Teachers play a key role in communicating with parents to support student learning. One of the more challenging aspects of this role for teachers is having a difficult conversation with a parent about their child. Difficult conversations, when needed, are best accomplished face-to-face incorporating effective communication skills to promote a…

Deaf-sighted, deaf-blind, and hearing-sighted people have been interacting within a small community in the Bay Islands of Honduras for over a century (Ali 2023; Ali and Braithwaite 2020). In this article, we sketch the history of the community and the ways in which signers make use of their own and their interlocutor's bodies to co-construct…

We draw on an article published in 1973 in this journal. We described how we taught "Geoff," a 6-year old boy with autism, an elementary form of sign language during the course of 24 one-hour sessions held over a 12-week period (Webster et al. in "J Autism Child Schizophr" 3:337-346, 1973; Fruchter in "Autism: new…

Students with learning disabilities are often educated in inclusive classrooms alongside their typically developing peers. Although differentiated small-group instruction is ideal for students with learning disabilities, whole-group instruction continues to be the predominant instructional model in inclusive classrooms. This can create major…

In this unit activity, students understand that social presence-one's ability to project a personality through computer-mediated communication-is critical for creating an effective online learning environment (Christen, Kelly, Fall, & Snyder, in press; Jorgensen, 2002; Kehrwald, 2010; O'Sullivan, Hunt, & Lippert, 2004). Without…

His name is Brett Schmidt, and he is a college student with Autism. His greatest challenge of having autism is communication. When he first applied to Briarcliffe College, he was given an e-mail address to the Campus Portal. He had to train himself to look at the portal frequently for communication and information. On the start of the semester, he…

Many American schools today have richly diverse classrooms composed of immigrants with a limited vocabulary or little command of the English language. Now more than ever, music educators must explore new, creative, and effective ways to communicate with this ever-changing student population. Although most teachers rely primarily on verbal…

This article discusses the use of nonverbal communication strategies for fostering social health in middle school students. It outlines a teaching technique designed to help students better understand nonverbal cues and their role in maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships. The technique begins with the card game "Slap What?" where the…

Children learn both verbal and nonverbal communication strategies by imitating parents, teachers, and other significant people in their lives. However, most American parents converse with their children for only about 38 minutes per week. In contrast, teachers might communicate with children for up to seven hours each weekday. Each day, teachers…

One may be in a situation where he/she feels frustrated and confused by certain behaviors that make his/her life difficult. Fortunately, in their international bestseller, "Dealing with People You Can't Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst," Dr. Rick Brinksman and Dr. Rick Kirschner provide a strategy for dealing with ten of…

In this paper, we consider gestures as part of the resources activated in the mathematics classroom: speech, inscriptions, artifacts, etc. As such, gestures are seen as one of the semiotic tools used by students and teacher in mathematics teaching-learning. To analyze them, we introduce a suitable model, the "semiotic bundle." It allows focusing…

The goal of this article is to present a sketch of what, following the German social theorist Arnold Gehlen, may be termed "sensuous cognition." The starting point of this alternative approach to classical mental-oriented views of cognition is a multimodal "material" conception of thinking. The very texture of thinking, it is suggested, cannot be…

For long-term learning and positive connections to take place in the classroom, we need to assume that our students want to learn both content and appropriate behavior in school. Teachers must explicitly teach behavior, pausing in their lessons to address misbehavior in the classroom. Five strategies can help: using volume, tone, and posture to…

"Socially ADDept" helps educators and parents teach the hidden rules of social behavior to children with limited social skills, notably those with special needs like ADHD, learning disabilities, Asperger's and high-functioning autism, Tourette Syndrome, and nonverbal learning disabilities. The author provides all the information parents and…

Communication is the exchange of a message between two or more people. Every one communicates in many different ways and for many different reasons. Communication can be expressive or receptive. Children who are deaf-blind may never learn to talk. However, they can express themselves to you. They can receive the messages you send them. Through…