One of the most important things we can teach our students is how to self-advocate. Despite that, with so many other goals to target, self-advocacy isn’t always on the forefront of our minds. I’ve found that one of the easiest and most powerful ways to get our students self-advocating is by incorporating it into our routine and learning space!
Here are my top 3 self-advocacy tips as well as a special freebie you can display in your classroom and send home!
1. Define Self-Advocacy with this Free Download
The first step is helping your students understand what self-advocacy is. Simply put, self-advocacy is the process of letting others know what you need. Although this definition appears simple, there’s a lot involved. That’s why I created a free printable for you, which you can grab at the end of this blog post! This visual highlights some of the key components involved in being able to self-advocate.
2. Provide Specific Examples – 3 R Trick!
Sometimes a simple road map with examples can do the trick. The more your students practice self-advocating the more comfortable and capable they’ll become!
One of my favorite tricks for helping student is with the 3 Rs, which I detail in my handout below!
- Repeat – “Can you please repeat that?”
- Rephrase – “I’m feeling unsure about what that means. Can you please rephrase what you said or explain it another way for me?”
- Rate – “This is a little on the fast side for me. Would you mind slow it down a bit?”
3. Incorporate Self-Advocacy Into Your Routine
One of my favorite ways to teach self-advocacy is to practice and positively reinforce it in real-time! This is incredibly easy to do with these example posters and some tap lights!
Whenever you catch students self-advocating, simply ask them to tap the light that matches the poster! Sometimes I’ll purposely set up a scenario that necessitates self-advocating (e.g. speaking ridiculously fast). It’s as simple as that!
You can find all of these tools in my Self-Advocacy Toolkit!
I hope these tips help make it easy to support your students as they learn to advocate for themselves!
Don’t forget to grab your FREE Self-Advocacy Printable in the Freebie Library by subscribing to my newsletter below!
(If you’re already a member of my newsletter community, access this freebie with your password HERE!)
