PECS phases

Also called Six phases of PECS, PECS Phase 1, PECS Phase 4, PECS Phase 6

The six phases of PECS, from one picture handed over to a sentence strip and a comment, and what a person should be doing at each.

What it is

PECS is taught in six phases, in order, and the phase a person is in is a fact that the school or therapist should be able to tell you at once. Each phase has a clear goal and a written way of teaching it, and the method's own manual is precise about what counts as having reached it.

Knowing the phases lets a family ask the right question. A child who has been "doing PECS" for three years may be at Phase 6, building sentences and commenting, or may be at Phase 1, handing over a picture of a crisp, and those are different situations that both get called PECS.

The phases are sometimes numbered with Roman numerals and Phase 3 is split into 3A and 3B. What follows is the structure, not the manual, which is Pyramid's.

Who it can help

Anyone supporting a person who uses PECS, so that home, school and respite are working on the same phase in the same way; a person who is at Phase 4 at school and Phase 1 at home has, in effect, no system. Parents at an annual review, who can ask which phase, since when, and what is next. And therapists deciding whether PECS is still the right vehicle for this person, since the later phases are where the method's limits show and where a fuller vocabulary is usually the next step.

It is not a ladder every person must climb to the top. Some people reach Phase 3 and move on to a different system with more words in it, and that is a success, not a failure.

How it works

Phase 1, the physical exchange: with two adults, the person learns to pick up one picture, reach to the partner and release it into their hand, and gets the thing immediately. Phase 2, distance and persistence: the picture is on a book across the room, the partner is across the other side, and the person learns to go and get it and to keep trying when the partner is turned away. Phase 3, picture discrimination: first a wanted picture against an unwanted one (3A), then choosing between several wanted things (3B), with a check that the picture handed over matches the thing reached for.

Phase 4, sentence structure: the person puts an I want picture and the item picture on a sentence strip and hands over the strip, and the partner reads it back; describing words are added here, so blue car and big biscuit become possible. Phase 5, responsive requesting: the person learns to answer the question "What do you want?", which until now was never asked. Phase 6, commenting: I see, I hear, I have, with the partner asking "What do you see?" and then fading the question, so that the person begins to comment without being asked.

Each phase has an error correction procedure and a rule for when to move on. Throughout, the pictures are whatever the setting uses; the vocabulary of most PECS books is nouns, which is the reason the critique in the PECS entry exists.

Getting started

Ask which phase the person is in and how the school knows. Ask to see the book. Count the pictures and notice how many are things and how many are words like more, help, stop and finished.

At home, run the same phase the same way; ask for the phase's teaching sheet and follow it. If the person is at Phase 4 or beyond, put describing words and feelings in the book, because the sentence strip can carry them and most books never get them.

If the person is at Phase 6, or stuck for a long time at 3, ask about a core vocabulary board or the free Talk board beside the book, so that the sentence strip becomes a spoken sentence and the vocabulary can grow past what fits on velcro.

Where to get help

Pyramid Educational Consultants publishes the phases, the training and the materials. Your speech and language therapist can say whether the person should stay on PECS or move on, and Communication Matters is the independent voice. The National Autistic Society explains PECS alongside other approaches for families.