A CASE STUDY OF SPED STUDENTS’ COMMUNICATION WITHIN THEIR

FAMILIES AND TEACHERS: STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION TO MAKE

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESSS MORE EFFECTIVE

1. INTRODUCTION

Providing for the needs of special education students will certainly be one of the greatest

challenges of a professional educator. Students with learning disabilities are those who show a

substantial difference in academic achievement and intellectual skills in one or more fields of oral

speech, listening comprehension, written language, basic reading skills, reading comprehension,

statistical estimation, logical reasoning, and writing, which is not the product of any other

impairment. A student with learning disabilities has impaired auditory memory, low tolerance and

a high level of frustration, weak self-esteem, often unable to control emotions, or verbally

aggressive. Teaching young people with learning disabilities will pose some special and distinctive

challenges (Teaching Students with Special Needs, n.d.). According to UnityPoint (2014), children

with special needs may require additional assistance in school. They are limited in verbal

communication or they are non-verbal. Communicating with them can be challenging.

Many people take for granted their ability to communicate. From the moment a person gets up

to the time a person puts his head back on the pillow, he is constantly communicating to those

around him. Some of this dialogue takes place with verbal exchanges, some with gestures, facial

expressions, notes passed back and forth, and the list goes on. Technologically, people have

progressed to where technology is considered to be their primary form of communication. For

children with speech disorder, verbal speech, social communication, initiating communication, and

using compensatory communication strategies are often difficult to learn. Verbal speech in
particular can elude him and cause great frustration and challenges for the child, family, and those

working with him. One-third to one-half of children with speaking disorders are functionally non-

verbal, making communication a significant issue that many families and professionals are

working to improve. Some families, therapists and teachers are hesitant to introduce a child to

augmentative or alternative communication (AAC) systems because they worry the child will lose

what speech he has or that he will not continue to expand his verbal repertoire. Children

demonstrate a desire to gain access to things they like such as food, toys and attention from parents

very early in life. They also begin to understand and seek the completion of an activity, or

demonstrate avoidance of what is to come next in their day if it is not a preferred activity. Without

a way to appropriately express themselves, these desires often manifest in the form of behaviors

such as hitting themselves or others, screaming, crying, biting, destroying things around them,

running away, etc. This is the indication that it is time to begin implementing a functional

communication system. It also points to the diligence needed in pro-actively implementing

communication trainings prior to the escalation of behaviors (Dutton, L., 2011).