Picture Exchange Play Wall
Happy Saturday Everyone!
During the week when I need a break from virtual teaching I have been working on getting my room ready for when students return. This past week I finished my Play Wall area and decided to implement PECS (picture exchange communication system) everywhere and started with this area. PECS are known for helping create a system to teach students to communicate. Most of my students are nonverbal so we are going to be using PECS a lot so I thought it would be fun to see if I immerse my students in this visual communication if it will help with their communication.
If you’ve never seen pecs, they are pretty simple. They are usually a card that has a simple picture and a one or two word phrase below it. I actually made a few that are a huge thing right now for my online zoom that look like this…
Download Free item on my Teachers Pay Teachers
These have been great for helping my students communicate through zoom when I have them all muted. They caught on super quick and are all able to respond (with some prompting from their adults) to answer questions I ask them like if my screen is actually sharing (a major issue lately).
To be honest, I have not gone through the official PECS training. I did do a 1 hour training from someone who had been trained in it and does trainings a lot so I know where you can find the information. Warning- it can be a lot so take it slow.
Photo from PECS USA
PECS USA has a great visual and is the go-to resource to learn how to use PECS. They are where you want to go to learn all about this amazing system that can help a nonverbal student learn to communicate almost effortlessly. I’ve seen it work before in different phases and it is so much fun to watch a student be able to talk and tell me all of the things they have wanted to.
I am currently working on my Masters and am really interested in making PECS come to life in all of my lessons so I decided to put up areas in my room designated for certain tasks, like playing. Then I found the most common things that may be used when we are playing like spinning a wheel or asking to play. I can not wait to use these in my classroom once everyone’s back.
If they aren’t though, I have been creating the spaces in my room so that if we play a digital game via zoom I can upload and make a google classroom with the same visual communication pictures! The consistency of using what you expect when they return on zoom is key to allowing your students to be successful once we transition back to in-class teaching.
I hope this gave you an idea of how you could use visuals in your classroom if you notice you have a student that may be struggling with communicating or learning a new language even!
Happy Teaching :)