Although we had a great first two weeks in our inclusive Augmentative Learning Study Program (ALPS), we have been able to use those initial weeks to identify areas of our program that need some problem solving. One aspect of our inclusive group that we are going to take awhile to figure out is our timing. How do we both engage all the students while also giving Joey and others who use AAC devices time to find their words?
Wait Time Over Zoom
Wait time is one of the most vital supports we can give a child (or an adult). I’ve written about it numerous times on this blog. While it doesn’t involve any extra supports, gadgets, or tools, it is still recognizably hard to do. We, as teachers and parents, aren’t good at waiting.
We aren’t good at providing enough in-person waiting time. Now that we are doing most of our work on-line, wait time is even more complicated. Not only do we need to wait to provide our students with the same processing time they need to respond in our in-person work, now we also have to account for a computer delay, the time it may take a child to unmute or speak into the computer, or to process the additional virtual and auditory information coming from the computer screen while shutting out the in-person visual/auditory information coming from real life.
