Communication process of children with deafblindness

1. Communication process of children with deafblindness Fernanda Cristina Falkoski Master in Education – UFRGS Member of Grupo Brasil

2. General purpose Understand how the communication process of people with congenital deafblindness occurs from production and use of alternative communication resources.

3. Specific Purposes • Identify the strategies and the resources used by people with congenital deafblindness to communicate. • Suggest and analyze the relevance of the use of strategies and alternative communication resources in the communicative process.

4. 1. First steps: determination to know • My interest in researching on deafblindness was due to the familiarity I have with the subject through studies, researches, and the social interaction with people who have deafblindness, and the lack of research in this area. • Research Platforms: ANPEd, Bank of Theses and Essays of CAPES and SciELO. • Data researches about the registration of students with deafblindness found at schools of Rio Grande do Sul: INEP Website, and contacts with SEDUC, FADERGS, and county managers.

5. Registration data - deafblindness

6. Registration data – multiple disabilities

7. Registration data – multiple disabilites

8. 2 Referentials of a perfect body: a place for the person with deafblindness. • Contributions to the inclusive education • Bodies Medicalization • Space within society to the person with deafblindness: creating possibilities • Deafblindness: search for (un)known

9. 3. Speech and communication • Speech and language • Alternative communication • Deafblindness and communication • Communication and learning

10. 4 Methodology: stages of the research • Organizing the toolbox: theoretical search • Tools in action: data collection • The participants selection • Map • Interview • Visits • Observations and interventions • Books with communication concreto objects

11. 5 Process of communication of two students with deafblindness • Data analysis resuming and connecting with worked concepts. • Rafael and Bruna – different moments related to the process of communication development. • Some strategies were equally used to both children, but with different structure and objectives.

12. Analysis of Rafael’s communication process • Rafael is 11 years old. He was born premature: 5 months of pregnancy. He doesn’t have visual or hearing residue. • Calendar • organized the routine, enabling the advance of the actions to be carried out or the people who he would have contact • contributed to the speech development • Reference Objects: • a backpack to go to school or home • a towel to dry hands • chain to the swing

13. (start description) Horizontal colorful picture of a blue sideboard fixed on a white wall enlight by the daylight that comes from the left window tilting. It’s an horizontal sideboard, with six equal partitions and it’s empty. (end description)

14. Three communicative forms observed: • Pre-linguistic • Tangible symbols • Linguistic • Rafael was between pre-linguistic and tangible symbols: • Pre-linguistic – tangible symbols: clues of information (natural and contextual; movement; objects and gestures)

15. (start description) Horizontal colorful picture of a woman embracing a child. Their faces are blurred. They are standing next to a bench, arms resting on the table top and hands holding the same blue plastic bottle. Behind the woman, a window with white shutters closed highlights the apparent brick wall. At the bottom, an industrial aluminum pan and a bottle of Coca-Cola. (end description)

16. Intervenor: family (in special, the grandmother) and teachers have strategies to communicate with Rafael. • Some actions and reactions (expressive and receptive communication) were perceived with sense and meaning. • Facial and physical gestures and expressions indicating: thirsty, hungry, or personal cleanliness (change of diapers). • Indicative of no.

17. Analysis of Bruna’s communication process • Bruna is 8 years old. She was born deaf and low vison. • Calendar: • organized the routine, enabling the advance of people who she had contact. • Pictures of the teachers.

18. (start description) Colorful and horizontal photo of an open tactile book. Left page: At the top in uppercase black letters reads: “Suddenly Pedro saw a girl in the water, he approached the boat and threw a float to pull her”. Just below, in Braille, the same sentence takes up three times the space on the sheet. Right page there are objects in felt: a white float with three red bands, a doll with brown wool hair and open arms, next to an orange hair doll, wearing a red dress, with white polka dots. Above, outside the book, a green boat with an anchor in the bow, a white stern float. The dolls and the boat are attached in the book by strings. (end description)

19. Three communicative forms observed: • Pre-linguistic • Tangible symbols • Linguistic • Bruna was between pre-linguistic and linguistic. • Pre-linguistic – primitive form to express • Tangible symbols – calendar • Linguistic – better organized signs.

20. Intervenor: family (in special, the mother) and the teacher have strategies to communicate with the girl. • Some actions and reactions (expressive and receptive communication) were perceived with sense and meaning. • Use of sign language, gestures, facial and corporal expressions. • Writing • Drawings

21. (start description) Colorful and horizontal photo of a green board, with white chalk drawing of an airplane in flight, with its beak to the left. Behind the tail, a trace represented by three parallel traces. There are also two traces under the airplane, below the turbine, and six traces in the wing. (end description)

22. (start description) Photo of a child work of collages with craft foam on a cardboard. Five airplanes in flight between clouds and a white moon, in random positions in the colors: black, silver, gold, light green and lead. In the upper left corner, there is an airplane drawn with red pen written MEL, and next to this airplane, an arrow points to the lower right corner written: ARoo, also written with red pen. (end description)

23. 6 Final Considerations • The communication often needs to be discovered and developed by the intervenor: children offer communicational clues and possibilities to be recognized and nominated. • There are different resources that are available to be used by and with the children. • Families have forms of communication and information about the children that are important to their communication process.

24. The use of alternative elements of communication (such as symbols, resources, technics and strategies), contributes to the development of Rafael’s and Bruna’s communication process. • The use of alternative communication through referential objects and pictures on the calendar system organizes the routine and provides advance of the activities and children’s actions.

25. Thank you!!! Fernanda Cristina Falkoski Master in Education – UFRGS E-mail: fernandacfalkoski@gmail.com Page on facebook: Conversando sobre língua, linguagem, surdocegueira e deficiências