Wednesday Win: Sign Language

My Wednesday Win occurred during one of my recent therapy sessions when I was pushing in to the CDC classroom. My student uses total communication, mostly signs and gestures, to request his wants and needs or to protest. Throughout this school year, this student has produced signs for 'help,' 'more,' and 'please.' We had not begun targeting production of two signs together, but one day I went into the CDC classroom and his teacher said 'I want you to watch this.'

She then created a situation where my student had to request for an item. He produced the signs for 'more' and 'please' to create the utterance of 'more please!' I was so excited and proud of him to see him using two signs together to create a longer utterance for communication! It appears as if he independently learned to put these two signs together.

Since that session, I have started modeling use of other signs to create phrases such as 'help please' or 'stop please.' I am so proud of my student and cannot wait to see how his total communication continues to flourish!

-Annie Street, M.S. CF-SLP