The Moderate/Severe Population: Telephone Scripting

Functional Communication: Where Does it Happen?

This year, I discovered that many students in my school’s 3 Moderate/Severe Special Day Classes have their own personal cell phones. This includes one student who is about 30% intelligible when context is known! Does that surprise you? It certainly surprised me.

As I began working with these students, it occurred to me that functional situations replete with language use happen every day over the phone. Even if some of my students do not have their own personal cell phones now, they likely will when they move onto their group homes or day program placements in the near future. And let’s be real, cell phones aren’t going anywhere. I decided it was imperative that these students graduate with functional phone communication skills.

Ring, Ring! ….Silence.

I started with a probe to see if my students could answer the phone. I handed an old, battery-less cell phone to one of my students and, using my own personal cell phone, I played a ringtone to simulate the student’s phone ringing. She excitedly held the old cell phone up to her ear, a grin on her face. She said nothing. I stopped the ringtone on my phone from sounding. Nothing. I cued her with an expectant face and waved my hand to motion her to say something. A solid 10 seconds later, she produced a “Hi, Ms. Hall!”

 

The rest of the class didn’t fare much better. We clearly had some work to do.

Powerpoint is My Best Friend!

Whenever I plan lessons for my Mod/Severe students, visuals are always my first thought. A few of them have basic reading skills, but most rely heavily on visuals for new learning. My go-to strategy for these classes is the ultimate, customizable visual tool: PowerPoint. Fortunately, all the classrooms I push-in to have SMARTBoards I can use to display powerpoints, videos, and other digital media to my students. If they did not, I would upload the PowerPoint onto my iPad and use is as handheld visual as I roamed about the class.

I set up a simple script that I wanted my students to learn for a specific phone situation: answering the phone and the person calling them actually needs to speak to someone else (e.g. their parent, teacher, caregiver, classmate, etc.).

The first time I ran this lesson with my classes, the script went as follows:

1. Hi!
2. Yes or No (in response to asking for the other speaker)
3. It’s for you! (hand the phone over)

The Part 1 PowerPoint I used to teach this activity can be downloaded here at my TPT store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/How-Do-We-Answer-The-Telephone-Phone-Scripting-Activity-2544908

Each student was able to practice this script with me twice in our allotted 30 minute session. Many of the students struggled with the overall concept; I knew this would become a recurring lesson to “keep in my backpocket.” Essentially, it shows up every so often in my rotation of classroom-based lessons. When I am feeling particularly uninspired, it’s an important relevant lesson to whip out in no time.

So, that brings me to  the second time I ran this lesson. I decided to add in a new step between 2 and 3: asking “Who is this?” For my students who were beginning to master the original lesson, this was a great step forward for them.

This updated Part 2 PowerPoint can be found at my TPT Store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/How-Do-We-Answer-The-Telephone-Phone-Scripting-Activity-Part-2-2544922

On the second time around, the students performed more independently overall; however, asking “Who is this?” was difficult when the students could see me at the front of the room. In the future, I may try asking several paraprofessionals to step outside of the room and actually have the students make a real phone call in order to practice asking “Who is this?” in a more realistic context (since they won’t know exactly who is calling them).

But back in what actually happened, I did turn the situation into somewhat of a game - the students quickly realized that each time they “answered the phone” that I would alter my voice to pretend to be a different staff member. They greatly enjoyed the farce of me pretending to be other staff members and it reinforced the necessity of asking the new question “Who is this?”

How Do I Differentiate This Activity?

• My non-verbal students participated in this activity by selecting appropriate messages on their AAC systems (e.g. “Hi.” “How are you?” “Yes/No.” “Take this.”) to respond to the demands of the “caller.”

• My students with intelligibility issues practiced their “good speech strategies” (see Blog Post #2 for more info) when speaking on the phone.
• I have the ability to modify how long I “stay on the phone” in order to elicit more language from my students who have higher language skills. I can ask open-ended, social questions like “How are you?” “What are you doing right now?” and “How was your weekend?” I can ask closed questions like, “Are you busy now?” or “Are you at school?”

Furthermore, as a carry-over strategy, I encouraged the teachers in the class to allow the students to practice by answering the classroom phone. Our school phones list the last name of the school personnel that’s calling, so I suggested that they make decisions about which teachers or staff members would be the best conversational partners and to have the students answer the phone when those specific staff members call (Because realistically, not all staff at my school would make good, patient, conversational practice models for my students!).

I hope that you find that you can easily implement this activity with the Mod/Severe population. I love this activity in particular because students can always use more practice with phone skills and it takes very little preparation now that I created the PowerPoints. And even better, the students have great fun! The students find it hilarious when I “call” them and alter my voice to pretend to be another staff member. Some of them have even altered their own voices to pretend to staff members themselves - which caused very appropriate laughter and classroom camaraderie. We all have a good time with this lesson and it reinforces functional, age-appropriate communication skills.

As always, it doesn't have to be fancy, just keep it fun and functional!

• Jillian, the No-Frills SLP