CAA: Play Activities and Communication

摘要

Each child only learns to communicate through the experience of communication. For this reason in recent years particular emphasis has been set on specific aspects concerning at once the recipients and the setting of the intervention. It has been argued that the AAC intervention must take place in the normal environment of the child in order to allow the child to make his/her own experience within real communicative needs. Besides, the AAC intervention must not only take into account the child with a communicative disability, but also his or her significant communication partners: parents, teachers, friends, peers and classmates. In Italy, all the children of all degrees of disability are integrated within regular schools. Initially we trusted that the circumstance should have allowed AAC users to experience situations of participation, by creating opportunities for communicative exchange between classmates. In reality this has happened very infrequently, and only in the case of those children, AAC users, who were able to keep up with the curricular programs. All the other children were experiencing only loneliness and isolation. This was the result of being kept out of the classroom, with the limited help of an assistant teacher often at his/her first working experience with children with communicative disabilites. As a consequence of the above-mentioned situations and of the rigid structure of school organization, the assistant teacher lacked the possibility of implementing an AAC program. Frequently, out of frustration, assitant teachers have asked to be removed to other schools.