Glenview's Winkelman School Adds Communication Board To Playground

GLENVIEW, IL — Looking to improve communication between all students and staff, Winkelman Elementary School recently added a communication board in the playground area. According to West Northfield School District 31, the school's Inclusion Success Team installed the board in March.

“District 31 is very proud to have a communication board for our Winkelman students,” Superintendent Dr. Erin Murphy said in a news release. “These boards provide an additional opportunity for students to communicate with their peers and help ‘Empower Every Student’!”

A board utilizes a composition of images specifically selected to support communication by pointing to or touching one or multiple images. Maggie Schneider, member of the District Inclusion Success Team and a District speech and language pathologist, ordered the sign on behalf of the school.

“When I was in graduate school at Northwestern, our Communications Sciences and Disorders cohort organized a similar project for another school. I saw first-hand the value of communication boards for students with complex communication needs,” Schneider said. “The communication board has been very well-received and used by ALL students.”

Pictures shown on the communication board were chosen specifically through Tobii Dynavox, a SE-based developer, manufacturer, and distributor of speech generating devices. The board uses a mixture of core and fringe words related to playing on the playground.

Core words are words that make up roughly 80 percent of what people use in daily situations (more, go, want).

Fringe words are a set of specific words that make up 20 percent of what we use to communicate more precisely (slide, merry-go-round, swing). The fringe vocabulary words are the communication board are based on what is most popular on the playground. There is a column of fringe vocabulary with real pictures of the different Winkelman equipment to make the board feel more personalized for the students, according to the district.

The communication board also features a QR code that links to a video of what the board is and how to use it.