Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End. Transcript Start [Music] Fade up from black. Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI. [Music face out] Fade to black. January 23, 2017, TSBVI webinar. ****************DISCLAIMER!!!**************** THE FOLLOWING IS AN UNEDITED ROUGH DRAFT TRANSLATION FROM THE CART PROVIDER'S OUTPUT FILE. THIS TRANSCRIPT IS NOT VERBATIM AND HAS NOT BEEN PROOFREAD. ***********DISCLAIMER!!!************ Chapter 1. Forms of Communication Sara: Hi, everybody. Scott: Hello. I'm Scott Baltisbergers. Sara: And I'm Sara Kitchens, and we're doing a segment on communication today for students with learning media and assistive technology assessment for students with multiple impairments. My brains are a bit scramble at this moment. So yeah, let's look at what we're going to do, the overview of the day. We are going to talk about communication. It's pretty important, it's pretty much the basic baseline for learning from another person, you have to be able to communicate. And we're just going to go over briefly the components of communication because it's a nice thing to be able to kind of break it down and share some tools with you. Let's look at our next slide. I think we're going to talk about the-- yeah, the parts of communication. So you may have seen this before, but this is the form, content and needs is basically what communication consists of. Form is how do we communicate. So that is things like gestures‑‑ Scott: Speech, symbols. Sara: Body language. Vocalizations. Scott: Writing a letter. Making a list. Sara: All those things, including sign language. And one thing that is a definite and important thing to consider, when you're considering the forms of communication, is that you have to include static as well as dynamic forms of communication. Everybody needs to have access to both. Scott: Right. So what is-- what's the difference-- what is the static form and what is the dynamic form? Sara: Well, the static form is basically anything you can pick up, anything that exists in space and time. It's a real thing. It can be a list, a grocery list, like that's a note for yourself or what you're communicating to yourself not to forget. Scott: Right, written words, for example. Sara: Or if my cup was empty and I wanted Scott to get me more water, I could hand him my cup and I might understand that I wanted more water because I'm using an object to communicate. It's something that doesn't go away. And it's definitely good to have those things. You need those things because that's how we read and write, from most concrete to most abstract. But you also need dynamic forms of communication. Dynamic communication is the stuff that goes away. As soon as it's gone it's done. So, say,, you know, nobody is-- if nobody is regard regarding this webinar and I said hi Scott. Scott: Hello. Sara: As soon as I was done gesturing and saying the word it's gone. But it's much more flexible. You can express so much more emotion with dynamic communication. And‑‑ Scott: We'll talk about this more in a second, but just looking at the --you know, the motivations for communication and that dynamic part really adds a lot to that. And I think looking at it --we're going to be talking about calendar system, communication systems. It's real important to keep in mind that you need to have that dynamic part, that needs to be part and parcel of your communication. Sara: And both of those things when we're talking about the vision aspect need to be accessible, so need to be understandable, detectable. And so the way that we communicate to another person has to be something that they can sense. So that's the form part. Now, the content part, I think that is --those concepts that we teach and that kids pick up when they have experiences. Scott: Topics. Sara: Yeah, their topics and what we communicate about. And then the-- Scott was talking about why do we communicate. To express emotions, to connect with other people. Scott: We can reject, we can request, just socializing is an important part of communication. Sara: To get information. Like what time does this webinar start? [ Laughter ]. So these are the things that-- the main things that we think about when we think about what does communication consist of. Chapter 2. Communication Assessment Tools And so how does that relate to AT? Our next slide --we're going to talk about some of the things we're going to use that we think are really good guides to helping with communication for students at this level. Scott: Right. So the first --the first three things we're going to talk about is Philip Schweigert and Charity Rowlands did the communication matrix and which leads to first things first tangible symbol systems and they will we'll look at Robbie Blaha's book, calendars. Sara: And they all have really good contributions to figuring out --to really solving or beginning to solve the puzzle of communication for our students. Another thing to really think about is that all of these assessments and the forms and the strategies are things that involve so many members of the team. You know, so communication is --and AT is like sometimes combined with when the speech therapist is also the AT. When you think about the TVI also being the AT. Scott: Frequently. Sara: It's because of the accessibility. And then you're thinking about --if you're activing about accessibility in a different --thinking about accessibility in a different way, what people can do with their upper body, lower body, you will need input from the OT and PT. Scott: Yeah. I think that doesn't happen often enough. I mean, I don't know that communication systems are assessed in the way that‑‑ Sara: By the whole team? Scott: Right. Or even formally assessed with an instrument. I think a lot of times they're just done diagnostically. And to really do an assessment like these assessments we're offering here, I think that's nice because it gives you more of a reason to pull everybody in. A lot of times I know when I was a TVI I was different from an AT who were at this level, the calendar system. And we didn't really involve --our AT didn't tend to get involved unless it was more of like a device was being used. But, you know, we were talking about this earlier. There's really no clear point where you stop using a calendar and you would start using a communication device. So pulling all those people in I think is a great idea to do early on. Sara: Right, because all of the things you do early on support the skills that you learn later when you become a more abstract communicator. And you know, it's nice to know that whole continuum of low and no tech into the higher tech. Yes. And your point about the bringing in the occupational therapist and physical therapist is a good one as well because that --I've seen calendar systems that were not very --in which it was difficult for the student to access it, and that really impacts how well they can use it. Scott: Right. So if you have like a choice board with two symbols of whatever kind on them and you haven't considered the growth motor skills of the student, like their ability to reach accurately, not only the visual part of it, but the whole picture they may indicate the choice they didn't mean to because they were able to have their body correctly reach for that. So it goes beyond just our area of expertise for certain. Sara: It certainly does. Scott: Let's look a little bit into-- are you ready to look more closely into the assessment. Sara: There is the communication matrix. I wonder if this is a familiar looking tool. I've heard of it being a used a lot. I know there's a free online version and a version for parents too, an online version. It can be a nice tool. If you have anything you want to share about your use of the communication matrix please feel free to type into the chat and we will respond to that. One thing I think that's neat about the communication matrix is it's really focused on what the child is doing expressively. You know you hear a lot of times, that, well, this child understands. Receptively he's really high, but expressively not so high. It's really difficult for me to determine exactly what another person understands. Scott: That's true. Sara: So I think you can see how somebody acts, but they may be-- what do you have an example about somebody who knew their schedule? Scott: Right. Sometimes you will see students that they have a calendar system and they appear to be responding accurately to the activities that are displayed in their system, but actually what they're cueing into are the environment. So when they see other kids getting up out of their chairs and going to the door or they hear them, or they hear other people talking about the activity that's coming up, so they're not necessarily cueing into that form, to the calendar form. Sara: The static form. Scott: Right, right. So I think it's-- you have to be real careful about that. Sara: Uh‑huh. Scott: So you can tell --so this assessment, these assessments will look at that receptive communication and there's --so there's specific responses to --I'm sorry. Look at their expressive communication because there's specific responses or specific expressions‑‑ Sara: Yeah, ways that they communicate and levels. It's really great because it's a checklist. Like you don't sit down and do a session with the child. You gather information from various team members, parents, and, you know, other teachers, teaching assistants. And you kind of go through this checklist. And it really gives you a baseline, kind of a place to start. On the next slide I think we have a picture of the instructions. And this is the very beginning. The instructions are very clear. You can follow-- this is just the first page so they would start with ways to refuse and go from there. And once you fill out the section-- there are a number of sections that look like the right‑hand side of this grid, you end up with a profile and that is an insert that is in the communication matrix and that's shown on our next slide. And it shows you-- and there's a way to fill it out where you highlight certain boxes and I can't remember exactly the specifics of that. I know that the electronic one fills it out for you, but you will see basically where somebody has most of their skills and the level in which they're working, and that gives you a good starting point. Scott: So they talk about the seven levels of communicative competence. And that's what you're looking at with that matrix. And these are the seven that they've got, preintentional behaviors, intentional behaviors, unconventional communication, conventional communication, concrete symbols, abstract symbols and language. Sara: Those are all described also within the communication matrix. It really packs a punch informationwise. It's really-- it's a really great little tiny booklet. And pre‑intentional behaviors, that was that-- those are those kind of things that you just do like more like reflexes and such, responses to your environment. And that's like when somebody is just little baby and stuff, they don't know that anybody is paying attention. They're not really sure that there is even anybody out there. Scott: Pure reactions. Sara: Right. And they don't even necessarily mean to do those things. It's more like twitching or I'm moving my hands because, you know, what is this? Scott: Very early developmentally, communicatively speaking, so they're not-- motor planning hasn't‑‑ Sara: More reacting to their environment, to the things that happen. But then there's intentional behaviors. And these are called behaviors, not communication yet. Scott: Right. Because even in the intentional, when you get to intentional behaviors, a child is not really trying to communicate or attempting to communicate. Sara: Right. They mean to do that thing that they're doing, but they don't know that somebody might respond to them yet. And it's still heavily interpreted-- you know when a baby is crying that they're probably wet or hungry and they're communicating that and then we respond to that and we say oh, you're hungry or oh, you're wet. And then we do something about that and the child begins to learn that if I do this, then somebody will respond to me. And that moves up into unconventional communication. Scott: I think if a child-- like a child reaching for their bottle, that's an intentional behavior, but it's not necessarily --they're not trying to communicate, but I know my kids when they were little, they started doing this thing with their hand like this. They would point towards what they wanted and do this grasping motion like that. Very unconventional, but it grew out of that motion of grabbing for something. Sara: And unconventional is something like less socially acceptable. So you know, you might bang on the table and somebody is going to respond to you, but you wouldn't necessarily do that at a restaurant later in life. Somebody might respond to you, might kick you out. So it's not quite conventional communication yet. And that's when we shape the communication to be more conventional, which is the next level, conventional communication. And we were talking about that as being more widely understood and the communicator is more persistent, may try a different way if the message is not understood. That's when you're definitely knowing that there's a receiver, I'm the sender and you're the receiver and you need to respond to me. Scott: Right. You're trying to get your point across, the very specific thing that you're trying to communicate with a specific other person. And then, of course, concrete symbols. You know, the example of your cup representing a drink of water. Move on to more abstract symbols. Sara: Maybe a picture of a cup. Scott: A picture. And then of course language being at the highest point. Sara: Yeah, yeah. Since it's a set of symbols or sounds. Scott: These are the seven things, seven levels that you get from doing the communication matrix. And once you've got that information you're going to move on-- well, depending on where they fall with these seven levels, that would determine what should the next instruments should you use. Sara: Yes. And there is overlap between the two next things that we're going to talk about. If you look at level 1 through 4, I think we have a little slide of levels 1 through 4, that's next, with this we really like looking at first things first, which is on the next slide. And first things first really describes how strategies for early communication for pre-symbolic kids. And they have strategies for teaching kids how to make choices, getting attention, et cetera. They have forms, data collection, all kinds of nice templates to check out how kids are doing. So that's a nice tool for people to use. Scott: So these are students who are pre-symbolic or at the very early stages becoming symbolic. Sara: They have such a nice way of describing how do you elicit communication so that the child knows that they have an effect on their environment and eventually that they have an effect on the other person and that person will respond to them in a certain way so they know they can communicate about different things. Use one way to communicate about one thing and a different way to communicate about something else. And I think they begin to introduce the tying together of some sort of a symbol with an activity. And then the next thing that we look at if we go to level 3 through 6 of the communication matrix if we find the student is working at that level, then we get more information from the tangible symbol systems book, which we'll talk about next, and also calendars, Blaha's book, tangible symbols is our third of the Rowland Schweigert series and they have more too. Scott: This one we're going to talk about today. So the tangible symbols systems is really all about calendar and symbol systems. That's really looking at the symbols and what type of symbol has meaning for the student. Sara: Yeah. It has an assessment to help you determine the form. When we were talking about static forms of communication, just to help understand what does this child really understand? What can they really detect and use-- there's an assessment that is used and I think it's on our next slide to really kind of work-- it's like a worksheet to work through the kinds of symbols that you introduce. And it starts from the most abstract. Scott: It starts-- if we could share my screen, I think we can look at that one a little bit. Yeah, there we go. So let me get this. There we go. So it really starts-- they start with the most abstract, which is a generic line drawing. So just a drawing that can come from anywhere, I suppose. And then goes to a specific line drawing that was made for that child or perhaps with that child. Sara: Or a photograph. Scott: Or a photograph. And then moves into symbol sharing one or two features, so to me that would be like-- like just some aspect of that --of the actual object that you're looking at. And then moves on to partial objects. And then the most concrete being the identical --the object that you're using in that activity. Sara: Right. So it could be-- I've heard that, you know, some of the tactile symbols that students use equate for pictures, as far as a student who uses vision. That might be the more abstract kind of tactile symbol and then there's the more concrete, which has an object that's a part of the object on there, so tactile symbols can be more or less abstract on this form, I think. Scott: Right. Does he-- Scott: He doesn't really talk about that. Scott: He doesn't really talk about tactile symbols. I was kind of surprised about that. Because they're a little different. I don't know that they would fall-- Sara: In the same order. Scott: Uh‑huh. Or they would be-- they would match up with this completely. Sara: Yeah. I think if you compare it to the --there's some information in Blaha's book from going from concrete to abstract that might be helpful if you're looking at tactile symbols. She has kind of a flow chart going from using pictures, two dimensional, all the way to objects, and she also has one that is a tactile representation, all the way to the real object that goes to more abstract. Scott: Yeah. I think we're going to look at that later when we talk about Blaha's book. But I guess in this assessment, this tangible symbols assessment, you start with the most complex and you do three-- you do an array of three. You do the actual target and then you have two distracters. Sara: Right. The things that don't mean anything. Scott: And it seems a little-- it's kind of complex to me and when I read about how to do this, it seems a little bit complex. I can see where this would be really good when you're trying to figure out --when you feel you need to do an actual assessment, if there's some disagreement or misunderstanding about what a student actually is able to use. Sara: Yeah. And this is not an observational assessment. This is actually you have to sit down and do this with the student. You have to present them with the distracters, kind of more scientific. And I think, though-- I think it can be done, it's just not maybe our natural style of doing things. It seems a little artificial. But I think once you go through it a few times it becomes more easy and less strange seeming. Scott: Yeah. I think it's a great-- I think it's a good idea just because I think it's-- it's a good idea to be a little more scientific about symbol systems and communication. Sara: Absolutely. Scott: Yeah. It largely is sort of folklore. It seems they understand this or this is what I've noticed that the student understands, whereas this is actual data that you can present. 4 Sara: Yeah. So one of the nifty things about the tangible symbols systems book is that it has a video that goes with it. And so we just wanted to show one of those. It's just about linking a symbol to its referent. Basically linking the symbol to the activity and doing it multiple times so that the student has successful communication over and over again about a particularly favored activity. So let's watch-- I think this little guy's name is Brandon. Chapter 3. Case Study - Brandon [ Video start: ] Description Start Description End Video narrator: Brandon is totally blind and has a severe bilateral hearing loss. When we first met him he was 18 months old and his family was using hand in hand signing with him. He was tactilely defensive and was not responsive to the form of communication. We spent about two years working with Brandon on gestural forms of communication. These scenes show you his transition to symbolic communication which occurred over the course of his fifth year. In scene one Brandon is learning to ask for more and also to choose between two objects using gestures. His partner pauses periodically to allow him to ask for more, which he accomplishes in this scene by hand guiding. His partner also presents a choice of the rocking board or the trampoline. First she tests Brandon to tactilely scan the two items and then allow him to guide her to the one he desires. Brandon is also learning to associate the information provided by the tactile scan of an object with what that object can be used for. Staff: Okay. Okay. You get. Here we go. Okay. Yeah? Yeah? [ Laughter ] Okay. We're finished. We're finished. Okay. What else can we play on? Come here. Rocker. Trampoline. Which one do you want to do? What do you want to do? The trampoline? Okay. That was nice. We're going to bounce too. Woo! Video Narrator: In scene two Brandon is first introduced to three dimensional symbols for the playroom equipment. The symbols are attached to the items and his partner makes sure that he tactilely scans both the item and the symbol before making a choice. At this point he is just learning the association between each symbol and its referent. Staff: That? Okay. That's my boy. Yeah. That's my boy. You want up there. Okay. Yeah. See? You've gotten big. [ Laughter ]. Okay. Narrator: In scene three, the partner now emphasizes the symbol in the tactile scan and now Brandon must pick up the symbol and hand it to her to make a choice. At this point he still needs assistance with handing the symbol to his partner. Staff: Okay. Come here and let's see what we've got to do here. Do you want this? Which do you want? Can you give it to me? Okay. Give it to me. Oops. Come here. Do it again. Okay. Let's go. What do you want me to do? Narrator: In scene four the symbols are no longer attached to the object, but instead are presented on a clipboard in an array of two symbols. In this scene Brandon wants more of the slide. And after scanning the two symbols offered, he gives his partner the slide symbol. Staff: Thank you! Good boy! Good boy, good boy! Thank you. Come here. What do you want to do? You've got this or you've got this. What do you want to do? Good boy! Yes! That was good. Can you hand it to me? Come on. Over here, come on. Oh hi. You want to go up? Woo! Narrator: In scene five, Brandon chooses from an array of three symbols at a time. Staff: Hi. You did such good work. Yeah. Come here. One more time here, let's see what you want. We've got this, this, this. What do you want? Good boy! Yeah, you want slide. Nice picking, Brandon, nice picking. Hi. Hi. You want to go up? Sara: I really like that. It focuses on choices that the child would make. It's fun, very motivating and it's got that use part down pretty well of why would I want to communicate with you? Because if I communicate with you, awesome things happen. And that's the way to hook people in. I see some things on the chat. It looks like Claudia was found-- she found her handout. Mary Ann said she registered for the communication matrix, but is not sure how to get in and use the charts. Last time I did it I think you had to fill it out under a certain student's name and then you start entering information for that student. So you could do a pretend student, just a kind of memory of somebody that you knew in the past or something like that or a student you know now and just do a run through. That's what I remember about it. It might have changed since then but I think it was pretty self‑explanatory once you started and do it. But maybe not so much from just looking at the page, the web page. Scott: Yeah. It kind of walks you through it, but I think you do have to spend some time reading over it, so I think it's a real good idea to do sort of a pretend student and do a run so you get familiar with the --with their charts. One thing about that video, I would think if you're doing the assessment it might be a good idea to having --for the three choices having the preferred thing, which was the slide and maybe --I'm not sure what the other two things were, if they were also-- Sara: Trampoline and-- oh, yeah, that's true. If they were the-- what did he call them, the non‑preferred or the blank? Scott: The distracters. The distracters. So I wonder if those are really distracters meaning they didn't have any meaning or if they were things he didn't like. If they were three things he prefers, he likes to do, I'm not sure you're getting the same information. Sara: I think you're not getting as much information about choice. You're just getting the association between the symbol and the activity associated. So every time you choose a symbol you get to do this, a fun thing. You're not really getting-- you're not getting a whole lot of information about choice, the choices you make in life or the choices you make because you're not getting the-- there would be another probably way of doing the-- of teaching choice. Like if I choose the fun thing or if I choose the unfun thing or just the nothing, nothing's going to happen. I'm going to choose something or nothing. Scott: Again, it goes into the intention of is the child intentionally communicating what we think they're communicating. I always think back, I remember years ago I had a student and they were doing a choice‑making activity with him and he was choosing-- the two choices were chocolate milk or chocolate pudding. Sara: Oooh, tough choice. Scott: And they were preparing the pudding and mic with pictures. He could see the pictures. And they were paring that with the picture symbol and he would have to pull the symbol off-- the picture off and hand it to somebody and they would say oh, you will get chocolate pudding or you will get chocolate milk. So really it didn't matter to this student because he liked them both. Sara: They were great. Scott: They were both chocolate. And we came up with the idea, we said is he really communicating a preference from one or the other or has he just learned that in order to get chocolate I hand you a piece of paper? And we did go in and assess him using distracters that were not preferred, definitely not preferred. I forget what we used. I think we used like a glass of water with like a little bit of salt in it or vinegar in it to make it a little more distasteful. And we saw real clearly when we did that, that he-- then he started to pay attention to the pictures because he wanted the chocolate. He didn't want the glass of water. Sara: That's a good point. Scott: That's kind of my point in looking at the assessment is be careful how you're interpreting. Be sure that you're testing what you think you're testing. Sara: Yeah. Get those distracters in there. Yeah. Scott: Okay. Chapter 4. Calendars Sara: So, the next thing that we-- we're going to move on from the Rowland and Schweigert. Do you have any comments on the video or have you used this assessment and you want to share your experience? We would love to hear from y'all. We'll go ahead and start talking about calendars, but if you want to just insert your comments any time. The next thing we have is Robbie Blaha's book on calendars and in order to kind of tie this together, there is a-- there is a nice discussion of concrete versus abstract and static and dynamic communication if you want to go and read about it and get more details of that. But also there's a really neat chart that I think she got that from the Haygood book on communication. On Page 25 of her book-- Scott: If you will share my screen I can show that page. Sara: Yes, Scott has that on his computer. Scott: There we go. Sara: And this is kind of a cool thing because it's kind of a developmental communication chart, so you can look at the kinds of things a person might communicate about when they're more of a pre-symbolic communicator. The forms that they might use that are understandable. What kind of things does a pre-symbolic communicator communicate about? What kinds of topics? And then how does the social piece look? So it would be a really nice way to think about when you're thinking about goals, communication goals and the kinds of things you're considering at whatever level you see the child. This gives a lot of nice examples of things you might observe. Scott: Right. If you look over on the right side, the dialogue, there's some nice things for looking at IEP goals. And really the content as well. But if you compare that to Schweigert's, to his-- Sara: The communication matrix with the levels? Scott: With the seven levels-- Sara: There are goals associated with each of those levels and we kind of forgot to go into that, but they are and that can also help with goals. Scott: Right. And sort of-- this doesn't really pair exactly with what he-- his goes into seven levels rather than three. And I think-- Sara: Actually Charity Rowland. Scott: She has the seven levels‑‑ Sara: That was one thing we didn't have his name on too. It's hard to keep track, for sure. But I really like this chart. It's a good one. I recommend it to kind of get a global understanding of where the child is and as well as the one in the communication matrix. So I think one of the strengths of the calendars book is it really-- while the Schweigert book really goes into the form, the calendars book really goes into time and how time-- time is to abstract and so subjective and hard to pin down because everybody is experiencing it differently all the time. She has the guide to selecting time frames is at the end of the calendars book, and I didn't know this was in there for the longest time, and it's a really helpful-- Scott: The guide? You didn't know it was there? Sara: No. There were pictures in that book and I didn't know the thing was here and I could have definitely used it. Scott: I like it as well. It's easy to use. Sara: Super fast. Scott: It's very fast and easy to use and it gives you really good information because I agree that the form, the symbols are very important, but if they're not presented in a time frame that's comprehensible to the student it really will sabotage the whole thing. Sara: Right. Absolutely. Scott: We can look at the time frames. I have it on my computer. Sara: Oh, let's go to your computer and we might be able to see it better. Scott: There we go. So it starts here is the guide for selecting time frames. And like we said earlier, all you do is it's a checklist and so you go through and determine which of these skills your student can or-- can do. And so the ones that are in bold are critical. The ones that are-- so these three at the beginning are critical skills for being-- for being able to just type a calendar. The ones that are light or not bold, they are not critical, but some information can help you in thinking about what kind of calendar to use. Sara: And also if you don't know the answer to some of those questions or you don't think the child has ever had the opportunity to try those things, it might be something that is missing from programming. So there is one thing that says the child will go to the next item in a left to right sequence without prompting or-- and that's something that people say I don't know, I don't have a left to right sequence. So you might want to think about giving the child the opportunity to practice that left to right consequencing because of course it is a prereading skill and it's really easy to tie those things to the TEKS and to include those in your instruction-- in the general education curriculum. Scott: Your communication is-- it's important to remember communication is a developmental-- it develops sequentially, so if you are omitting some of those concepts and skills from your student's education then it will be difficult for them to advance to different levels. Sara: There would be some sort of plateau that you wouldn't expect because it seems like they could do this and then it doesn't go any further so it's good to get those things in there. They're pretty important. Scott: And teach them, do some direct teaching of those things. But anyway, it starts the anticipation calendar and if they're able to do all these things you would move on to the next-- next up, which is the daily calendar. And if they're able to perform these skills you would move on to the weekly calendar. And then the most complex would be multi‑week, monthly calendars or even an annual calendar. Sara: Yes. And there are sections in the book that describe strategies that you use with a student when they're using an anticipation calendar or when they're using a daily calendar. And there's just-- I like it because you go do the assessment and it takes you to a certain section of the book and you focus on that section because you can use it. This is the information you need right now. It's not-- you don't have to read the whole entire book and tease out what you need. Scott: Right. Sara: You are directed to --because we know we don't-- we don't all have endless amounts of time, so we need to get the most critical information right now and that's why I think this is such a great assessment and book to go along with companion to the assessment. Scott: I agree. I think the --we were talking before, you and I were talking about-- because Robbie doesn't go in-- she doesn't do an assessment of the forms really. She talks about it extensively and gives a lot of good information, but there's not really an official assessment like in Schweigert and Rowland's system. But, you know, we were talking about this, the earliest calendar being the anticipation calendar, and I don't think I've ever seen a student using an anticipation calendar who was using more advanced or more sophisticated symbol systems. Typically that's with objects. Sara: Yeah. I think that you-- that what you're talking about is nicely-- is like what you're talking about is kind of on that thing that we looked at a little bit that has the levels. Scott: The blue chart. Sara: Really the students do progress. These are the kinds of topics at this level, these are the kinds of social interactions at this level. These are the kinds of forms at this level. And generally it does progress to the more abstract, more complex. And so yeah, you don't see a lot of really cross --students who can use language and, you know, talk about things that aren't, you know-- that happened yesterday that it wouldn't make sense using an anticipation calendar with a student that can do that. Scott: Right, right. Sara: Yeah. I mean, not to say that there aren't students who have splinter skills and can be complex to figure out, but-- Scott: Uh‑huh. And again, it's looking at what the student really does understand because if a student hasn't had real extensive instruction or real instruction that's really covered time frames and looked at them and taken through this developmental levels, they may not be able to perform or may not really understand some of the concepts that are being presented. Sara: I think a real good example of that is students who have a lot of language and have really great enunciation and have functional echolalia language. And they are able to identify the sounds they have heard and they associate the sounds, like the language that they've heard with a symbol, but maybe they don't have the actual-- the content-- the concepts that stand behind it. So they know the language to use, and that can fool a lot of people into thinking that they really know these concepts, but they just know the sounds to make to go with with it. So the language isn't really meaningful to them and that's one of the things you also have to make sure, can they lead you to the activity area, can they tell you something about the activity, can you have a conversation about it where you're really thinking about what is the most important part of that activity and maybe do some actions that have to do with that activity or use some objects that have to do with it, object box or whatever. So there are many ways to explore that and make sure that it's meaningful. So where do you get these things, Scott? Scott: Good question. If you go to design to learn you can get the communication matrix, first things first and tangible symbol system. The matrix is, like we said earlier, it's really an online form that you can work with. You can also-- you can also order hard copies of all three of these as well. Calendars, the calendar book, Robbie's book, we can sell that to you, Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, you can get it from our site. They also provide it through APH, and they give you a set of those foam calendar boxes with it. Sara: Yeah. Hillary says that there are videos on TSBVI's website and that would be on the --what is that called, like the communication? I can't remember exactly the name of it. Chris Montgomery has worked on that a whole lot. There are some really great videos of kids using different calendars. Hillary is going to look for the link. Off camera: [ Inaudible ]. Sara: Andy says search for calendars on the main website. And that should help you find it. There's-- and Chris also goes into the kinds of calendars, in addition not just the time frames, but the choice calendars and various-- and calendars to use within an activity so those are the most basic time frames is just I do this one little step, it only takes a little while, and I go to the next thing. That's the very earliest way to teach left to right consequencing within the context of a routine. So let's see, are there any other comments or questions? Ah‑ha, Hillary has posted-- looks like it's a link to one of the videos. Because it's in the library, the TSBVI library. Thanks, Hillary, for that. I'm glad you said that. I know I need to-- Scott: She says should be in the category of calendars in the media library. Thanks, Hillary. Sara: Yeah. I haven't used it as much lately so I haven't-- I need to go back and review those things. Make better use of them. Okay. Anything else you want to share, Scott? I know we have another webinar coming up. I guess it's our last one in May. Scott: Right. I think in May we're going to do one more of the series of MIVI assessments. Sara: Yeah. And I think that we have-- Scott: May 15th. We have the sensory learning kit and the SAM. Scott: And Millie Smith's‑‑ Sara: The Millie Smith material, which-- and then the every move counts quick and fast, we were going to look at that sensory learn learning kit. So if you're familiar with one of those, you're basically in a certain kind of way familiar with both of them. Scott: Yeah. I think those would be really good to look at those kids who are maybe not quite ready for calendars, or maybe kids-- maybe looking at ways for kids who are at anticipation level or even more kids who are kind of prior to that level. Sara: Well, they both look at really what the child's preferences are, like what things would they want to communicate about? And go through a really thorough assessment of those things, like offering the child opportunities to participate in those things, and, you know, we may not have thought of. The things in the sensory learning kit are-- really make us think about all of the sensory channels and all the sensory systems that kids access information through and prefer. Scott: And it looks at sort of the pre-intentional levels. And they both offer ways to shape those pre-intentional behaviors to make them more intentional. Sara: And if I'm remembering correctly, the sensory learning kit really guides you towards the structure of the routine and the social interaction of that and building the trust and bonding. And every move counts is really about finding the activities and the symbols that could be paired with them and building the associations between-- it's a lot like what Rowland and Schweigert did. It feels like they also have the --we'll go into it more next time. [ Laughter ]. Scott: We'll have plenty of time to talk about that in May. Sara: All right. Well, thank y'all for coming. We have-- Dawn said this was helpful and she's used the matrix and the calendar book, but didn't know about the others. Yeah, the Rowland and Schweigert stuff is really good. I would recommend it. [Silence] Fade up from black. Animation: Text for TSBVI transform into braille cells for TSBVI. Fade to black.