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Community Involvement for the Handicapped

Sharilynn M. Russo
Turner Highlands Special Center, Antioch, California

Subject: Special Education
Grade: ages 5-21

"It has been suggested that simple line drawings would be more successful and less costly than photographs. However, experience is that severely handicapped students are not sufficiently able to generalize for this to be true."

Purpose and Description of Project

Sharilynn Russo, a speech pathologist, uses photographs of foods from restaurant menus, grocery items, and other objects from the community environment of her severely mentally and/or physically handicapped students to help them learn to communicate their needs and behave appropriately in public places.

The students are trained at school to point to pictures in response to questions and then go out into the community with teachers and aides to practice what they've learned in real-life situations. They learn, for example, to take a "grocery list" of photos to the store, show the photos to the appropriate person or find the items themselves, take them to the check-out counter, pay, and take the items in a cart to the car.

Russo says that few of her students are able to communicate orally but that many can use limited signing. However, few people in the community understand signing and even many parents are unable or unwilling to use this form of communication. Therefore, she explains, "presenting pictures to a clerk and pointing to a picture of a desired item help bridge this communication gap." And, she adds, the success in communicating leads to improved behavior.

As a result, she found that the project helped students "feel more a part of their environment" and "parents feel better about including their children in activities because they respond more readily and are behaving more appropriately."

Activities

Russo photographed foods from restaurants and items from stores and other aspects of students' environment, laminated them, and selected an appropriate set of photos for each student. Classroom teachers and aides then assisted in training the students at school to learn to respond with the appropriate photo to questions they were asked. The students then went out into the community in small groups with adults to practice communicating with the pictures in actual restaurant and store situations.

In a fast-food restaurant, for example, the students learned to wait patiently in line, point promptly to photographs of the items they wanted, pay for the order and get their change, eat properly, and dispose of their trash.

Materials, Resources, and Expenses

The speech pathologist was assisted by classroom teachers and aides in both training the students to point to pictures in a classroom environment and monitoring students' activities in the community.

Outcomes and Adaptability

"The responsiveness of the students to this program has been wonderful," declares Russo. They've not only learned to point to photos to communicate with store clerks and others but some actually started using some speech in conjunction with the pictures, and others have increased the use of signing. She says that people in the community have also been increasingly cooperative, primarily due to the emphasis on correct behavior and strict limiting of outings to very small groups. Students have also come to participate more in family activities as their communication and behavior have improved.

The teacher advises that the program can be used with any severely handicapped population by using pictures appropriate to program goals and the level of the students' ability to participate.

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