This week we ran a parent workshop on ‘Supporting Communication at Home - AAC and supporting spoken communication’, the session was attended by one of the speech therapists who works with school and was delivered by Assistant Head Sarah. The turnout was lovely and it was great to speak to parents.
The session covered what is meant by communication and how we support communication across school as part of our total communication approach, before discussing the role of visuals in supporting communication and the benefits of using symbols and photos. We then shared a range of AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) including high tech, such as tablet devices, and low-tech paper-based options such as PECS (picture exchange communication systems) and communication boards.
We shared examples of these and discussed the pros and cons of each, answering questions as we went along. We also discussed the importance of modelling in supporting a young person with their communication and how we can do this effectively, including the importance of adults using AAC themselves to comment rather than ‘quizzing’ our children with lots of questions.
The session also covered some Makaton which might be used within the home, playing a game of Makaton bingo.
We finally shared approaches for supporting to develop spoken communication such as getting down to your child’s level, making time for children to respond, and the role of modelling language using a one-up approach.
We ended with a chance for parents to network and speak to the communication lead and speech therapist.
We will be going through parent feedback from the three workshops run this term and will look to deliver further sessions in 2025.
The alternative communication session was very informative..I will definitely be using some of the strategies.
