Pacing

Today I stepped back a little. I prepared a stick figure image of the student and several thought bubbles over the figure before the student arrived. We came into the classroom and it was an unusual beginning because the student’s bus arrived more than thirty minutes late. We sat down across from each other to work.  

I drew simple pictures inside the thought bubbles – one of the science class (two kids sitting at a table and a flask), one of the student eating snack, one of the science class with a line across it with “not today” above the image, one question mark, and one with the student sitting near work boxes (labeled 1, 2, 3). Then I told/signed the story of how the student arrived at school and signed, “science, snack?” I pointed to the corresponding thought bubbles – signing/saying, “You were thinking about what will happen next – Science? Then snack?” I pointed to the “not today” science picture and told the story about the late bus and there would not be science today. I wrote out the sentence – Today is different – and we signed it together. I pointed to the workboxes image and signed “first work boxes,” followed by “then snack” as I touched the snack picture. I wrote out these sentences on the page and I directed the student to sign the sentence back to me. We put the picture up with the sentence strip – What will happen? – and started the day.

I did not put myself into the picture today or attempt to broach the concept that I was thinking something different from the student. I reiterated the student’s communication and made visual imitations of the signed communication. I then used these visual imitations to explain how the day was different.  This kind of intense one-to-one engagement over something this student really cares about is agitating. Also, trying to get the student to think differently about the way the day progresses is met with some resistance, but this particular student is quite motivated by the exchange and clearly is grappling to understand.

Later in the day I tried to incorporate these stick figure drawing strategies into a reading lesson. This particular student can, with more than 75% accuracy given a field of 3 to 5 picture choices, identify the characters in a story and one to two character traits. With less accuracy (but more than 60%), the student can also identify a main (or big) idea in a story. Here again I am trying to step back and teach/reteach the concept of characters, character traits, and main idea.  I had a separate paper for each concept. I placed the student, as stick figure, in the center of the paper and through pictures in thought bubbles tried to explain what each concept was. I labeled the pictures, and then used the visual images to talk about the concepts.  After looking at and explaining each thought bubble I would write a sentence (put the picture into written words) and the student would sign it back to me.

The student, with prompting, then read a short story and with assistance answered these questions on a communication device (iPod touch with Proloquo2go) The device is also new for the student and myself.

With all these strategies I want change one or two things, tweak them if you will, a day. The student has significant communication challenges and so evidence that these strategies are helping is harder to come by. I am trying to shift my way of approaching the student overall and create additional instructional tools. The student’s willingness to engage is my highest priority right now, although I think it’s important to nudge kids sometimes out of their comfort or stuck zones even if frustration is unavoidable. 

Proloquo2go