Descriptive Teaching

When students are using a communication system such as exchange cards, communication boards, or devices, I must plan in advance the vocabulary, supports, and questions for my instruction and assessments so that the student can respond with the vocabulary they have available in their system. With descriptive teaching, educators deliberately present questions, content, and assignments in such a way as to make connections to the vocabulary available in a student's communication system. For instance, if I'm doing a lesson on photosynthesis, I'll use the academic vocabulary like light energy, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. But I also need to further describe those terms using words my student has available on their communication system. Most communication systems contain a combination of core and fringe words. Core words are those used most often in everyday communication, typically verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions. Fringe words are used less frequently and are mainly nouns that are specific to a certain situation. For my student who has very limited core and fringe vocabulary on their communication device, I will use words I know are on the device to describe each concept as I teach. I'll describe light as day, energy might be food, and water might be drink. Carbon dioxide and oxygen are very formal scientific terms, so they may best be added to a lesson specific topic board the student can use in combination with their usual communication system. However, I might instead describe carbon dioxide as in and oxygen as out in terms of photosynthesis because those are words my student uses often. I need to make sure when we are engaged in activities and assessments on the content that I frame questions or discussion prompts so that the student can use the vocabulary on their communication system to respond. This might look like what kind of energy does the plant convert into chemical energy? Day. Right. Light energy from daylight from the sun is converted into chemical energy during photosynthesis. What is released as a byproduct of water splitting during photosynthesis? Out. Yes. Oxygen comes out of the plant during photosynthesis. Tell me what you know about what the plant gets from photosynthesis. Food. We know that the plant gets energy by storing glucose used as food. Descriptive teaching helps me make sure every student can participate in conversations and engage in the curriculum throughout the school day.