Students with moderate to severe disabilities often have communication impairments and difficulty getting their wants and needs met. Teaching language is an essential part of the job of a special educator, and yet, can be extremely complicated. For instance, think of the word “book.” While the word itself may be simple, the student has to be able to apply the word in many different contexts.
Even teaching a simpler word like “book” can be complex because students have to be able to use it in many different ways. When beginning to teach language to students with moderate to severe disabilities, it is most important to teach students to request.
There is a close relationship between a student’s ability to communicate their wants and needs and the frequency and intensity of their use of maladaptive behavior. Developmentally speaking, before children are able to communicate their wants and needs, they tend to have tantrums and exhibit other challenging behaviors. Students with moderate to severe disabilities tend to use maladaptive behavior to communicate. Requesting is most important to teach first because it teaches students that language helps to get their wants and needs met. Teaching to request directly benefits the student and is most likely to reduce challenging behavior.
Imagine you are in a foreign country and do not speak the language. What are the first words you want to learn to get your wants and needs met? You can use this same framework to think about what words to first teach your students. To teach requesting:
A student has mastered a request once they can request the item independently, without the help of an adult. Teaching these first few requests are important but often a student needs a repertoire of many words in order to get all their wants and needs met. While teaching specific requests, you can also teach the child how to point and gesture to get more general wants and needs across.
To teach requesting effectively, the request should work quickly for the student in all environments. All the adults in the student’s life should be teaching the request and providing ample opportunities to practice. If a student is using an AAC device that doesn’t have vocal output, the adult should say the name of the item being requested so the student learns to associate the request, the word, and the item.
When teaching requests, the words taught should be specific. Words like “more” are too general and do not give the listener enough information about what the student wants. Instead of teaching “more,” teach the student specific requests like “juice,” “ball,” and “Mom.”
Pronouns and manners come much later in language development and should not be prioritized when a student is first learning language. Manners like “please” and “thank you” make language more effortful and benefit the listener instead of the speaker. The easier and less effortful language is, the more likely the student is going to be to use it.
Requesting should be taught using prompts to help the learner be successful. Prompts should be removed as the learner becomes more independent. Prompting helps the student practice the correct communicative response instead of practicing errors.
After the learner learns their first 2-3 requests, introduce more! Developmentally, according to the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment (VB-MAPP) students should acquire at least 10 different requests independently before moving on to two word requests. The student should also be able to request for missing items, request for others to perform actions, and request to remove or stop an undesirable activity.
Requesting gets more complicated as the student progresses, but the more the student is able to communicate, the more independent their life will be!
Contributor Bio
Shea Kytomaa, M.A., BCBA, has her Master’s in Education from The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Autism and Developmental Disabilities. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and has worked in K-12 schools, clinics, and community mental health centers. Shea currently serves as a Classroom Consultant at TeachTown and is passionate about bringing their K-12 adapted core curriculum into special education classrooms.