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Gateway User Profiles
Christian - Age 7
Gateway 60
 Christian, who will soon be celebrating his 7th birthday, is included in a regular first grade class in his home town in central New Jersey. He has a diagnosis of Schizencephaly, but he doesn't let his motor and speech impairments get in his way of being a regular kid. Christian is a charmer, has a cunning sense of humor, loves challenges, and strives to achieve anything and everything he sets out to achieve. As a therapist, I view his advanced communication skills as a significant achievement. As a fun-loving kid, Christian sees his participation in rock climbing and karate as his personal achievements.
Christian began using an aided communication system when he was 3 years of age. He began communicating his needs and wants with a manual board containing 60 1/2” pictures arranged in a Fitzgerald Key format. Typical messages consisted of 4--5 symbol sentences. He used a TechSpeak to enhance his participation in his preschool program. Formal receptive language testing revealed that both vocabulary comprehension and understanding of language were roughly two years above age level.
As Christian made gains using his manual board, more vocabulary was consistently added. By age 4 1/2 he had over 200 picture symbols on his board and was creating messages that contained pronouns and the -ing form of the verb. He also began to develop some speech, which is intelligible in context and with familiar listeners.
Christian's fine motor limitations prevented him from using direct selection as his mode of access for an AAC device. While continuing to address his expressive language performance, therapy included improving his accuracy using a joystick to access a computer and a DynaVox. Shortly after turning 5 he received a DV4, which he accessed with joystick. While he initially was placed at Gateway 40, he quickly moved on to Gateway 60.
Therapy goals now included teaching past tense of the verb and increasing his length of utterance. He also participated in numerous activities directed towards to teaching him the contents and location of the Gateway vocabulary. Christian was determined to use his finger to point rather than the joystick. This too became a therapy goal, one that he achieved!
In the summer of 2005, in preparation for his need to write journals in his first grade class, Christian began using Access- IT. He enjoys using his DV4 to write. He knows that he can write long stories and compete with his peers in school by using his Gateway vocabulary.
At 7, Christian has age appropriate expressive language skills. He uses a combination of speech and his DV4 for spoken and written communication.
Updated: 11/05
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