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Hi Valerie,
Similar to Wendy, I have worked with children who are nonverbal where picture boards and Velcro are effective learning materials to use. I am not aware of the students’ writing ability or expressive skills, but you could allow them to demonstrate their knowledge of class material in nonverbal ways, such as by allowing them to draw or engage in some other creative form of expression. For example, if you are teaching them about characteristics of fall, you could have them go through magazines to collect fall related photos and create a collage with these images. This allows them to demonstrate their understanding of what things can be found in the fall in a nonverbal way.
In addition, when teaching students who are nonverbal, you could also assess their understanding of the material by having them use different colored flashcards to represent different ideas. For example, if you teach the students about sink or float, you could have them hold up a green flashcard if the item floats or an orange flashcard if the item sinks. Again, this allows you to gauge their understanding in a nonverbal way.
Finally, presenting your material in a variety of ways is effective for all students regardless of their language ability. For example, if you are teaching your students about farm animals, have the students listen to the sounds they make, show pictures of different farm animals and maybe a stuffed animal that they can pass around, and/ read stories with vivid images of these animals to give the students both visual and auditory information.
Hope this helps,
Melissa
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