The Guide to AAC Communicator Goals

Do you struggle with selecting and writing measurable goals for your AAC communicators? This is something that I have wrestled with for years. Things that I have referred to in the past to help write goals for AAC communicators consisted of language development norms, the Tobii DynaVox Dynamic AAC Goals Grid – 2 (DAGG-2), and personal experience with my clients. Although valuable resources, I was not fully content with those options. Developmental norms did not seem functional for all AAC communicators, especially those with lower cognition or other challenges like social constraints, attention, behavior, and other executive function deficits. The focus for communication for clients with these challenges needed to be directed more towards participation in functional environments in regards to information transfer and meeting basic social etiquette. Furthermore, although the Dynamic AAC Goals Grid provides a valuable guide for goals in four areas of communicative competence, some AAC communicators would get “stuck” within a level and it was difficult to determine where to go to continue to progress the client towards independence. Furthermore, the independence level, as described in current AAC communicator classification systems, often seem unattainable for many AAC communicators. Skills in the independent category require high level language and social skills, which many AAC communicators who have cognitive or social limitations cannot attain.

As I searched for answers and struggled with finding guidance for goals that would provide a continuum for AAC communicators of various diagnoses, cognition, social motivation, and executive function skills, I concluded that there are two types of AAC communicators –functional and generative. Functional communicators use communication skills to meet their wants and needs and for basic social purposes. Individuals in this category have a limited vocabulary, have been taught specific communication skills and are typically bound by routines and/prompts. Generative communicators, are AAC communicators who generate and use language for all four purposes of communication: wants/needs, social closeness, information transfer and social etiquette (Light, 1988). Individuals in this category typically have a large vocabulary, generate novel utterances, and have been taught rules in form, content, and use of language. Once an emerging communicator develops symbolic language, it is important to consider their profile of cognition, social motivation, and executive functions to determine if they fall within the category of functional or generative to help determine an appropriate continuum of goals that maximize strengths and strive for communication independence.

Need guidance for selecting goals? Check out The Guide to Goals for AAC Communicators in B&B Boutique’s Teachers Pay Teachers store. We have worked hard on developing functional goals in a continuum that will promote communication independence and allow tracking of progress. The Guide to Goals for AAC Communicators provides goals in all 4 areas of communicative competence. The linguistic and social competency areas are listed in a hierarchy of skills, but the skills are specific to Functional and Generative communicators. Additionally, goals in operational and strategic categories are provided in a checklist format for practitioners to consider and choose skills that are relevant to the level and needs of their clients. We encourage you to check it out and hope you find it a useful guideline to selecting meaningful goals for your clients who use AAC.

Provides more specific and customized goals for individual AAC communicators, as more factors are considered when placing a child is a specific communication category. The continuum of goals is unique to each communication category and level of functioning within each category, rather than a “one size fits all” approach for AAC communicators.