Do you have a student or child who is finding communication difficult? Are they non-verbal or have limited speech? If so, your students or child(ren) may benefit from having a communication book. And today, I’m so excited to be talking about the benefits of a communication book for autism and special education students.
What is a Communication Book?
A communication book contains symbols or photographs inside it. I like to organise ours into different categories to make it easier fo our students to find what they need. Your student will then use this book to communicate with others.
Ways to Use
There are a range of ways that you can use communication book, including;
- To request items that they need.
- Communicate their needs and wants with others around them.
- To take part in conversations.
- In order to respond to questions.
- To take part in activities,
- and so much more..
What to Include
A lot of people think that they need to include everything in communication books – and this can be overload. You don’t need to include every symbol or photograph under the sun for your students to access. Start small and add what you need.
We like to organise our symbols into different categories. And, right now, I only include 6 symbols on each page. That way my students are able to easily find the symbols that they need. It also helps to avoid the possibility of being unable to choose.
What is being unable to choose? I hear you ask. It’s simple really. Have you ever been offered so many different options that you just don’t know what to choose? You’re overwhelmed and just can’t make a choice. It’s that feeling. When there are so many different options on offer, the student gets overwhelmed and doesn’t know which to choose – or even how to choose!
How to Use
The communication book is one of those things that is definitely best when differentiated and personalised to individual students. You may include different symbols for some rather than others. And some students may offer you the symbol, while other students may use the communication slip to build a sentence using symbols.
Levels of Progress
I’ve include some examples level of progress below that you can use for students using the communication book. This however, can be tailored to the training you’ve received and the policies that your school have in place.
- Students will pass just one symbol, i.e ‘apple.’
- Then, students will place the symbol ‘apple’ onto the communication slip next to ‘I want’ which was already left there.
- Students will place symbols ‘I want’ and ‘apple’ symbols separately onto the slip to start building a sentence.
- Your students will then move on to placing 3 symbols – ‘I want’ ‘red’ ‘apple’ to build a sentence or incorporate numbers ‘I want 2 apples’ etc.
- You can then start to introduce punctuation like full stops.
- Students can also have teachers introduced, so ‘Miss. Davies’ ‘I want’ ‘red’ ‘apple’ etc.
Do you want to start using a communication book with your students? If so, check out our communication book here and the photographs down below of it in action.
Do you use a communication book with your students? Let us know in the comments down below. And if you found this communication book for autism and special education students blog post helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues.
For more tips and advice, be sure to check out our podcast episodes here.
