DISCLAIMER: Raw, unedited transcript from webinar. No guarantees are made for the accuracy of the content.

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>>  Please stand by for realtime captions. 
>> I will mention the question from Sherri, the PowerPoint will be posted on our website in a few days after we go through the accessibility check  to make sure everything is accessible for those who want to download it.
>> That is part of our plan. 
>> Yes. All of our webinars that we do are on our website and I will put the URL in the chat pod a little later of where you can find those if you would like to look back. They have our presentations as well as the captioning file along with a recording link. If you find a webinar you would like to see that happened in the past, including the one that Susan did in the past, you can find those on the website there. I will post that after we get started. Everyone needs to use the telephone and I need to get that note back to Tonya. Then we will get started. Okay, we are at the top of the hour and this is Robbin Bull and I will get us started and we will continue to follow up with chat in the chat pod. You have heard Susan talking but we will do an official start here. I want to begin by welcoming everyone. As you have experienced, the phones are on mute to alleviate back ground noise. Sometimes we get feedback on the phone, so we have everyone's phone on mute. I want to mention that the question and answer session will happen at the end of the presentation. However, you can post questions in the chat pod at any time during the webinar. It will be monitored to route the webinar in anticipation of the question and answer session. We want to remind you that the webinar will be recorded so be mindful of what you post in the chat pod because everyone who watches it in the future will be able to see the chat pod. I am going to start the recording now. And Kristi I believe you were going to do an introduction for Susan. Kristi is with NCDB and she will do a quick introduction. 
>>  Thank you, Robbin.  Good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are thrilled to introduce Susan Bashinski who is going to do our presentation for us. It is the first of two webinars and she will talk today  about "Laying the Foundation for Communication Exchange: Part 1 - How to Start"  and thank you so much for joining us and I will hand it over to you. Thank you. 
>> Thank you Kristi and I appreciate it. I see several names I recognize from different conversations  and our paths have crossed in the past. I didn't see former students and that scares me but an exciting thing. Those of you who know me know I love nothing more than to talk about communication development and talk particularly about very early communication development which we will call nonsymbolic. As we move through the day today, if you have come to participate in the webinar hoping to get ideas for how to build and expand augmentative communication programs and extend communication skills of kids who are fast while I communication, I'm sorry but you are going to be disappointed because that's not what we are focusing on in today's seminar and the follow-up which will be in three weeks. It really is the very basics of how you get this whole communication train started and where the foundation needs to be laid on which to build and move a learner, whether it is a child or young adult, to move them to more communal -- more conventional communication. I hope I don't offend anyone but through the course of the webinar I say kids a lot because it's more efficient than saying children. I don't mean it this -- I don't mean it disrespectfully but it is a timesaver. One thing that is very important to me is we remind ourselves what the objectives are. We will start with 18 or 19 communication reminders and I hope I don't offend anyone with them. They are things I think 99% of you know, but I feel they are critically important to bring to the forefront of our minds as we talk about how we get communication started with those learners about whom a lot of people would say they don't communicate. I am here to tell you that you don't leave this hour with anything more than oh yes they do. They do communicate and you will make me a happy person and the more you can extend on that the better off we are. We will spend a fair amount of time contrasting the differences between nonsymbolic and symbolic communication and non-intentional and intentional communication. We are sort of going to talk about how you do this within the context of routines, more from the standpoint of the kids have to feel safe and have to trust you as well as feel secure in order to begin to initiate any kind of communicative effort. When we get into the details of building routines and strategies, that is the only topic which we will focus in the next one. If you are looking for specific strategies, I would say sign off and come back in three weeks or else stay tuned and come back in three weeks because that is the focus for the next round. I believe in my soul there is absolutely no learner who does not communicate. Every one of them does. And sometimes it's very difficult to find out how. And for us as partners of those learners to try to organize and orchestrate a system for making whatever the learner does and whatever skill she is to turn it into a formal system. I don't know if you have read the book shown on the bottom of this slide called ghost boy by a gentleman named Martin and if you have not read that book I encourage you to read it. It's a quick read and novel and a biography. This is a quote. He does not have deaf-blindness. I will own that to you. He does not have deaf-blindness but has lived the life over 10 years when nobody thought he was conscious and nobody thought he heard and understood communication going on around him. And he lived 10 years without any system of communication. And he said not having a voice, to say I've had enough food or the bath water was too hot or too tell someone I loved them was the thing that made me feel most in human. Words and speech give us free will. Without a voice I couldn't even control the simplest things. Now granted some of our kids may not ever have vocal speech, but it's the notion of communication that makes us human. I think it's really important and this is my mantra. Rebecca in class we used to say this. Not being able to speak is not the same thing as not having anything to say. Please remember that. I ask you to please believe it. I can't make you believe it but I can ask you to please try to remember it. It's what I try to live by. 
>> There is a committee and I realize the slide is ugly and I apologize for that. It was so pretty when I copied it off the website. It was blue and purple and colorful. I have the website for you from which it came on the next slide. There is a group called the and JC -- called the NJC , and I strongly encourage you to check them out. The national joint committee for the communication needs of persons with severe disabilities. 1 million words so we say instead NJC and they have written for 25 years but most recently updated in 2013  -- I'm sorry, 2016, the communication Bill of Rights. There are 15 rights included in this Bill of Rights. They are the things that I am imagining most of you believe in your souls. That every person has the right to be aware of what is going on around him, to be told what is going to happen to him, to not be swept off his feet or have his chair moved or be touched or have anything happened to him or her without a warning. That person has the right to make choices. That person has the right as Martin said to have a voice even if it's not a verbal voice. I think one we struggle with a lot is number 3. The right to refuse or reject. What is the first word that comes out of the mouth of most typically developing kids? No. We have to teach our learners a more conventional way to say no without having to resort to incredibly challenging behavior. I think number 10 is critically important. They are all important but I will point out those 2. Number 10 said the right to have your communication acts acknowledged and have someone respond to what you are trying to say even if it's kicking your foot or pinching someone or striking another peer in the class. If your desired outcome can't be granted, you have the right to have someone say I see you, I hear you, and I know, Johnny you want this thing but you can't have it right now. It's that acknowledgment of the humanness. If you are interested in this, it's a great handout to set -- to chair with general education partners and families. This is the website for NJC and you can download a one page handout of the communication Bill of Rights.  I used to hang it up in my classroom and I think it's important and encourage you to take a look at that. With that as the foundation, these are the famous or infamous Susan Bashinski communication reminders. I was doing a workshop for a deaf-blind project out east and they said I should call them the communication commandments.  Something about that didn't sit right with me. I appreciated their support but we will call them the communication reminders. I don't want to insult anyone with these but want you to hold these in the front of your mind as we talk today please.
>> Everyone communicates. Have I said that enough times? Everyone communicates. It's up to us as partners of these children and young adults with deaf-blindness to expect them to communicate with us. To expect that whatever they do behaviorally, overtly, somehow or another is communication. It is somehow communication, and we have to figure out how to shape it and increase it and make it more conventional. It's very important to be in the moment. If you are helping a learner be fad or get dressed or changing their diaper, please don't be talking over your shoulder to another adult or a parent in the classroom about did you see that Olympics run on Sunday or what are you going to do this weekend? You need to be in the moment because the kind of signals that learners will give us when we are just trying to lay a foundation for beginning a communication program, they are quick and subtle and if you look away for two seconds you might miss them. You have to be plugged into the learner and be in the moment. Do I sound like a preacher yet? I'm sorry. Behavior is communication. So what we will do is talk a little bit today and more in the next webinar about how in the world we organize some way that everybody on the team of the learner can interpret those behaviors in the same communicative way. Behavior is how communication begins. For learners with deaf-blindness in particular, communication is both a skill and it is a sensorimotor experience for these kids. When you have kids who are more challenged visually or auditorily, we have to remember that we are piling on communication and vision and hearing and kids get tired of this. They get fatigue and don't have the stamina. We have to remember these things about how much energy it takes some of them to try to even communicate in ways that we would say that is not socially appropriate and not acceptable behavior. I'm sorry but I say no. We are starting and anything is acceptable. Where that learner is and what that learner is doing is at an acceptable place to begin. Not stay, but to begin. 
>> When you first get a learner beginning to share memories with you, there is some cognitive recall or cognitive connection being made, it will most likely incorporate a movement aspect of that experience and the tactile aspect of that experience. It will shift as an individuals learning and hearing skills change. You most likely need to be attuned to movement and tactile aspects because those are the memories that our kids are going to rely on and fall back on 1st.
>> The labels we use for children around them may be very confusing to them. I worked with a teenager and the name was Tabatha. Some people called her tabby and some Kultur Tabatha and some called her Beth. Some Kultur baby. They called her all these different names that she was at this level of communication early. Nonsymbolic and non-intentional and I was trying to tell the team that the kid doesn't even know those are all versions of her one name. Call her by one name. There is one label we can start anchoring other things onto. That was a bad sentence but hopefully you got the point. For a learner who experiences deaf-blindness, the way they receive information might be entirely different from the way she is able to express information. Lance is one of my favorite kids in the world and I have permission from his parents to talk about him , he receives a lot of information through signs, visual and manual signs. He sends information through a speech generating device or gestures. In his 19 years of life he has signed three or four times. Getting information and giving information might be entirely different. I think it's important to remember that. If there is anyone who is a CT or an OT and I ask all you teachers and parents and technical assistance providers, don't forget motor. Proper positioning and support in a chair or on a gurney or at a desk or whatever it is is critical. We want kids to be able to focus and learn basic communication, they don't half to be worrying about where their body is and holding their trunk stable and the feet are flying around. We have to support them physically so they can learn communication and academics or anything else for that matter. We want to maximize the sensory access of the learner and every one of you have said that at least 300 times but we will remind ourselves. Whatever vision or audition skills the learner has, we want to take it and run with it. We want to use it. It's very important. 
>> Teach multiple modes of communication. We don't want to teach each learner to say everything he or she might potentially say in more than one way. I don't need to be able to tell you several different ways that I want a Diet Coke. I can tell you one way I want a Diet Coke. If it's only through a speech generating device, you probably need to give me another way because a go talk won't work in a Mac or a bathtub. Batteries go dead. So for things that are most essential in the life of that learner and those of you who know me know that is Diet Coke, I need a way other than speech generating device to say that. So that essential core vocabulary, how to say no, get away from me, you need more than one way to say that.
>> This is simple but so important. We want to do with the students we teach and not do for them. We need to engage with them and not do them for them. I think this is hard. We have chosen to do the work we do and that makes us helpers. It kills us to see the kids struggle. But through their struggles, that is the way they learn. We support and we do with them and not for them. Weight!  How many times have you heard Patience is a virtue? It is. Especially when you tried to build a foundation for communication. You do something and then you wait  and you watch. Some of our kids have delayed response times of 15 to 20 seconds and Lance who I talked about before, his average response time is 22 seconds after he is asked to do something. When you are just waiting, 22 seconds is like an eternity.  You are nodding your heads and I need that feedback. Okay. Here we go. Body language is a two-way street. 
>> We read kids body language and I urge you through everything I am saying. Watch them. Read what their body is telling you. Feel through their muscles if their tone is like this, they are telling you something like I am scared or hurt or I don't know what that is. If the tone is relaxed that it means I'm good and chill and it's okay. I didn't do that on purpose. 
>> Susan, this is Robbin. There seems to be a delay coming from your video and the PowerPoint.  I think when I moved the PowerPoint it stays on track. So if I could move your slides I think that would be best.
>> I apologize. 
>> It's technology. Maybe that will make it smoother for people.
>> Okay. I am on body language is a two-way street. I guess I would just call on you to remember that kids read our body language too. When we get impatient or tense or stressed out and maybe it's not about them but stress from home or had a flat tire on the way to school, but they read our body language. I think it's important to remember that. Next slide please. 
>> I think it's important that we model the modes of communication kids use and the forms of communication we are trying to teach. If kids are using gesture to try to get someone to give them something or go somewhere, we need to use that gesture. If kids are taking someone's hand to take them over to the cabinet because they want a goldfish cracker, then when we want them we need to model taking their hand and model if we start to use a switch or whatever it is. The communication modes of the learner, they have to see us using those same modes. Next slide please. 
>> Communication is the foundation for literacy. I think that's why it's so critical we take these two weeks now and in the second webinar to talk about laying a foundation for communication because the way I view literacy is communication written down. There is a lot of research and you don't need me spouting research, but communication does build the foundation for later literacy learning. Next slide please. 
>> Another very important thing is that I think it's important we remember today affects tomorrow and what a learner does today affects tomorrow, but it certainly doesn't predict tomorrow. So just because a child or young adult is in giving you much and I will never say they are giving you anything in terms of things that might be communication, that doesn't mean they won't tomorrow. We have to guard against saying because she is here right now and is 16 years old, she will blah blah blah. We don't know that. 
>> It's never too late to begin. It's easier sometimes whether right or wrong, it's easy for teams to get excited when you work with two-year-olds or four-year-olds or six-year-olds and when you work with a 19 or 20-year-old and still don't have an organized system of communication. I am here to suggest that I don't care. It's never too late to start. Kids are never too old to start. And nothing is free. 
>> This is my favorite. This is orange because it's my favorite. By this when I say nothing is free, I am just saying please try not to anticipate if the child wants more juice or if the child is an oral eater, don't give them half a glass of juice. If them a little bit of juice and then if they want more, required that the learner do something like shove the cup that you are knocked the cup off the table or take your hand, whatever to get more juice. If they want their shoe off, try to help shape that you have to touch your shoe or grab my hand or indicate some how you want your shoe off or on. Don't just anticipate and do. Nothing is free. Everything comes at a communicative cost and that is how we build that. 
>> So that's the foundation and here we go. We will talk about the basic principles that I believe go into how we lay this foundation.
>> I do believe that when we talk about nonsymbolic communication development, learners demonstrate skills at multiple points along this continuum. If you have a continuum of totally nonsymbolic all the way over here and fully symbolic like you and I are, you operate at multiple points along that continuum all the time. If I am at home with my family in a country where everyone speaks English in the same regional dialect as I do, I am way down here on the symbolic end. You put me in a country where they don't speak English and they don't understand English, I slide way back down toward nonsymbolic and start gesturing and pointing at the picture on my map of where I want to go. I try to pantomime things and move towards more nonsymbolic forms to the point that someone stole my map and I lost my purse and passport and don't know where I am in the city and it's getting dark and I will sit on the curb and cry because I don't know what else to do. That is nonconventional and nonsymbolic behavior. You may be laughing at that or think it's not appropriate because it's extreme, but I'm just trying to say we all slide up and down that continuum. And learners do demonstrate very different skills with partners they know then with partners they don't know. The communication partner is critical to laying the foundation. The communication partner has a major role in laying this foundation. Learners do different things with familiar and unfamiliar partners. Learners do different things in familiar and and unfamiliar environments. 
>> It would be lovely if all these levels on this continuum of communication development were differentiated by distinct boundaries and we could say you are in this stage or that stage. But that is not true. This hopefully was exemplified by my silly story about myself and it shifts from one level to another level or one stage of development to another stage of development does not happen overnight. We generally talk about the communication levels of learners by where the point on those continuum for the majority of communication skills fall. 
>> We will look at two major aspects today. We will look at the development of symbolization ability which is very critical and then we will look at the development of intentionality. Those are the two continuum.
>> Symbolization. Definition of assemble is one thing that stands for another thing. Or one thing that represents another thing. Maybe something visual. In our world most things are visual but in the world of people who don't have vision, mostly symbols are tactile. Some of our symbols are auditory. It said my connection got lost. Are we back? 
>> I can still hear you. We lost your WebCam.
>> Now I try to click it back on. And my back? 
>> You are back. Yes. Thank you. 
>> Everything just went blank and I freaked out. One thing stands for another thing. The referent is the object or action that is represented and the representation itself is the symbol. Symbols are very abstract and challenging cognitively. They require kids to have developed an understanding of distancing. If you remember the Warner and Kaplan articles when we talk about symbols, one thing stands for another thing. The written word, a braille word, a manual sign, spoken words are all symbols. 
>> And lots of different people talk about different numbers of levels of symbolization development. If you are familiar with the communication matrix and I guess many if not all of you are, charity talks about seven levels of symbolization development. The Maclean's wrote on communication and came up with six levels. Different people talk about different levels. I go with the keep it simple method. I talk about three because they tell us what we need to know. Today we will talk about three primary levels of symbolization development. Nonsymbolic, concrete symbolic or what we call transitional, and fully abstract symbolic communication. 
>> You see these terms. Prelinguistic, nonlinguistic, pre-symbolic, and nonsymbolic and they all mean the same thing. In the literature and when you hear people talk about learners at this level of communication, they will choose others like one of the first 3. I always go with nonsymbolic. I prefer that. It doesn't mean it's right. To me if you say pre-symbolic or prelinguistic, it seems to imply that eventually that child or learner will move to symbolic or linguistic. It precedes but not necessarily. In typical development, yes. Pre-symbolic precedes symbolic development. But with wonders with deaf-blindness, many of them will not ever move beyond the nonsymbolic stage. That is why I use that term. 
>> Susan, are you on the phone? 
>> I am on the phone and I think I'm on camera too. 
>> Your camera cut out. If you could pause your image now. I think your video feed is having some struggles. That might preserve your image. 
>> Okay, I paused it. Can you see me or should I keep going? 
>> Keep going. It's the content you are sharing that is most important. That would be great. 
>> We didn't have these problems yesterday. 
>> That is what technology does. 
>> We love it until we don't. Nonsymbolic level of communication development is very idiosyncratic. It's unique to that learner. I'd beat on the top of the TV that means I want to change the channel. Nobody would know that unless you are a familiar partner. It's very unique to each learner. I said this before but I will say this a lot, the responsibility for successful communication with the nonsymbolic learner rests with the partner. The communication partner makes it successful or there is no communication exchange. The context of the interaction is critical. Examples of nonsymbolic forms could be sitting on the curb crying, the way that kids posture their bodies, they act on people or grab your leg or pinch your arm or throw an object or grab it from somebody. They do unusual things with their body or make unconventional sounds.
>> What do you do? How do you even start? Watch. Just watch. Especially during unstructured time. Watch what the kid does. Follow the learners lead and they will make notes that it seems like when he is on the ground and someone walks past he kicks his right foot. Or whenever someone approaches her to try to get her to engage in a work task, she pinches her eyes closed and strikes out with her arm. Just make notes about those things and you will look for patterns. You as a team will figure out a way to embellish those communicative signals. They are not symbols but potential signals. We will give you a structure for that in the next webinar. Oftentimes with learners with deaf-blindness, they have to directly be taught these nonsymbolic skills. Kids are typically developing and learn by being alive and incidentally but kids with deaf-blindness don't. 
>> The transitional stage are when signals kids give start to look more conventional. They start to look more like what other people do. A two . and -- they start to point. Kids walk around and say that, that, that while they are pointing to things because they want you to name them. Maybe they will start to raise their hand to say pick me up when you start to lift them up out of a chair. They will start to raise their hands and those gestures become more conventional. Maybe vocalization starts to approximate word sounds. A partner is still very important in the transitional stage, but just not as important as initially. The magnitude of the role of the partner diminishes. The magnitude of the context diminishes. Things become much more concrete and more predictable. To unfamiliar partners in this stage, kids use more gestures and objects. Some learners will be able to respond to photographs in this stage if their vision allows it but some will not. But object representation like you always wear this big band watch and that's her personal identifier. Or if you always touch the child on the back of the neck in a certain way when you interact with him. Those touch cues and object cue's start to have meaning in transitional stages of development and we will talk about those in the next webinar. 
>> Symbolic I will read fast because we are talking about this but we need to tie a bow on this continuum. This is one the communication of a learner is very conventional. It's consistent with culture and the primary language. The partner isn't as important because at this stage when the learners are symbolic they can communicate with anybody in that culture who uses that language. It can be free context that we can talk about what our kitchen looks like now. We might not want to, but we can talk about things removed in space like our kitchen or what we did on our birthday last year. We are free of time and space and symbolic forms are speech, braille, prints, manual sign language, and written words. 
>> Here is the first cable. This is slide number 37, Kathy and for anyone else. It's a table where I tried to summarize all the most essential elements of nonsymbolic transitional and symbolic levels of communication. I put some ages in here. I was scared to do that because those are our approximations. I think if you read down the nonsymbolic column it should reinforce what I said. Nonsymbolic communication is idiosyncratic. The context is critical for you to understand what the learner might be communicating. The learner may give you very little overt behavior and it's up to you and the other partners to figure out what it means.
>> There we go. That was a superquick run through how communication through communicative symbolization occurs in now we will do an activity with how communication intentionality emerges. It's a little more complicated. Let's take a look. 
>> We start with the definition and communicative intentionality is a two part definition and that's why it's a little more tricky. Communicative intentionality involves first the deliberate pursuit of a goal. It's funny and you can't see me but I'm still signing. It's the deliberate pursuit of a goal. A number two, it also involves an understanding of a means by which to obtain that goal. It has two parts. You were doing something on purpose, but with an intended purpose to affect another person or get another thing. So those two criteria must both be met to be at the fully developed level of full complete intentionality. The way that makes the most sense to dissected this is to say we can talk about intentional behavior. The behavior of the learner even those with deaf-blindness that may be atypical, even their behavior becomes intentional before it becomes intentionally communicative. I will say that again. This is the crux of the whole thing with intentionality. I am urging you to try to separate intentional behavior versus Intentional Communication. The parenthetical part of the Intentional Communication is really important. You have to be going into that interaction with the idea of having an impact on another person. Not just stuff. To be intentionally communicative you have to have the intention, the purpose, in the goal of impacting another living person.
>> Different people will talk about seven stages or eight stages are four stages but I look at three of four depending how you count this. There are three main ones with some sobs and I will read them for those who cannot see this. The main stages I talk about and you will say it's so simple it's stupid but it's the way my brain works, we talk about behavior that is not intentional. Then we will talk about transitional which in the transitional stage, the behavior of a learner is intentional but not intentionally communicative. So we met the first part of the criteria. A kid is doing something on purpose. The kid is sitting on the floor in a classroom and banging his head against a concrete wall. He's banging his head against the wall because when he does he has little vision and when he does he sees stars or lights or likes the way it feels inside his head or get some kind of sensory input from banging his head on the wall. He's doing it on purpose. That is intentional behavior. But if it just stops with I will do this thing because it feels good to me, that is where the intentionality stops. That is intentionality at the transitional level. If we move into the final stage, stage three, intentional or fully intentional behavior then we have met both parts of the criteria. The behavior of that learner is intentional, and it is intentionally communicative. Let me use the same example. If this young man who was sitting on the floor of your classroom is banging his head on the wall not because he gets something cool out of it, the sensory input is like a turn on, but because I know if I sit here and bang my head on this wall someone will come and talk to me and I am bored and want someone to talk to me. We can only imagine those learners at that level don't have that in their language, but if we were to project what he is probably doing, he knows if he bangs his head he will get attention because we stop him all the time. Then you have crossed the line into intentionally communicative behavior. I hope that makes sense. He is doing it not just on purpose, but he is doing it on purpose to get a person to do something. With or four or to him. Within the intentionality stage we get where things are concrete but still symbolic or fully abstract symbolic. But I don't think that's as important as the other differentiation. 
>> Once again you can talk about pre-intentional or non-intentional and I use none intentional. It doesn't make it right but it is what I do. You will be things that say pre-intentional and it lines up with what I say none intentional but only because of the inference I prefer this term. 
>> Let's examine each of these. In the non-intentional stage of communication, the learner is not aware of either deliberately pursuing a goal nor aware of a means to obtain the goal. The learner is engaging in random behaviors. That learner is just being moved along and getting through the day doing things that just happen to feel good at the moment or it's very random. The communication partner is going to watch for those patterns that we talked about. When I talked about symbolization, if we take the example I said when the kid is on the floor and you feel like you notice that when someone walks by within her field of vision, the learner kicks her foot. So you as the partner are going to interpret and you are laying this meaning on the behavior of the kid. You don't just pull something random out of the sky and I think it means they want to go to taco John's for lunch. You say what could that mean? Maybe she is uncomfortable or wants someone to talk to her. Maybe she is in there a long time and needs to be moved. You try to use the context. With kids who are nonsymbolic and not intentional, context is critical. You as a partner are going to lay a meaning on that. For this example you lay the meaning that she kicks her foot and I think she means she wants attention. You will go and give her attention. And every time she kicks her foot you will give her attention. You will take data on it. If she kicks her foot less and less then you know that's wrong. Use your data. If she kicks her foot more and more, then you go maybe we are onto something here. This is the one way she tells us Susan, come talk to me!  If the data goes down and she kicks her foot less, maybe it means I am hurting here. I am sore so move me. Then you will lay the definition of when she kicks her foot, we will change her position. And you take the data again. You lay the meeting on the behavior you have observed. If the kid isn't doing it for a particular reason or to make you do something, you will project with your best professional judgment what that might mean and treat that behavior as if it were intentional. 
>> This is what it looks like. Expressively and receptively, please remember the modes that we use to provide information to a learner and get information from a learner especially with deaf-blindness might be different for expressive and receptive. So in the intentionality part, I tried to give me examples of expressively what the stage looks like and receptively what that stage of development understand. So expressively at a none intentional stage is very idiosyncratic. Kids may be under the control of a lot of behavior state so alert and totally context driven. This is the stage at which a learner develops an understanding of the power of communication. We are going to try to give the kids power, but the partner must interpret that child or young adults behavior. At this point and level of symbolization a none intentional development, the learner does not understand your spoken words. Don't get verbal diarrhea and say Johnny you are tired and have been lying on the floor for 30 minutes and I bet you want to be picked up and I bet your bottom is sore and we need to move you. No, stop!  Those are too many words and too much stuff. At this level of development, learners typically understand two rings. They understand the tone of your voice and they understand physical context. I am also not advocating just shut up and don't say anything. I don't believe in that. I don't think we should ever act on a child or young adults body without telling them what's going on. But use minimal words or telegraphic words or keywords. You hurt? Let's move you. Or something like that. In a warm and approachable tone and touch appropriately. 
>> Transitional intentionality, in this stage the learner is deliberately engaging in the behavior. Remembering the headbanging because it's cool, but not with a mental plan for getting any kind of a goal. At this stage, the partner may use the context to derive meaning of the learner's behavior. Sometimes the form might still be idiosyncratic. You have to still interpret. You may not get a clear indication. I was in the home of the learner that I talked about earlier when the kid beat on the TV to say change the channel. I still had to have help to understand that unconventional form. I knew the context that it was probably something about the TV so I can use that. 
>> Expressively at this transitional or partial stage of intentionality development, the behavior is intentional. It is partial intentionality but when it starts to wake up and purposeful communication begins to emerge in the context contributes but less so than in the nonsymbolic stage. Receptively, at this middle stage, it is analogous to transitional symbolic and they don't go hand-in-hand always but are related. Kids will begin to understand and comprehend some spoken words and simple directives in context.
>> Intentional, we won't spend a lot of time because this is not laying the foundation. Kids have a foundation of communication exchange, but we will tie a bow on it and this is the stage of full intentionality. The learner is deliberately pursuing a goal with a mental plan where he understands the means for getting the goal accomplished. He is banging his head because he wants someone to come talk to him. Or he is deliberately is engaging in exchange with another purposeful that another person for a purpose. A learner uses his behaviors for the purpose of a effecting another person. Not just affecting objects but a factoring another person. 
>> -- But affecting another person.
>> Examples of expressive, this is the first true symbolic expression. Use of first true spoken words or first true manual signs or first true tactile signs and communication can become independent of the context. Comprehension of words either through hearing or signs or manual signs and tactical signs, at this level the vocabulary will exceed the production which is similar to typical development. 
>> Here is a summary table. This is slide number 48 and I was correct on that, Kathy. I have tried to summarize for none intentional, transitional intentionality which is behavior is intentional but not intentionally communicative. And then full intentionality where the behavior is intentionally communicative. If you read down these three columns, hopefully we have talked about each of those elements in the table prior to this time. Robbin, if you could at this point let's skip  to slide 55 and that way we have five minutes for questions.
>> The essential takeaways would be the three and I can make 10 slides of essential takeaways but I need to not do that. Meet each learner where she is. It doesn't matter. It's not where it is appropriate. Where she is is what is appropriate for her. You begin to build a system of communication from that point. It's critical that you respond consistently and when I say you I mean the team. Consistently respond to the behavior of each learner in a predictable way. That's why you look for these patterns and come to consensus of what we will do. I will give you more formal strategies next time. The predictability is what make kids feel safe and secure and trusting enough to join us in the world. The point is to plan programming to help the learner grow in the direction of conventional and intentional symbolic communication.
>> So if we can go to the last one. Here is my phone number and email and I will shut up. We have five minutes for questions. Here I am. Do you want me to turn my camera back on, Robbin, or should I keep it off  like 
>> I think it's fine to keep it paused. It was delaying and then doing a speed up thing to catch up. You moved a lot before and you should see your recording. [ Laughter ] 
>> I'm sorry! 
>>  That's okay. That's how things happen sometimes. Let's see if anyone puts anything in the chat pod for questions. That was very good, Susan, and I appreciate it. We have good content for the second webinar.
>> Is that a teaser for the second one? 
>> It is. [ Laughter ] I'm thinking it's March 28 but let me check on that. 
>> The 21st. 
>> March 21 is the next one. We will have notices out for that to remind people.
>> It really will be strategy focused. It really well. It's just too much to lay this information and do strategies at the same time. Thank you, Jane. I appreciate it.
>> Julie asks in the next session will you show forms for data collection or do you just know take and add comments? 
>> I can come up with some forms, sure. I don't know there will be a lot about that. I have it partially planned but not completely, so let me make some notes here. Thank you, Julie, for that.
>> And Lynette mentioned interested in learning more about strategies to use when a non-intentional learner has extreme self abuse.
>> I will make one comment about that right now, Lynette. Whereas with my examples like with the headbanging, if it were headbanging where the learner is being destructive and injuring himself, then I won't say you will build on that is a meaningful signal. You never want to build on a self injury behavior as a signal because we have to keep the kids safe. So we will build on behaviors that look random and we wonder if maybe they are reflexive but we are not sure. We will never build on self-injurious behavior. We have to block those and protect the kids. Hopefully some of what I talk about with the strategies will address that more. Your point about self injury is critical to be made today. I think you for calling me on that. 
>> And Debra mentions what are your thoughts around total versus primary mode of communication? If you have a short answer that's great but if not we can cover that in the next webinar or determine a different way to get that response to people. 
>> Do you mean total like simultaneous speech and sign? If you could help me out with that. Patti McGowan, you are welcome. And Andrea and Lisa, people from my class. 
>> It looks like Debra is typing to clarify. 
>> Mostly I believe each of us all the time uses multiple modes of communication. I talk about when I teach a face to face class, one time I student said can you teach with your hands in your pockets? I found out the answer to that question is no. I can't. I can't even find words when my hands are in my pockets because I sign and waved my hands and pick up stuff. We pick up things and we . -- and we .2 things that we as facile communicators primarily use our voices and speech. We still support with gestures and signs and unaided communication, and we support with objects when you are old like I am and you can't think of it's name. You pick it up and say what is this called? I do that with technology. What do I do with this? So all of us are multimodal. Why should we try to build a communication system for a learner with deaf-blindness that doesn't involve all of the modes? It's crazy to me. I think we have to involve all the modes. But there will be a primary mode for most kids.
>> That's great. Well we are at the top of the hour. Debra, if Susan did not fully answer your question, you have her email and phone number. If you want to follow up and ask further questions regarding that, you can do that. It looks like Debra will follow up with you later. I will wrap up this webinar now so people can head on out and we can release the captioner. I thank you so much, Susan. It was excellent. We look forward to everyone joining us for the second part.
>> I just want to say lots of people are writing really nice things in the chat pod and I appreciate it. Hopefully if nothing else you can tell this is something I think is important and care a lot about. I want you to care too. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. 
>> All right, Susan, thanks again. 
>> Thanks again. 
>> [ Event Concluded ]