Your child communicates with an AAC tool: how do you bring it into school, and make sure it is really used there? Three levers: get it written into the support plan, train the adults around your child and prepare the words for each lesson. Here is the framework in the UK, then the practices that make a difference in class.

What is the framework: support plans and reviews?

Across the UK, the support a pupil with additional or special educational needs receives at school can be set out in a support plan: arrangements, adult support and equipment. Its name and the way to obtain one differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: ask your child’s school or your local authority which plan applies.

Have AAC written into the plan, in black and white: the pupil communicates with an AAC tool; this tool stays available at all times (in class, at playtime, at lunch, on school trips); the adults use it too. Everyone can then rely on this text.

Who provides the tool at school?

A tablet or another digital tool can count as adapted equipment. Depending on where you live, it may be provided by the school or the local authority, often through the child’s support plan. Waiting times and loan arrangements vary from area to area. To fund a personal device, see Funding AAC.

Teaching assistants and specialist bases: who does what?

The teaching assistant, first communication partner

The teaching assistant is often the adult who spends the most time with the pupil. They become a valuable communication partner if they master three habits: modelling on the pupil’s tool while talking, waiting 5 to 10 seconds before helping, and never answering for the pupil. Short, practical training is enough to change these habits: see Model, wait, respond.

Specialist bases in mainstream schools

Some mainstream schools have a specialist base (also called a unit or resource base) for small groups of pupils who spend part of their time in ordinary classes. Its teacher can become the school’s AAC lead (see Setting up AAC as a team).

How do you prepare the words before each lesson?

At school, the vocabulary changes every week: plants, then planets, then volcanoes. A stable social vocabulary, however rich, is not enough to follow the curriculum (Westby, 1985, cited in Beukelman and Light, 2020). Set up a ‘vocabulary pipeline’:

1. The teacher sends the words in advance for the next topic to the speech and language therapist or the family: a list of 10 to 20 words is enough.
2. The topic words are added to a dedicated page for the length of the topic, then archived at the end (so you can talk about it again later).
3. Long answers are prepared at home and recorded for class: a presentation, a poem, the answer to ‘What did you do at the weekend?’.
4. Characters’ lines are recorded for reading aloud, as well as the repeated line in the picture book for younger pupils.

Choose one person to be in charge of adding words: often the speech and language therapist, the family or the AAC lead. What matters is that the list arrives before the lesson. In Pictalk Buddy, the vocabulary syncs between the school tablet and the family’s phone, and core words don’t move when a topic page is added.

How do you adapt the activity rather than the pupil?

The Participation Model (Beukelman and Mirenda) suggests observing what the other pupils do during an activity, what the pupil who uses AAC does, and what gets in the way. You then adjust one or more levers:

For example: during a picture book reading, the pupil has a page with the characters, a few verbs (eat, run, fall), three emotions, who?, what? and ‘oh no!’. They take part instead of listening passively.

How do you encourage exchanges with classmates?

Without a clear plan, pupils who use AAC talk mostly to adults. In one observational study, only 3% of their interactions were with peers, a third of them had none at all, and the AAC tool was missing in about half of the opportunities to communicate (Andzik, Chung and Kranak, 2016).

• Introduce the tool to the class: how it works, how to wait for the answer.
• Plan playtime words: games, friends’ names, ‘Are you coming?’, ‘It’s mine!’, ‘Awesome!’.
• Add questions for the other person (‘What about you?’, ‘What did you do at the weekend?’): they make conversations longer and more enjoyable (Light et al., 1999).
• Organise games in pairs where the classmate uses the symbols too.

What about reading and writing?

Spelling is the only way to say absolutely any word, and so to access all the vocabulary of the curriculum. Offer a keyboard from the start, even if the pupil can’t read yet, and bring the tool into reading lessons: see AAC and literacy.

How do you link home and school?

• The same tool at home and at school, with the same word layout. Don’t change tools at the same time as changing schools: one transition at a time.
• A visual home-school diary or a digital notebook, to share the day at home and the weekend at school.
• An open file format (OBZ) to share the vocabulary with the speech and language therapist, even if they use other software.

Frequently asked questions

Can the school refuse my child’s tablet?

If AAC is written into the support plan, the tool is part of the agreed provision. If there are difficulties, talk to the school and ask for a meeting to review the plan.

Can the teaching assistant help the pupil find their words?

Yes, if the pupil asks: they can show where a word is. But they never choose the answer for the pupil.

Pictalk Buddy brings together AAC boards, a visual schedule, guided sequences and notebooks, with the same symbols, on Android, iOS, the web and the watch. A pay-what-you-want app, developed by a non-profit association. Discover Buddy

Sources

• Beukelman, D. R. & Light, J. C., 2020, Augmentative & Alternative Communication (5th ed.), Paul H. Brookes. Studies cited: Westby (1985); Andzik, Chung & Kranak (2016); Light et al. (1999).