October may be International Augmentative and Alternative Communication Month, but Columbia’s Eagleview and Parkview Elementary schools are embracing different communication styles year-round. 

With the start of the new school year, Eagleview students saw a new addition to their playground that enhances this goal: a large, weather-resistant Saltillo communication board. 

As Kristen Miesner, Eagleview and Parkview’s speech-language pathologist, explained, the playground’s board contains 60 pictures that represent a corresponding word. Students can point to the pictures to communicate with others without necessarily having to say a word. 

“Our hope is that (with) this board on the playground, they can use it to help facilitate appropriate play with peers,” Miesner said.

Just a few weeks into school, Miesner and Jeanne Goacher, the district’s special education director, are frequently seeing students use the board. 

“I think the big thing with the communication board outside is just that all students have social interaction with peers, and we’ve seen that,” Miesner said. “Some of our kids might be sitting on the ground and then another peer group goes up to them and points to the board, and (so) they have this little nonverbal picture conversation back and forth and it’s been really awesome to see.” 

Students quickly adapted to the outdoor board, the two said, in part because similar boards are used in classrooms. Teachers often use smaller versions of the board while teaching, sometimes even cutting out individual images for other uses. Some students have high-teach boards that actually can speak for them as well. 

“We are using a lot of these boards throughout our classrooms, and so taking it outside to the playground was just kind of the next step to really keep our students communicating,” Miesner said. 

She explained the boards not only help students who are nonverbal, but the student body at large. Because Eagleview serves the district’s youngest students, there are many students who find the picture board handy as they are learning to read. 

Miesner observed many students get excited when they see their “sight words,” or those teachers try to get them to recognize easily, on the outdoor board. 

“They’ll go up to it and be identifying their sight words,” Miesner said. “So, it’s great for our non-verbal students, but we’re really seeing it used for other students as well. It’s been a very good program and project for our students as a whole.” 

Miesner actually had started the process of getting the big playground board in April, but she and Goacher decided to introduce it at the start of the new school year. 

“I went around to classes when they were out at recess and showed them how to use it in August … and they did a really good job with (using it),” Miesner said. 

She exlplained modeling as a process where the teacher touches the picture and you says the corresponding word to a student. 

“All of our teachers have done a really good job of modeling on the communication board in the classroom and on the playground,” she said.  

To cover the cost of the board, Miesner applied for a PTA grant. This ended up funding the majority of the project, the rest of which was filled by the special education department. 

“Kristin came to me with this idea and asked, ‘How can we fund it?’” Goacher explained. 

The special ed department was able to help with the remaining cost using donations it had received from the Kiwanis Club. 

“So, all of it was really through donation,” Goacher said. 

Miesner hopes to eventually bring a similar board to Parkview’s playground. For more information about Saltillo’s low-tech communication boards, click here.