Unique Speech

As I am preparing for my career in elementary education after graduation, I work at an early childhood education center to gain further insight and experience in various childhood behaviors, teaching styles and techniques. One of the biggest realizations that I have had is the fact that working in an early childhood education field can be very tough. Helping each young, flourishing child understand their own emotions, understand boundaries, communicate with peers and teachers as well as follow directions, all while educationally enriching them and even going through the potty training process with children are very difficult tasks to manage and balance. What can make this challenge even more difficult is when there is a lack of communication between student and teacher. In my experience, I have come across many students that have been diagnosed with Autism, a great deal of them being almost to completely non-verbal. Witnessing wonderful and bright children struggle because they lack the resources to convey the things they need made me feel utterly helpless. I knew I could be doing something more. My first attempt at trying to remedy this issue was when I made a verbal communication board in my room. This consisted of various pictures on the wall of one side of the room that illustrated certain feelings and things they would need such as water, or to use the restroom. Unfortunately, this backfired on me when I realized that there was too much and not enough on the wall at the same time. I saw that my students would get frustrated when they were over stimulated by the many broad choices they had but also not enough options to depict very specific wants or needs.

I did a good bit of research to fix this problem and I discovered the solution. I stumbled upon an app called Unique Speech. This app uses basic pictures featuring various categories and when you choose a category, more specific choices are presented. It contains hundreds of requests such as locations, verbs, food, etc. so children can not only ask for things, but can conduct meaningful conversations with others.This app is organized in a simple way where the student does not feel overwhelmed and it is easily accessible. The only con to this app is the fact that after the three day trial it provides, you have to pay a monthly subscription. I tried using other free apps like this, but this was the only app I could find with as many options for my students. I let my students use our iPad to communicate with teacher and other students and within a week of using it, I noticed the students on the spectrum were having less meltdowns, less altercations between other students, smoother transitions and a brighter personality in the students with Autism. I am so grateful to have stumbled upon an app like this because I do not know if I would have been able to experience the truly bright and cheery children I had seen when these students had the ability to communicate. Overall, I believe this app has benefitted my classroom as well as my students.