Health & Wellbeing News

Our two tips for this fortnight are to: 

1) pause and allow time and, 

2) add meaning. 

Pausing and allowing time is a powerful strategy that creates positive communication opportunities. It allows for time and space to process information. Pauses can feel awkward, but children require extra time and space to build their understanding and come up with a response. When you have said something, pause, lean forward and count to 8 in your head before you comment again. When your child initiates communication, respond immediately. Pausing can give our AAC users time to use their communication and provides an opportunity for adults to add more language. 

Adding meaning is a very valuable strategy that we can use as communication partners. When we add meaning, we watch and observe. We assign meaning to what we see. We listen to what our AAC users are telling us with their faces, their body, their actions and their communication attempts. We can model words and language on AAC to match those possible meanings. Adding meaning makes us responsive communication partners, build connections and helps us decide what words we can model on AAC. 

We hope you have found these tips helpful! 

This term we are introducing a fruit or vegetable product of the week in an effort to expose our students to healthy food at school. The first week we have chosen Watermelon. We will be giving out watermelon at recess each day this week from the playground. Have a chat to your child about the weekly fruit to see if they like it and perhaps add it to their lunchbox in their future.