Lessons!!!! Those 3-8 pages of paragraphs, followed by color-coded questions and the occasional image, are a gateway to accessing communication. If you were to visualize a triangle, you would see the letterboard and keyboards on one side, lessons on the other, and the practitioner and speller on the third side. Step right through that portal and join the communication access movement!!
Engages the mind and the body.
We use lessons to help nonspeakers acquire the motor, sensory, and regulation skills to point to or touch letters to spell out their thoughts and ideas. The primary purpose of the lesson is to help achieve synchronicity between the speller’s mind and body.
Picture your brain thinking of a word – maybe you are doing a lesson on the moon landing. The word you think of is APOLLO 11. Your brain directs your eye to the ‘A’; it makes you lift your hand and touch the ‘A,’ then your brain directs you to look for the ‘P,’ and so on until you successfully spell ‘Apollo 11’.
In this same scenario for a speller, they understand the concept of the moon landing, the space race, and facts about the craft Apollo 11. This understanding happens in the language center of their brain. The part of the brain that is responsible for expressing understanding through movement of the mouth or hands is not working for them. In order to spell, their brain needs to direct their eyes to find the ‘A’ and lift their hand to point to it. This is the motor-sensing part of the brain. We coach and build that connectivity over and over again between the language and motor-sensing parts of their brain. We coach their eyes and bodies to reach the letters they need, to spell a word they need, to respond to a question. We do this until they can spell any word THEY want to spell, opening up their ability to communicate.
This is the essence of S2C.
Presupposition
Lessons provide critical context in the skill acquisition phase, when the speller’s body has not yet acquired the motor-sensory skills to accurately and fluently spell out words that reflect their thoughts and ideas. If you were to engage with the speller, with the letterboard, and no lesson, you will have no shared context or understanding with which to calibrate and prompt to the target word. Shared context helps you so you and the speller know what they are spelling out. Ex: What was the name of the spacecraft in America’s successful moon landing? APOLLO 11
Imagine a situation where you enter the lift in your building with a known stranger – a neighbor from two floors down who owns a dog and loves dogs as much as you do. If that neighbor were to take a massive bite out his sandwich and continue to talk, you would be able to approximately understand what he is trying to say. This is because you have a shared context to work with. If the same thing happened with another stranger whom you have no shared context, his conversation with a mouth full of sandwich would be incomprehensible to you.
The shared context allows the speller and you to confidently partner and navigate through the motor, cognitive demands as they learn to spell and communicate. Knowing that your speller is trying to spell Apollo 11, allows you to coach them appropriately.
Because no drills, please!
Remember we don’t work on word lists, dictation, scripted Q and A’s and other kinds of drills. This is because we respect our spellers competence, and right from the start we want them to practice spelling NOVEL words, so they can combine those 26 letters any which way they want!! Drills present a huge danger of automaticity. You don’t want a spellers tricky body to get into spelling loops.
It's conversational
A lesson is a lot like a conversation. You ask something, the speller responds, you read something, the speller responds. This back-and-forth sharing of space is a lot like a conversation. A conversation that is structured so that there is respect for bodies that need to build neural pathways in their motor-sensing systems. As you advance into open communication, your questions become more like a commentary, inviting discussion. Instead of information, you are actively seeking their insights and opinionson a lesson. (see list of questions below.)
Bespoke Content
Many of our spellers have been underestimated and denied a free and appropriate education. Until the discovery of their capability, they’ve lived in a world where they have by chance overheard and listened their way to acquiring knowledge. The vast library of lessons available to practitioners in the I-ASC portal, the free lessons published on the website, and the plethora of lesson books and lesson subscription services available have created an incredible resource for spellers. Bespoke subject matter is presented in a comprehensive manner that is age appropriate, and presumes competence. It is, by design, offering the speller a chance to catch up on an entire unit of knowledge contained in 3-8 pages.
Skill and Communication progression
Within a lesson, there are different types of questions. These range from spell words, known, semi-open, prior knowledge, open, VAKTS, and creative writing . They form a skill and communication pathway for a speller. The types of questions help them formulate original thoughts and ideas that are not in the lesson as they go from spelling knowns to open questions. The variations in semi-open and open questions increase spellers stamina, endurance to sustain the motor necessary to communicate at length. It gradually moves them from recalling information just presented to express understanding, apply, analyze, justify, and eventually use the lesson for creative self-expression. Teachers amongst us will recognize that this is based on Blooms taxonomy.
Here is a set of questions that mimic such a skill and communication progression:
When did the moon landing happen? Recall, known
Name one of the astronauts on the successful mission to the moon. Recall, Semi Open
Describe the space race between America and Russia in the 1970’s. Summary and synthesis, open
What critical factors led to America’s successful moon landing? Analysis, open
What other historical event compares with the moon landing? Analysis, open
If you were to design a mission for NASA where would you go and why? Application, open
Should billionaires travel to space? Justification, application, open
Why would NASA want to recruit you as an astronaut? Self – expression, open
An Ethical Framework
This is always something a practitioner needs to pay close attention to. Lessons provide a roadmap and an ethical framework to guide the conversation boundaries between spellers and practitioners. As practitioners, we may be the spellers sole access to self- expression, until such time as a parent or authorized caregiver can be coached to be a
communication partner. A lesson, reminds us, to stay within the bounds of a conversation that is appropriate to have between a speller and a practitioner.
About the Author
Lakshmi Rao Sankar, is a certified S2C practitioner. She is a part of the I-ASC
Practitioner Leadership Cadre. Lakshmi is the Executive Director of CrimsonRise in
NYC. She enjoys lesson writing, but needs a deadline to stop herself from going down
rabbit holes. She loves receiving lesson recommendations. She is a very unsuccessful
knitter, and a passionate indoor and outdoor gardener.
