If an AAC Referral is determined appropriate, complete the following steps:

  • Consult with your SpEd Director on the AAC referral/evaluation process for your district.
  • Within PowerSchool, complete LBL ESD Services Request: Cascade Regional Inclusive Services form. Under Reason for Referral, give as much detail as possible. For example, when sending in a referral, please provide existing information about the following:
    • Hearing, Vision, Fine Motor, Gross Motor
    • Medical status (diagnosis, allergies, seizures activity, etc.)
    • Language Ability (Receptive, Expressive, Pragmatics)
    • Literacy and Writing Skills
    • Behavior information
    • Existing File Review information
  • Under Service Request, check Augmentative Communication and either Evaluation or Consultation.
  • Check the appropriate box under Reason for Service Request at the bottom.
  • Complete the Assessment List and obtain parental Written Consent for Evaluation (upload the actual signed form to PowerSchool).

Assessment List – The team may want to consider getting permission for the following assessments. If you have questions about which assessments to list, contact the district’s AAC Specialist.

Found under Evaluation Procedures on the Assessment List

  1. Observation
  2. File Review
  3. Teacher/Parent Interview

The Case Manager will need to write the assessments name and explanation under Communication: Other

  1. Trial of low-tech and/or high-tech tools
  2. Functions Questionnaires: determines the various ways the student may use or express language and whether it is functional
  3. Communication Matrix: non-standardized assessment of a student’s use of communication functions, graphed against their developmental stage(s) of communication
  4. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Tools Assessment: student points to picture symbols within a grid that vary in number and size to determine extent/limitations of their capacity to access information on one page
  5. AAC Genie: tests a student’s ability to select the requested symbol on a grid with increasing numbers of items
  6. AAC Profile: criterion-referenced list of subjective, functional skills that are needed for developing communicative competence using AAC systems. Examines four main areas of learning: Operational Learning (ability to use and operate the AAC system itself), Linguistic Learning (the understanding and expression of the “native language” spoken by the community), Social Learning (interest in others, desire to communicate), Strategic Learning (making the best of communication knowledge and what can be communicated through the AAC system)
  7. Test of Aided-Communication Symbol Performance (TASP): Assessment tool with subtests to look at a range of skills related to use of single-meaning symbols with aided augmentative and alternative (AAC) systems. Examines four specific aspects of symbolic communication performance: Symbol size and field number (determines the maximum number of symbols a student would be able to select from), Grammatical encoding (ability to recognize symbols representing categories such as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and locatives), Categorization (ability to assign symbols representing basic common objects to the appropriate category), and Syntactic performance (ability to sequence pictures to form telegraphic messages and simple sentences).