Students who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) interact with many professionals throughout the school day. While each team member plays an important role in supporting communication, teachers are often in the unique position of coordinating instruction, creating communication opportunities, and fostering collaboration among team members with their classroom’s activities.  

Successful AAC implementation depends on a connected team with shared goals and consistent strategies. Here are practical ways teachers can build collaboration and create meaningful communication opportunities throughout the school day. 

Build Communication into your Lesson Plans 🔗

Successful AAC implementation begins before the lesson starts. As you’re planning your lessons, think about how students who use AAC will participate alongside their peers. A little preparation can create more natural opportunities for communication throughout the lesson. 

What To Do🔗

• Identify natural opportunities for communication while lesson planning. 
• Choose core vocabulary that can be modeled naturally throughout the lesson.
• Pinpoint any important fringe vocabulary that will need to be either located or programmed on the AAC device. 
• Build opportunities for students to comment, predict, compare, ask questions, explain, and interact with peers. 
• Look for ways one activity can address academic, social, and communication goals simultaneously. 

AAC works best when communication opportunities are embedded into everyday routines. Even simple opportunities to model language can make a huge difference. 

Make Time to Connect 🔗

Strong collaboration starts with consistent communication. In busy school settings, finding time to meet can feel impossible, so teams often need to think creatively. Teachers often serve as the communication hub for the student’s support team. Creating regular opportunities to exchange information helps ensure AAC strategies remain consistent across classrooms, therapies and home.  

What To Do  🔗

Increase communication through…

• Quick check-ins before/after a session or during a transition in the hallway.  
• Share classroom plans with the paraprofessional and SLP ahead of new units.   
• Create a shared Google Doc where you can share words, vocabulary, or phrases that may need to be identified or programmed so that the student can participate in academic lessons. 
• Establish communication notebooks so that you can easily communicate about the student’s day with the family. 

These small moments of communication add up and help ensure AAC strategies are carried throughout the day and not just during therapy sessions. 

Create a Shared Approach to AAC 🔗

Every member of the educational team brings a unique perspective and area of expertise. Developing a shared understanding of AAC terminology, strategies and expectations helps create consistency throughout the academic day. 

What To Do🔗

Collaborate with the therapy team and school support staff to discuss each of the following for your student:

• How AAC modeling will be used. 
• Which vocabulary should be emphasized.  
• How prompting and supports will be faded. 
• How much wait time will be provided. 
• How multimodal communication will be encouraged. 

In addition, try these simple strategies:

• If staff members are unfamiliar with the student’s communication device or app, identify resources or training opportunities to build confidence and consistency. 
• Together, create a one-page AAC support guide for staff that includes important information like troubleshooting, passcodes, and ideas to model. 

Create a Consistent AAC Plan 🔗

Consistency is key to success when it comes to AAC. To ensure consistency across the entire school day, it is important for teams to be collaborative. Role clarity and identifying a consistent plan will help prevent confusion. AAC requires a unified team to ensure that students receive more predictable and meaningful communication opportunities.   

What To Do  🔗

• Establish shared expectations for when and how AAC will be used throughout the school day. 
• Discuss what vocabulary is being targeted. 
• Decide how new vocabulary will be added and communicated to the team. 
• Clarify who is responsible for programming, troubleshooting, backing up, and maintaining the device. 
• Develop a plan for training substitute teachers and new staff.  
• Review the plan regularly as the student’s needs evolve.

Encourage Peer Interactions 🔗

Students who use AAC often have many opportunities to communicate with adults, but meaningful interactions with peers are just as important. Encouraging classmates to engage with AAC users helps foster authentic friendships, build communication skills and create a more inclusive classroom community.

It also teaches all students that communication can look different for everyone. In some cases, AAC users may even benefit from seeing a peer model language on their communication device. Peer interactions can feel more natural and motivating than adult-led exchanges.  

What To Do  🔗

• Teach classmates to wait for AAC users. 
• Model natural conversations.
• Include AAC users during cooperative learning.
• Normalize different communication methods. 
• Encourage a buddy system within your classroom.
• The communication buddy could help ensure the device is going to different specials and model language if appropriate. 

Share Data Consistently 🔗

Good collaboration relies on shared information. Some goals you might be collecting data on could be student’s activation of a specific word, activating the device in general or identifying if the student is visually attending to the device while someone is modeling.   

If data is being collected, work as a team to identify which areas are most important and align with the student’s IEP goals. If only one team member tracks communication progress, important patterns may be missed. Data can include quick notes, tallies, or observations from different parts of the day. It does not have to be complicated.  

What To Do🔗

Ask these questions when deciding what data to collect:  

• Which activities generated the most communication? 
• Which vocabulary was missing? 
• Were students initiating? 
• Did environmental factors help or hinder communication? 

Compromise When Necessary 🔗

Successful teams understand that not every goal can always be addressed at once. Collaboration requires flexibility, problem-solving, and compromise.

What To Do 🔗

• Instead of focusing on “whose goal” is being addressed, focus on creating meaningful communication opportunities.
• Communicate shifts in priority with the team.

Final Thoughts 🔗

AAC success is never the responsibility of just one person. It takes a connected, collaborative team that values communication across all environments and interactions. Students who use AAC have thoughts, opinions, and ideas worth sharing. We want to always assume the student is capable of learning, participating and contributing when given the appropriate supports.    

Teachers have the opportunity to create classrooms where communication is intentionally embedded into instruction, routines, and social interactions. When teachers, therapists, paraprofessionals, and families work together with shared goals, AAC becomes woven into the student’s everyday experiences as a meaningful way for the student to connect, learn, and be heard.