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Collection Does Your Student Understand What She's Saying?

Date Created: 3/16/2016

Posts: 3

When you're first teaching learners to use some sort of tangible symbol (whether pictures or objects), it's all too easy to set up a situation where they figure out that if they select a symbol--any symbol-- they get something they want...and they don't need to learn what each symbol means. Since selecting any of the symbols offered results in some attention and something new, it's worthwhile to randomly select any of the choices offered. This is especially true when common high-tech devices (such as iPads) are used. They make symbol selection so easy that the purposefulness of a selection may be questionable. If you are working with someone who understands speech and to whom you can explain exactly what a symbol means, it’s probably not an issue. But when comprehension is questionable, it may be a big issue. If we don’t attend to comprehension from the very beginning of instruction, then we may find out too late that the user doesn’t understand the 1:1 correspondence between a particular symbol and what it represents. This situation will be very difficult to remedy if it persists for any length of time. This collection addresses this issue.

Quote This post discusses including "distractor" symbols into the array from which the learner chooses to boost comprehension.

Indicators of Intentional Communication and Meaningful Use of Symbols

Communication Matrix Team . - 2/5/2015

Sometimes it's difficult to determine whether potentially communicative behavior is intentional or not. Here are some indicators of communicative intent related to either pre-symbolic or symbolic beha...

Quote Here are some indicators of whether your student is communicating intentionally and understands the symbols he or she is using.

Arrays of Symbols: Mixing it Up for the Sake of Comprehension

. - 3/16/2016

Sometimes a teacher asks the learner to select a symbol from an array consisting of symbols for nothing but preferred items, and immediately gives the learner the item corresponding to the chosen sy...

Quote This post explains how to build comprehension checks into the early stages of teaching someone how to use a symbol system.

The Science of Comprehension Checks (tangible symbols instruction)

. - 3/17/2016

Comprehension Checks When you are first introducing a symbol system to a learner who has no capacity to use any sort of symbols, you are really charting new territory. You need to be pretty scienti...

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