Building a Strong Core

Providing teaching staff with firsthand insight into the challenges students face can help them deliver more effective support. This is why Holly Campanelli, a speech teacher at Brookhaven Learning Center, launched the Core Word Challenge.

Many developmental students with speech and language impairments use communication devices such as tablets, core boards, picture exchange systems, gestures, and sign language.

Core words (mostly verbs, prepositions, pronouns and adjectives) are versatile, high-frequency words used to express basic wants and needs. They make up 80 to 90 percent of everyday communication and allow nonverbal or limited verbal students to construct multi-word phrases. For example, ‘want’ can be used regarding food, toys or actions.

The Core Word Challenge is structured in a similar fashion to the March Madness tournament where classroom winners progress through a series of bracket-style rounds to eventually compete for the schoolwide title. That winner faces off in May against the champs from the other ESBOCES developmental schools during the annual showdown held at Sequoya High School.

Students emcee the activities and cheer for their favorite staff members. Creating an event of this scale allows many staff members to participate and to do so over an extended period of time. Participants are asked a series of questions that they answer using a tablet equipped with core word communication software. The purpose is to familiarize them with how to model this type of communication for students, which in turn teaches students how to broaden their own ability to communicate.

Explained Campanelli, “This is similar to learning a type of language, and the best way to learn any language is to be exposed to it.”