Teaching communication skills
Information about the school
Gwenllian Education Centre is an independent special day school for children and young people who have diagnosis of autism or an associated condition. Pupils are aged between 5 and 19 years.
The school is committed to provide pupils with the best individualised educational experiences and opportunities possible, and ensure that these enhance their lives.
Context and background to the effective or innovative practice
All pupils at the school experience significant difficulties with communication. This ranges from pupils with no speech or form of communication, to pupils with many positive skills and extensive language, but who exhibit difficulties when interacting with others and mastering social skills, for example when turn-taking, requesting assistance or negotiating. Most pupils have previously exhibited challenging behaviours such as aggression towards others, property destruction and self-harm.
For many of the school’s pupils, a wide range of traditional methods to develop their communication (for example, picture exchange systems, signing, objects of reference, switches, voice output devices, choice boards, and speech assistive technology or signing) have often previously been unsuccessful. As a result, senior managers decided to focus on pupils’ individual strengths and their strongest means of learning, including using visual, kinaesthetic and auditory means, to stimulate and motivate their interest in communication.
The long-term goals of this approach are to:
- Reduce behaviours that challenge by increasing functional communication
- Enable pupils to independently ask for their wants and needs
- Support pupils to communicate using speech
- Continue to develop pupils’ communication skills by increasing their vocabulary and sentence structure
- Support pupils to develop more advance communication such as asking questions
Description of nature of strategy or activity
The senior management team developed a framework to assist staff to teach communication skills to the pupils. The framework highlights key areas to consider for individual pupils and a flow chart of the steps required to develop their skills. The model ensures that staff communication is functional and efficient in order for pupils to rapidly develop their skills.
Initial assessment
This indicates to staff the most likely effective mode of communication for each pupil. For non-verbal pupils, this is nearly always an augmentative form of communication.
Understanding and developing pupils’ motivation to respond
In order to develop communication, it is important that time is spent developing preferred items or activities that the pupil is motivated to engage with. When developing these items, the school wants to ensure that they satisfy a range of motivations such as auditory, visual, edible, movement-based etc. It is important that the pupil has a wide range of preferred items so that if they satiate on one item, there are other items that they can continue to ask for.
Controlling the environment
Once preferred items and activities have been identified, it is important that the pupil’s access to the items is controlled. This is because if the pupil has free access there will be no motivation to ask for the items. Items can be controlled by storing them on shelves, in clear food bags or plastic boxes, for example.
Communication training
Once the pupil’s access to the motivating items is controlled, the school begins communication training. This involves allowing the pupil to sample the items on offer to establish which one they would prefer to interact with. The specific strategies and type of prompting used will depend on the mode of communication to be taught (i.e. picture exchange, signing, etc.). The school’s methodology includes fading out the use of prompts over successive trials. To ensure success during the training period, the pupil is exposed to hundreds of trials throughout the day.
Communication as a priority
The school prioritises communication training for pupils at school. Most learning sessions include a focus on communication. The skills and focus may vary but the development of communication will have significant implications for learning in other areas.
Consistency and generalisation
Staff are encouraged to implement the training consistently and accurately. Throughout the day, hundreds of opportunities are provided for the pupil to rehearse asking for items or activities. The school ensures that the pupil transfers the skill of requesting their chosen item across multiple environments, with different preferred items or activities and with a range of staff.
Monitoring progress and using data to plan next steps
Recording and evaluating data to plan a pupil’s next steps is a key aspect of developing their communication. The school records the number of prompted and independent requests made per day and graph the results. It analyses the data to check if the intervention is working over time. There should be an increase in independent requests and a decrease in prompted requests. If not, any potential barriers that have prevented the pupil from making progress are considered, and methods or the motivating items or objects are adapted.
Developing speech
Once communication is underway and the pupil is making hundreds of independent requests per day without being prompted, the school begins developing their speech production. A multi-disciplinary team approach, including class teacher, speech and language therapist and school’s behaviour analysist, ensures that staff work together to plan an individual programme to encourage, reinforce and shape pupils’ speech and develop their language acquisition.
What impact has this work had on provision and pupil’ standards?
The introduction of the communication planning framework has impacted on the following areas:
Communication
All pupils have made significant improvement with their communication skills. Nearly all pupils can initiate requests and conversations with reduced support. They communicate more regularly throughout the school day. They are more confident when communicating and are generalising skills to a wider audience and environments.
There has been an increase in pupils’ use of speech and most non-verbal pupils are vocalising more consistently and regularly. A few pupils now say words independently and use words to communicate. These pupils are more aware of each other and in some cases more willing to tolerate being with each other. A very few pupils have made significant progress and can now enjoy the company of their classmates.
Behaviour
As pupils’ communication skills have improved, there is a clear reduction in their undesired behaviours. Generally, pupils are calmer and less frustrated. This in turn has a positive impact throughout the school as the positive behaviour contributes to a positive, calm learning environment.
Independence
The development of communication skills enables pupils to have more control regarding many aspects of their school day and beyond.
Co-operation, improved learning and skill development
As communication improves, pupils learn to engage and co-operate with school staff. They access their learning effectively and achieve the knowledge and skills to support their future.
How have you shared your good practice?
The school shares its good practice through workshops aimed at parents and by encouraging other schools to observe the provision in place. Open workshops are available for schools, parents and other settings to share our good practice. Specialist staff are available to work directly with schools and families to support with developing communication plans based on our practice.
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