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SPED Homeschool Team

Communication is more than just speaking; it is the underlying framework that determines how well we relate with others, the wider community, and the world we live in. It also affects how well we learn. After all, the majority of education involves either written or spoken communication. So when a child struggles with communication skills, learning can become particularly frustrating. However, not every child’s struggle with communication is the same, and thus how we address communication skills in our homeschools is as varied as our children.

 

Peggy Ployhar

Over the years of homeschooling, we have focused on communication skills from many angles to help our children master various aspects of communication.

 

Social Communication
Since our oldest struggled with understanding social cues, we often used role-playing or acting in our homeschooling lessons so he would grasp more than just the facts about what we were studying. It was often crucial for him to see and experience the cause and effect relationships between one person’s actions and the community those actions affected. These activities were essential in helping my son realize the world involved the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others as well as himself. Immersion learning in the homeschooling environment was something we took advantage of to the fullest when it came to teaching social skills and social outcomes.

 

Pronunciation
Our middle child struggled with pronouncing certain letters with accuracy from a very young age. Integrating speech therapy into our homeschooling schedule was important to help him work on these skills with a trained therapist. Over time he overcame his struggle and even went on to compete in speech and debate during his high school years as well as publish a podcast with a friend.

 

Descriptive Communication
Our youngest was speaking in full sentences and conversing with adults before she turned one year old. For this reason, we didn’t suspect she would experience any communication deficits, but as she worked on writing projects or created presentations she started to discover how much she struggled to use words to elaborate her ideas. As an artist, she has incredible visual-spatial skills and can draw just about anything described to her, but in reverse she has a hard time putting together words to describe what she did to create a drawing or to teach someone else how to draw using her techniques. To stretch her in this area, part of her homeschooling curriculum has involved writing creative short stories, teaching art lessons to her peers, and presenting research reports.

 

Little by little you can stretch your child in your homeschool in the area of communication skills; and as you do, your child will gain greater confidence in navigating relationships, learning environments, and opportunities for greater self-discovery.

 

Tracy Glockle

To join us at our dinner table for a meal, you wouldn’t suspect that any of my kids have problems with communication skills. At our house, it’s hard to get a word in edgewise. However, for one of my children, in particular, language-based disabilities have made communicating rather difficult.

 

Communicating emotions is particularly challenging for this child and often results in more aggressive behaviors. We spend a lot of time working through those emotions and finding the words to help her express how she is feeling healthily. After she has calmed down, we will revisit the situation and role-play how it could have gone differently, coaching her with words to use to express things. It hasn’t been an overnight success, but through the years we’ve seen her grow in her ability to express things.

 

Academically, the communication challenge has shown up in writing. We have not gone the traditional route of teaching writing at all. For most of her schooling, I have not used a curriculum at all. We’ve merely practiced writing together as part of her other subjects, and for many of those years, I scribed what she orally dictated to me. Eventually, she has taken on more of the writing herself. For this child, nonfiction writing is a much more natural realm for her to learn how to put words and thoughts together because it does not involve the added challenge of creating something original. She can research facts and retell true stories, learning all the same elements of writing and gently scaffolding her communication skills.

 

Dawn Spence

Being a teacher and then a homeschool mom I have experience with all kinds of students. Children communicate in many different ways and learning to listen to how they communicate is key.

 

My eldest son was an early talker and still is very verbal. This helps me when homeschooling him. He would rather talk about what he learned than write it down. That is a great skill to have to summarize his thoughts out loud but becomes a struggle when it comes to writing. Though he is a reluctant writer, allowing him to see that his words have meaning and that writing them down gives them more power gives him the nudge he needs. We do a lot of brainstorms and use graphic organizers to help in his writing.Blocks provide you with everything you need to build a larger page. They contain a variety of content elements, such as images, buttons, headings, and more. These elements are arranged in rows and columns, which provide a useful structure, as well as a sense of balance within the overall composition. You can modify this structure using our intuitive drag and drop interface, which allows you to rearrange content to your heart’s content.

 

My twin girls are very different in their communication as well. My girls as twins have always had a special non-verbal communication between them and still do to this day. My oldest twin has a speech delay which has, of course, affected her communication. Her sister always wants to interpret, but we’ve had to discourage this so she could work on her speech. We used sign language, pictures, games, and therapy to help her communicate. As her communication grew she became less frustrated and began to try more. She is 10 and can verbally communicate her needs and her wants. She continues to grow and excel.

 

My youngest twin is very inquisitive and wants to know about the world around her. She communicates best through her writing and her art. She has dyslexia but is an avid reader which helps her communication immensely.

 

The beauty of addressing communication skills in our homeschools is that we can look at our children as individuals. We can help them to learn through their preferred communication and help them to grow in the areas where they struggle.

 

 

 

 

 


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