Augmentative Communication Systems at Home and in the Community

Communication devices that are used at home or in the community can differ significantly from those used in a school setting. It is very important that parents and family members are included in the augmentative communication planning and implementation in order to allow them to properly support their child’s communication needs in environments outside of school.

Below are some tips provided by my course textbook for guiding parents to promote the use of augmentative communication (page. 294):

• Provide direct instruction on the use of the system.
• Identify vocabulary that is relevant to the home.
• Teacher family members to provide opportunities for communication and to wait.
• Provide simple data and evaluation sheets for home and community use.
• Give parents permission to expand the child's communication.
• Keep it simple!

^{Dell, A., Newton, D., & Petroff, J. (2012). Assistive technology in the classroom. (2nd ed., pp. 3-22). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.}