Developing a responsive social and learning environment

The environment and language development

• Understanding of your environment is fundamental to the way you interact and access it: – determines they way you behave– helps you make sense of your world– how you adapt your social skills from setting to setting– increases security and reduces anxiety– The way you interpret your environment determines how

you interact with it and manipulate it for your own benefit– environmental cues exist within all levels of society

Introducing an analogy for language development.

The way we have made sense of our

environment depends on our

perceived reality

Soil = environment

A compatible environment?

Very often we put students in an environment which, by its very nature they can’t access

We can make environmental adaptations to ensure understanding across a range of settings

What are we aiming to achieve?What are we aiming to achieve?• Adults relinquishing control – giving children more control

over their environment

• Increasing children’s independence and problem solving skills

• Increasing security, understanding of role and expectations within a routine

• Providing a stable,secure, predictable and meaningful environment

• A decrease in ‘negative communicative behaviours’

• An environment that children need, and want, to interact with

Connecting with your environment

Relationship with your physical

environment

Relationship with your symbolic

environment

Relationship with your

social environment

How you respond to

environmental prompts

Ability to attach meaning to

symbols

Awareness of how time is

represented

Understanding of your role

within a given setting

- TEACCH: Organising the environment into clearly defined areas -play, ‘office’, work, putting down mats to indicate where students should sit etc.- Physical prompting and backward chaining

- Labelling the environment - Written/symbol commands- Base boards- Floor markings- Menu boards- Accessible communication systems (AAC)

- Routines- Social Stories- Comic Strip Conversations - Power Stories- Scripts- All about me books- Generic ‘All about me books’- Preparation Books, ‘Guide books’- ‘Visual/Interactive’ nursery rhymes- Daily schedules

- Weekly timetables- Task schedules- Calendars- Clocks- Check lists- Diary

Adapting the environment

Physical Symbolic Social

Setting Up The Classroom: 8 Areas

• Designated learning areas • Labelling the school with Baseboards • Differentiating between similar areas, such as work statio

ns

• Refining learning areas to support contextual understanding

• Integrating communication systems within the classroom • Setting up schedules • Labelling the classroom to support independence • Considering the sensory environment

1. Setting up designated learning areas

2. Labelling Learning Areas with Base Boards

3. Differentiating between similar areas

4. Refining Learning Areas to support contextual Understanding

5. Accessible Communication Systems

6. Supporting Time concepts / Transition Schedules

7. Labelling the classroom

8. The sensory Environment