Using Visuals to Teach Play and Conversation

I have had a terrific day today using my new Aided Language Displays with little preschoolers who have minimal language.  Visuals are great for so many reasons:  to help children understand, for following routines and schedules, to help children request items and actions...the list goes on!  I love visuals most of all for their ability to help children learn how to play and interact successfully  with others.  All too often I see visuals limited in their use to helping children learn how to request items.  There is so much more to communication than learning how to request!  Visuals can help us to teach children how to become a successful communicator.

Today we played with Mr Potato Head.  Our visuals were used to depict 'head' 'hat' 'eyes' 'shoes' and 'arms'.  Once my little 4 year old client with Downs Syndrome had mastered picture exchange to request these items from me, we added some more visuals to spice things up a little and make this activity fun, real and playful.

This time we added visuals for 'uh oh' 'funny' 'red' 'blue' 'more' 'my turn' 'I want' 'again'. What programme did we use to create these visuals?  Google Images and a printer!  For those lucky Speech Pathologists and Educators out there with Boardmaker, this also lends itself easily to the creation of Chat Boards for Aided Language Display.  Before long we were interacting beautifully about our Mr Potato Head.

The possibilities are endless.  Bubbles, musical instrument play, building a train track, dolls and dress ups are all play activities that lend themselves to modelling of simple, functional language using visual supports.  The clue to making this all a success is not to limit yourself to the use of pictorial items for the child to request items from you.  Add visuals for the other words and phrases that are commonly used in each activity and you will start to see communication skills flourish.