Intensive Interaction
Intensive Interaction is a wonderful and important means of communicating with all of our pupils. Intensive Interaction values all of the pupils communications that they undertake, enabling pupils to extend and share their voice and interactions. It can take place during planned sessions or during everyday interactions. Intensive Interaction provides the opportunities for practitioners to support and extend a pupil’s curiosity and engagement. It is a person-centred approach which enables a shared understanding of a pupil’s unique communication and,, where possible building and extending on this. Intensive interaction at school is a huge part of the learning. Through building trust, and supporting advocacy, a pupil can show and express their communication. The team around a pupil will work on being a better communication partner, enabling increased confidence and competence as a communicator.
How to support intensive interaction
Intensive Interaction provides the opportunity to let the pupils lead, responding to their lessons and surroundings. This may be through commenting on their actions, joining in with them and playfully imitating them. By responding, instead of leading, we don’t make demands on the pupil that they cannot cope with. Instead, we communicate that they are valued, enjoying being together, taking time to enable exploration, curiosity and excitement, making things happen and valuing their lead.