3 Ways to Build Communication Skills

Identifying items by feature, function, and class is an essential communication skill. Not only does this help build vocabulary in a huge way, but it also increases discrimination and categorization skills, which is really important. I'm Sasha Long. I'm a former special education teacher and board-certified behavior analyst, and today I'm going to share 3 ways to build feature, function, class skills. You can work on feature, function, and class by sorting, by selecting, and by saying. So So we're gonna dive into how to sort, select, and say feature, function, and class. But before we do that, let's rewind a minute. What does feature, function, and class mean? Feature means identifying an item by a distinguishing feature. So a house has a door, a bike has a wheel. We can look at a picture of a bike and say, "Point to the wheel," or we can look at a picture of a bike and a banana and say, "Which one has a wheel?" This is a skill that we use all the time within everyday Language and communication, so something we definitely wanna work on with our kids. Identifying an item by function looks at the verb and the reason why we use something. You could point to a pair of scissors and say, "We use those to cut," and point to a fork and say, "We use that to eat." You could also see a fork and say, "What do you use this for?" And a child would say, "We use that to eat." Again, this is language we use every single day. Class is class or category. We develop things into categories all the time, things we like, things we don't like. Toys versus people, food items versus animals, things that are red versus things that are blue, things that are little versus things that are big. There's all kinds of categories and classes we can put things into. So now that we know what feature, function, and class is, let's look at our 3 ways to build and teach feature, function, class. First, let's look at how we can build feature, function, and class skills by sorting. So I'm going to show some examples on how to sort using feature, function, class with file folders. I really love file folder activities because they are space efficient, they're there's a clear start and end point. You can work on so many different skills, and they don't, you know, take up a lot of space either. So where I'm going to start here is really, really basic. This is if this was something kind of new to the student. These two activities here are really similar. They're sorting buttons by type or school supplies by type, but there is a little bit of a matching component. So even though we're working on categorizing by shape, we're also going to be working on matching because we have that sample there. So you could cover up that sample. You could also just use these pieces and have students create their own groups and categories. That's a great next point to go with this, but this is still going to have a matching component, which is going to be helpful for students that are just getting started here. So they could finish this activity or do this on their own and get started on sorting school supplies by type. So we're working on those categorization skills. Now, if we wanted to get a little more advanced with categorizing, we could look at making groups by color. So we could do this with only few groups, like this one has 3 different colors. We're creating categories. Again, there's a matching component, so it's going to be still a little bit more foundational for our kids that need that. Then we can increase the amount of groups, like this one has 6 different groups that we're going to sort by color. And again, the colors aren't all exactly the same, so we have to have some of that more complex matching. We're going to be putting all of the different ones in the different places. The greens aren't exactly the same. That's okay, that's part of creating groups. They're not always exactly identical. This builds generalization skills. Now if we're going to get a little more advanced, we could learn— work on, let's say, function within file folders as well. And here's one I really like. This is sorting pet animals and zoo animals. This is still working really on class and the two different categories because these are less clear categories. They're both animals, but they're different types of animals. They're animals that are are pets, and then there's animals that live in a zoo. So these more complex categories are great to work on with your students that are ready for this vocabulary and this discrimination. And then my last file folder is the one that works on function, and I love this one. Super simple, but really great way to build this skill. So we're gonna work on things you write with, drive, read, or sit on. So I'm gonna pull out one of the pictures. This is something I read. Something I sit on. Something else I sit on. So I love that we get to see multiple things in the same category to see things that all the different types of things that we read or write or drive all here. Great vocabulary to work on. And again, if your student is not yet verbal, this is still something they can work on because we're building that receptive language. All right, so we looked at how to sort those feature-function-class scales. Now let's look at how to select by feature-function and class. Again, this is another skill that's great for students with verbal or nonverbal skills. We can still be building all that great receptive language even if those verbal skills aren't there yet. Next, we're going to look at how to select using feature-function in class, and we're going to practice these with task cards. Now what I love about task cards is we can use these to work on both receptive or expressive vocabulary. So if I was going to use this with a student, I could say, "Which one do you use to glue?" The student could point to the glue, So we're building receptive language, but they could also work on saying glue if they had those verbal skills. They could say glue. So these really have two really nice uses and there's lots of ways we could do these. You may notice some of these have some special labels on here. These are actually all ABLES and VB-MAPP task cards. The ABLES and the VB-MAPP are both assessments and skill tracking programs to work on communication skills, and feature-functioning class is a huge part of both assessments. So these are both from that set. So let's go ahead and look at how we would start with some pretty basic skills on this. Um, I love these really simple ones. This is a small field size that just has the function: which one do you cook with? Which one do you sit on? Which one do you use to hold things? Which one gives you light? So you can see some of them have bigger field groups, and then some of them have smaller field sizes like this one. I would start with a smaller field size like this. You know, just picking out of 3, and then get to these more advanced ones because you want to be sure that they can really discriminate. And this gets more complicated here because there's multiple— which ones do you eat? It's not a process of elimination. You have to be like, okay, this one, this one, this one, and this one. So you really have to think about each one because there's multiple correct answers in each. Um, same idea here. These are some bigger field sizes also. These have 10. I love using real photos. How cool are these? Which one— who has stripes? Which one flies? Which one is for cooking? Which one cleans? I mean, so much great vocabulary that's coming from this and so many uses for these cards. This could be direct instruction, this could be a game, this could be something we do like as a quick finisher activity, this could be a task card. You could give a dry erase marker for it and they could circle the correct answer. So now as we get a little more advanced, we can start working on associations. This is also a nice way to kind of do that intro to categorizing where we're just putting two things together, paintbrush and paint. So we have tent and sleeping bag, we have sleeping bag and tent. So we're gonna work on the associations in both ways. You could work on one at a time. The text clue is really just for you. It's also so students don't memorize this card. I would— if I were to say to the student, which— what goes with the sink? And like they point to the sink and we'd say, yeah, which one goes with the sink? And they'd say towel. Now if we see this card again, we'd maybe want to then ask the reverse. What does the towel go with? And then they point to sink. So we're able to work on it from both ways. Now, feature-function class can get complicated really quickly, which is really what I love about it. Look at these ones. These are— let's read the complicated answer. Select an item from an array of 10 when asked which one can't. That's the VB-MAPP skill here. Which one can't mix or stir? The pen, right? Tricky. Which one can't cook? The football. Which one can't melt? The house. I mean, you gotta really look at these, right? Which one can't walk? So these are really hard looking at negation, big field size, similar items. I mean, the dice looks pretty similar to the soccer ball, right? You really have to pay attention and discriminate between what is the correct answer. You could even put a functional skill on this by looking at things like community helpers and what their feature-functioning classes are. Who brings people to the hospital? Who drives a bus? Who flies airplanes? So lots of ways to work on this skill. All right, we've selected, we've sorted. Now we're going to work on saying things based on feature, function, and class. This is the one skill that students will need expressive verbal communication. So if your students aren't quite there yet, stick with the selecting and sorting. Those will be great places to start. And once some verbal skills start to emerge, then we'll get to work on the saying feature, function, class. Alright, last we are looking at saying the correct answer. Again, this is the only one of the skills that we've talked about so far that will need that verbal skill, but you can work on selecting and sorting until you're ready for this. So these cards are for the teacher, for the educator, for the clinician. This is to have a massive set of prompts ready to go so you don't have to think about it. These are all pulled from the ABLES, from the intraverbal section. But these are all set, ready to go. So we have all of these kind of prompts ready. So this set right here is answering multiple response questions about the community. I actually really love this one because it works on creating a list of ideas. Tell me as many places as you can that sell food. So working on function, we're working on categorizing. Tell me as many things you get from a music store. So you have to look at functions of items, what's sold there. Tell me what you can see near the street. The food you could buy at the movie theater. So not only we're looking at the category of food, the category of movie theater food, and creating that list. You can get a little bit more simple by looking at something just like what questions about function. What can you use to lay on? What can you use to get food warm? What can you use to write? What do you use to sweep the floor? I mean, these are awesome for a social skills group, for when you're waiting in line, for every day at morning meeting. Here's another version of filling in the item given the class. A type of transportation is. A type of pet is. A type of dessert is. A type of eating utensil is. A type of sea animal. So what I love about having this set ready to go is I don't have to brainstorm all these, you know, complex categories. They're all ready to go right here. This one is where questions that incorporate feature, function, and class. Where do you find the coffee table? Where do you keep the markers? Where do you keep your coat? Where do you find the washing machine? Where do clothes belong? These are all household-based and again, are gonna incorporate feature, function, and class with those wh-where questions. All right, so that was feature, function, and class by selecting, sorting, and saying. I hope you found this video helpful. Please click follow on our YouTube channel for more strategies for your classroom or home.