Monday – PrAACtically December: A Year of Core Words Tuesday – Site of the Month: Patient Provider Communication Wednesday – Video of the Week: Communication Access as a Social Justice Issue
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Doctor appointments, feeding tube placement, ear check, blood pressure, suctioning, IV medication, oxygen through a nasal cannula, trach changes, blood work No matter what the age or type of disability, almost all AAC learners face the challenge of communicating effectively during encounters with healthcare professionals. People with AAC needs are among those who are considered to be communication vulnerable and do best when there are planned supports in place. The Patient-Provider Communication (PPC) website hosts projects and resources to improve interactions between people with communication challenges and their healthcare providers. It is also the online home to a group of professionals across the globe who share information and collaborate to improve communication at physician offices, clinics, emergency rooms, acute care and rehabilitation hospitals, intensive care units, home health services, and hospice facilities. It is funded by the Central Coast Children’s Foundation and directed by AAC pioneer Dr. Sarah Blackstone and... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: healthcare, patient provider communication, Sarah Blackstone
The recent ASHA 2015 Conference in Denver provided even more validation that core vocabulary is now a widely accepted practice in supporting language development in AAC learners. Presentation after presentation discussed the rationale, research support, and strategies for implementation. A few years ago, we suggested that one way to help strengthen learners’ abilities with core words is to take a different set of 12-20 core words each month and focus on them for a few weeks. How? By modeling those words, making resource materials (like word cards with the symbols), creating activities in which those words figure prominently, posting them in the classroom/therapy room, reading books that have heavy use of these words, sharing them with families, write stories using them, etc. Set 1 (2013): ask, favorite, goodbye, hear, of, please,silly, surprise, these, use, way, work Set 2 (2014): already, clear, doctor, fix, great, grow, her, high, jump, outside, ride, room,... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: Year of Core Vocabulary
Monday – Building AAC Intervention Skills: Skillful Use of Time Delay Tuesday – How We Do It: Co-Teaching with PODD by Dana Brown and Sara Olsen Wednesday – Classroom Support for the Beginning Communicator Thursday – Happy Thanksgiving!
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When SLPs and teachers work together for the benefit of students with little or no functional speech, the results can be magical. Today, we travel to Wisconsin to visit with SLP Dana Brown and Special Educator Sara Olsen who work together at the elementary school level. In this post, Dana and Sara tell us about their experiences using PODD in a classroom of students with intellectual disability. You can learn more about their work on YouTube (Watch Your Language) where they post Word of the Week videos and snippets of AAC use in different clasroom activities. Regular readers know that we’ve posted a few articles and videos on PODD. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: We write as a team of special educators, a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) and an Intellectual Disabilities teacher, and one thing that we’ve learned working closely together is that AAC is difficult and ongoing. In this post, we are excited to share... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: classroom, collaboration, Dana Brown, PODD, PODD book, Sara Olsen, schools
The effectiveness of AAC therapy is probably more related to the skill of the individual interventionist than it is to the therapist’s professional discipline. Whether our backgrounds are in SLP, special education, OT, or behaviorism, we all strive to further develop our skills in implementing AAC instruction. In today’s post, we invite you to join us on a journey of therapy skill-building. We start by learning more about two types of time delay, constant time delay and progressive time delay, both of which have are research-supported strategies for learners with ASD and other developmental disabilities. They are important tools for helping AAC learners generalize their communication skills across settings and minimize the possibility of prompt dependency. The team at Autism Focused Intervention Resources and Modules (AFIRM), a project of the National Professional Development Center on ASD at the Frank Graham Porter Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: AFIRM, Frank Graham Porter Child Development Institute, intervention, intervention skills, National Professional Development Center on ASD, time delay
Monday – Tracking Natural Speech Changes in AAC: PrAACtical Suggestions Tuesday – Presentation Handouts on AAC Implementation Wednesday – Video of the Week: Family Collaboration by Dr. Barry Prizant Thursday – PrAACtically Reading with Karen Natoci: I Eat Thanksgiving Dinner
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Here in the US, many are getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday. If you’re looking for a way to add a prAACtical dimension to your preparations, this post is for you. Thank you, Karen Natoci, for another fabulous PrAACtically Reading contribution! :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Book: I Eat Thanksgiving Dinner by Karen Natoci; Published on Tarheel Reader here. Core Vocabulary focus: LIKE, DON’T LIKE, Uh Oh!, I, MORE, IT, COMMUNICATION Matrix Level: I-VII Literacy Framework: Emergent This month, we decided to practice eating Thanksgiving Dinner by “eating” our way through this book! This has been uploaded to Tarheelreader and the powerpoint version is available there. This is shared around a table set for a feast! To prepare for this story, we were able to purchase a frozen thanksgiving dinner available at the grocery store. We heated it up and separated it into serving dishes, individualized according to the diet of each of our readers. Some... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: download, Karen Natoci, literacy, PrAACtically Reading, Thanksgiving
It’s hard to get to every conference where high-quality information on AAC implementation is being shared. Here are some handouts on AAC implementation from presentations you may have missed. Models of Parent-implemented AAC Intervention for Children with Severe Autism (Wendt, et al 2014) AAC in the Pediatric ICU/Acute Care: Preparing a Child for an Upcoming Hospital Admission (Santiago, 2013) Teaching Preschoolers with Unintelligible Speech to Produce Rule-Based Sentences: AAC Solutions (Binger, 2014) Supporting Beginning Storytellers Who Use AAC (McLellan, 2014) Strategies for SLPs Working with Students with AAC Needs in Schools (Phillips, 2014)
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Tagged With: handout
Let’s face it: No matter how much some of us love the AAC field, nothing makes us happier than hearing the natural speech of our prAACtical friends. Initially, it’s a good idea to capture the oral output of our AAC learners so that what we have a baseline of their productions. That can serve as a point of comparison later on when we want to look at how the student is changing over time. Didn’t do a baseline measure at the start of treatment or the school year? It’s nothing to stress about, but put this on your radar and consider gathering the information now so that you have it to work with later on. Here are some thoughts on moving forward. What to Track Track the sounds your student can produce: Complete a phonetic inventory by keeping a list of all the consonants and vowels the AAC learner has produced.... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: data collection, natural speech, Padlet, phonetic inventory