A key aim at St John’s is the development of communication and interaction skills to assist understanding and self-expression for all pupils.   Communication skills enable pupils to develop social skills, build self-esteem, make choices, build relationships, make sense of and influence their environment and ultimately, prepare them for adult life.

By focusing on their communication, we assist all pupils to develop autonomy and self-advocacy so that they can access the community as fully and positively as possible.  Pupils also need to be able to communicate in order to access the curriculum, to learn about the world they live in and to develop literacy skills.

In order to do this we provide an engaging and communicatively rich environment in which pupils have a means to communicate appropriate to their sensory, motor and processing abilities, the reasons to communicate; and the opportunities and situations in which to do so.

Augmentative and  Alternative Communication (AAC) refers to the huge range of techniques that support or replace spoken communication. These include gestures, signing, use of pictures (symbols or photographs), objects, body language, facial expression, gestures, music and sound cues, intensive interaction, touch. Staff at St John’s attend regular training in the use of AAC and the importance of modelling AAC at all times.

At St John’s we use Sign Supported English (SSE) to support our spoken language. The signs are taken from British Sign Language and used in the order that they are spoken. To support pupils to attend to the important words, staff focus on signing just the key words when talking.