Context for Communication Interactions
Elicit language and support emergent literacy skills during a book reading activity (e.g., point to title, demonstrating reading left to right, defining words, identifying targets based on child's level)
What is Use Shared Book Reading?
Do anything after the focal language behavior occurs that increases the likelihood of it occurring again (e.g., use of a child’s preferred stimulus or modification to the environment)
Play side-by-side or adjacent to a child, but without direct interaction
What is Use Parallel Play?
Pair a physical or pictured action with a spoken word or phrase
What is Modeling - Pair Action with Word or Phrase?
Offer two or more choices for snacks, activities, objects, or any other options that a child may have
What is Offer Choices?
Use images, pictures, materials, or objects to support understanding of expectations (e.g., visual schedule) and language within a task and across tasks that add value to the individual or the activity
What is Provide Visual Supports?
Gain or ensure the child's attention, providing a clear task direction to demonstrate the focal skill, supporting the child to perform the skill if needed, and providing reinforcement for skill demonstration
What is Provide Direct Teaching Opportunities?
Use social, physical, or emotional consequences for a child’s behaviors after the focal language behavior occurs to increase the likelihood of it happening again
What is Reinforce - Natural?
Make comments instead of asking questions to reduce the demand on the child to respond
What is Limit Questions?
Narrate what you are seeing, hearing, touching, or doing as part of an activity (e.g., concrete or external)
What is Modeling - Use Self Talk?
Use spoken hints or supports, such as saying, “What’s the weather?” to guide the child or elicit their response or action
What is Prompt with Spoken Cues?
Provide verbal and/or visual notice of what is happening now and what will happen next to help support conceptual understanding of expectations and future activities
What is Use First / Then?
Engage the child in play or social routines with consistent, predictable, repeatable steps (e.g., Peek-a-boo)
What is Build Social Routines and Play?
Copy the child's actions, play, gestures, movements, sounds, or words
What is Imitate the Child?
Work in ways that assume the child is developing and will continue to develop in terms of their learning and participation.
What is Presume Capability?
Present or demonstrate gestures, such as pointing, showing, giving, actions, movements to songs, etc, without expectations or requirements for a response
What is Modeling - Gestures?
Ask questions to a child that allows them to answer with varied responses to demonstrate knowledge of skills and vocabulary related to an activity, or to build language and encourage task learning (e.g., "What should we use to make your picture?" rather than "Do you want to use crayons?")
What is Ask Open Ended Questions?
Review relevant information to make connections or comment on links or similarities between previously taught concepts or activities (e.g., saying "Remember we learned about flowers in our book yesterday? This is a flower too. A blue flower.")
What is Make Connections?
Plan opportunities for children to respond to expressive/receptive language targets across different stimuli/referents (e.g., object, picture), different people (e.g., lead teacher, paraprofessional, gym teacher), and/or contexts (e.g., during different activities at school)
What is Facilitate Generalization?
Provide praise or a constructive statement specific to and immediately after the child's communication attempt
What is Provide Immediate, Specific Feedback?
Identify and build on the child’s strengths while incorporating the child’s preferences, favorites, passions, and regulatory tools.
What is Center the Child's Strengths, Interests, and Priorities?
Present or demonstrate language in more than one modality without expectations or requirements for a response
What is Modeling - Multiple Modalities?
Use gestures, facial expressions, or body posturing to guide the child or elicit their response or action (e.g., an adult looking at the child with an expectant look, by raising their eyebrows raised, hands up with flat palms, shrugged shoulders)
What is Prompt With Non Verbal Cues?
Minimize distractions, such as lights, sounds, and materials, and preparing physical space
What is Arrange the Environment?
Embed semantic learning into activities where the child can experience the word or concept (e.g., experience cold by playing in the water or eating a popsicle)
What is Embed Experiential Learning?
Immediately repeat what the child said with the correct form of language while maintaining the core meaning of the utterance
What is Recasting?
Modify volume, pitch, rate, tone, pace, intonation, and sentence contents and length directed to the child and aligned with their developmental level
What is Use Child Focused Speech?
Present or demonstrate whole chunks of language (e.g., gestalts) or scripts that are individualized to the client's natural language acquisition (NLA) profile and that resonates with the child based on language sampling and known history of the child's language without expectations or requirements for a response
What is Modeling - Gestalts?
Provide individualized, varying levels of hints or support to help the child achieve an outcome (e.g., helping a child respond, understand, or complete a task/activity)
What is Scaffold?
Provide sensory, emotional, and relational support to a child during times of dysregulation
What is Coregulate?