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Home & School Words: Michael  English  Mum  Teachers LAM Data: Home & School

Learning LLL:

• New (Nov 2006) - Word Wall Words, Double-sided flashcards with LLL symbols one side and Widgit/PCS symbols on the other. Click here for LLL side, and here for Widgit side.
• Training Time - Recommendations from the Makers and Experienced Tutors of LLL
• Training Time - for Michael's Support Team
• Learning, or not, So far
• Learning, Next Steps
• Target Setting and Monitoring of Progress in Vocabulary Usage & Learning
• Target Setting and Monitoring of Progress

TRAINING TIME, RECOMMENDATIONS

1. A person can begin talking immediately after learning a few words and phrases appropriate for certain situations. They may not be able to compose complete, grammatically correct sentences, but they will be able to communicate some of their ideas to others, which is the most important goal of the speech act.

Training time, as with any learning task, varies from individual to individual. We recommend approximately 90 hours, for a cognitively and linguistically intact person, to learn a prestored vocabulary of approximately 2000 words well enough to carry on a normal everyday conversation. (Minspeak FAQs).

2. Note from webbie: the following extract is not an exact quote 'cos I write it while I'm away from my books, but it does say in Ye Olde LLL Manuale, 1996, authored by Tony Jones, who wrote the LLL programme, something like this:

Even severely cognitively and physically challenged individuals can make significant progress with this system during the ten or so years they spend in the school system, more cognitively able users can learn it in 200 hours. It all depends on the level of support a user is given.

Tony has taught the LLL system to many children with all levels of ability.

3. Panton, 1989, reports that in her experience it takes a cognitively sound adult 200 hours of tutored time with a specialist SLT to become a proficient LLL communicator. Time that the client practices on his/her own is NOT included in the 200 hours count.

TRAINING FOR MICHAEL'S SUPPORT TEAM

One session for one teacher with Communicate 8 or 9 years ago. An induction at an inset training day 5 years ago (2001), delivered by an SLT who had loaned a Delta Talker for a while and taught herself how to use it.

After 3 years of working with Michael (2004), his English teacher and the self-taught SLT both told Mum (July 2004) that they didn't understand much about the Pathfinder, and in October 2005 English said she wouldn't be able to guess where to look for a word on the Pathfinder, and yet the words are all stored logically, by grammatical class or semantic group.

The words are labelled with icons rather than text, so the language encoding is not immediately transparent to the casual observer. Hence much petitioning of Michael's head teacher, SENCO and LEA for (even a small amount of) staff induction time for:

• a proficient communication aid user to come in to school and speak with children and staff
• a brief overview of core vs fringe vocabulary, and of our LLL support materials, to be delivered to staff (possibly at an inset training session, and possibly by me) to enable them to become effectively involved in Michael's accessing core language communication aid

In November 2004 three of Michael's teachers were finally allowed to attend the first of five free training sessions in using the equipment that Michael got from CAP in October 2003 (two sessions from PRI that they give with every new Pathfinder, and a further three funded by CAP).

Advisory Support asked Mum to let the teachers have this first training to themselves, so they wouldn't feel intimidated by Mum's superior knowledge or guilty about what they could have been doing all along! It was a big mistake for Mum to acquiesce or accede to this request, as she had already suffered a whole year of not knowing about Michael's day at school as everyone had stopped giving her words for Michael, except for the only teacher using Pathfinder with him (to read aloud from simple reading scheme books), and this key tutor wasn't present at the only communication strategy planning/liaising meeting held that year with an SLT and Mum and two tutors and an LSA.

Mum hoped to be included in the second free training session, finally arranged for 24 April 2006, and only after much more campaigning by Mum, because as can be seen from logged data from the Pathfinder, teacher training so far, with no further collaboration between school and experts or school and Mum, has not enabled anyone to facilitate Michael's use of his communication aid at school, and Mum has much to learn too BUT -

PRI, SLT, and Michael's CAP Coordinator at ACE Oldham were all told by school head that training was for school staff only and not for Michael's family!

Mum got the usual no reply to her requests in home / school planner and letter to head, so she wrote again saying she hoped the 'no reply' could be taken as no objection to her attending training BUT -

MUM WAS SENT HOME WHEN SHE ARRIVED AT THE TRAINING, AND -

THE TRAINING AMOUNTED TO A MERE 15 MINUTES WHEN THERE WAS NO PROJECTOR IN THE ROOM AND THEN IT WASN'T FUNCTIONING WHEN ONE WAS BROUGHT.

THIS TRAINING HAD ALREADY BEEN REDUCED TO TWO HOURS, (USUALLY A TRAINING SESSION WITH PRI RUNS FROM 10:00 AM - 15:00 PM) BY THAT SELF TAUGHT SLT FROM YEAR 7, WHO THOUGHT IT WOULD BE MORE BENEFICIAL FOR STAFF TO HAVE HER CHAT WITH THEM ABOUT 'THE ETIQUETTE OF HAVING AN AAC USER IN SCHOOL' AND 'WHAT TO DO WHEN THINGS GO WRONG'!!!!!!

Mum's learning has been through attending seminars at the annual Communication Matters Symposium, at CASC Roadshows and workshops with product specialists, reading literature and trawling the web.

She's made support materials and placed them in school so that everyone around Michael knows which words it is most important to teach/learn, and where all these words are stored on his talker.

She has tried to champion the cause for AAC for any child that needs it, by promoting the DfES BECTa Communication Aids Projects (CAP - March 2002 - 2006), and sharing Communication Matters' Journals, Liberator's Switching to Communication presentation, Caroline Gray's 'In Other Words' video, 1 Voice website printout and Blackpool weekend video, Sally Millar's Communication Passport workbook, Karen Bloomberg's 'InterAACtion' workbook and DVD (formerly known as: Checklist of Communication Competency), and more, with school.

LEARNING, SO FAR

We have mostly taught Michael words on a 'need to know' basis, ie we have interpreted his signs and gestures and shown him where the words are stored to say these things. There is some disparity between what Michael would say socially and what his teachers allow him to say. Staff gave 200 curriculum nouns for Michael to learn on his Pathfinder when he was is year 7, but only gave us 3 for year 8, and none for year 9.

Michael uses icon dictionaries to read aloud from Wellington Square books to his English teacher, and gives yes/no and adjective/noun phrase answers to questions about the stories, and he sometimes uses stories and presentations typed in Writing With Symbols, e.g. A Talk in the Park and Waiting for Xmas to enable him to speak on his Pathfinder. We didn't know how to add graphics for words not in the default wordlist for WWS when we typed these two, so we could only use core vocabulary, the words that are in the Pathfinder's memory by default, and so included in the WWS wordlist for LLL.

Mum read somewhere that reading, especially from reading scheme books (that are not exactly rich in content) doesn't give a child much opportunity to practice language, so more efficient strategies are needed.

LEARNING, NEXT STEPS

Luckily, learning LLL does foster language development, because LLL is a language, the arrangement of words stored in the machine being in groups that are grammatically and semantically the same as in English.

We plan to do some teaching away from the talker, using flash cards that represent the file paths (icon sequences) to words in LLL, filed in LLL groups (which are in natural English language groups), and targeting small groups of core words at a time, using them in everyday situations, and allowing for meaningful use and enforcing repetition of those few hundred everyday speech words that make up 85% or so of everyday speech.

Michael will use physical flash cards and he will also be able to access electronic versions in: a PowerPoint 'filing cabinet'; another 'filing cabinet' made with Clicker Grids (which will add speech and word processing facilities and also allow Michael to be accessing his core vocabulary alongside all the curriculum and topic vocabulary already available in that programme); and from an online database hosted on this website. (Database made, site not online yet, see Normalisation notes and draft search and results pages here).

Printed flashcards could be created with Writing With Symbols, MS Word, MS Paint or any number of graphic applications. Below is a picture showing our database version: