selling gifts and joining in with the Valentine’s disco. I felt that this would be a good opportunity to talk about early stages of social communication and an approach we use here called ‘Intensive Interaction’.
Intensive interaction is typically used for younger students who are starting their social skills journey but it is beneficial for many of our students throughout the department. Intensive interaction requires one to one work with a student and staff member, it is helpful to have a number of motivating items in the room and then let the student interact or play with any item they like. The role of the staff member is to copy the actions of the student, turn taking, copying vocal sounds and movements. The aim is to communicate with the student on a personal level, this will very often result in interaction between the two over a number of sessions.
On the Intensive Interaction website there are a number of videos showing how this works, it is something that can easily be tried at home too. Have fun!