Velcro to Create Picture Exchange Communication System Binders for Verbally Limited Students
The cost of 10 boxes of 15' Velcro Strips from Sargent Welch is $277, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. L.'s classroom raised $263
This project is fully funded
I am a speech-language pathologist (SLP) who works with students with communication disorders. Four of my students, who present with varying degrees of mental retardation, have difficulties communicating their thoughts verbally. However, they do possess sufficient cognitive skills to use other means to communicate. A common "low-tech" communication system that SLPs teach these students to use is called the "Picture Exchange Communication System" (PECS). As the title suggests, it is a system which allows the students to use picture cards to express themselves. For example, if a student's goal is to be able to form sentences consisting of subject-verb-object to express what he/she eats, I would print out pictures of food, a picture showing the action "eat," and a picture that represents "I" from a computer software program called "Boardmaker." The pictures are laminated, cut into individual cards, and velcroed in the back. They are placed on sheets with velcro strips in a binder. I teach the students what each picture card shows. I model making sentences with the picture cards using a "sentence strip" (a piece of laminated paper with a velcro strip on it). I pull cards off from the binder and place them in order on the sentence strip. Therefore, if I want to express that I eat fish, I would pull off the picture "I" from the binder and place it on the sentence strip. I would proceed with "eat" and then "fish" so that I have formed the sentence "I eat fish" on the sentence strip. I would ask the student questions, such as "Do you eat eggs for breakfast?" The student would practice using the PECS by forming appropriate sentences on the sentence strip. Once he/she has achieved his/her goal, he/she brings the binder with the picture cards and sentence strip home. He/she uses it to communicate with others at home, in school, and in the general community. (Please visit www.mayer-johnson.com for a description of Boardmaker and more examples of how to use PECS). Overall, the PECS allows my limited verbal students to express their thoughts to others using pictures. To create the system, a lot of laminating paper and velcro are need. The school I work at does the laminating, but it does not supply velcro. A box of 15-ft. velcro strips from staples costs about $20. About 10 boxes ($200) are needed to create the four PECS binders this school year. The students, their families, their classroom teacher, and I would greatly appreciate the donation. Thank you.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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