At Currumbin Community Special School promoting and providing a communication ‘Access for All’ environment is a very important part of all learning and teaching within our school community. At Currumbin Community Special School we believe every student has a voice and we aim to provide the appropriate support for their voice to be heard. Our focus is to embed Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) into all aspects of the school day and in all curriculum areas, with a focus on the Communication Functions; The reasons why we communicate i.e. Getting and Giving Information, Social Interaction, AAC Repair Strategies and Expressing Needs and Wants. The AAC tools ‘we’, our school community, model support individual students with complex communication needs to develop their independent and autonomous expressive communication skills. Our Students may have their own personal device/system, which they bring to and from home and are encouraged to use it throughout each school day.
Project-Core and Core Word ALD Boards are prominent communication supports at Currumbin Community Special School. These core words consist of, 36 of the most commonly used words in the English language, which account for approximately 80% of the words we all use every day. These core words are modelled and embedded across the school day and in all learning contexts. We currently explicitly focus on two core words of the week across our school environment.
The AAC supports/devices/systems consist of High and Low tech options. We as a school community model and support Students with High-tech AAC devices such as; Proloquo2Go, Eye Gaze, Snap Core and Liberator. The Low-tech systems we support students to communicate with include Project Core, Pragmatic Organization Dynamic Display (PODD) and ALD Boards. Auslan is also embedded in our school community. At various times our school staffing has included Auslan Interpreters to support students with their autonomous communication and learning.
We promote AAC within our school community through Staff and Family Members chat times, professional development sessions and seeking advice from knowledgeable others within our wider community.