AAC Therapy: When the Lesson Plan Fails

August 4, 2015 by - 2 Comments

AAC Therapy: When the Lesson Plan Fails

We’ve all been there. You have meaningful goals, engaging materials, and a solid lesson plan for our therapy session. Five minutes into the session, it’s clear that the AAC learner has little or no interest in what we’ve prepared. Now what? Our choices are limited: persevere with the plan, modify it somewhat, or scrap it entirely. What’s a clinician to do? Take A Breath The first thing to do is breathe. Know that you are not the first one to struggle to engage this learner, and you won’t be the last. Think of it not as an excuse for an unproductive session but as a problem-solving challenge. Previous clinicians may have justified the session’s difficulties and atttibuted them to the learner’s lack of engagement, limited attention span, or behavioral problems. Personally, I feel sad for those clinicians because when we take that approach, not only do we fail the client,... [Read More...]

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PrAACtical Resources for Writing Notes to Send Home

July 30, 2015 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtical Resources for Writing Notes to Send Home

When children arrive home from school, they are often asked some version of ‘the’ question: “What did you do in school today?” A few years ago we wrote about strategies families can use to help facilitate that conversation and were so pleased to hear from school staff who took this to heart and helped their students practice these conversational skills. As busy as life in the classroom can be, many teachers and SLPs make the time to communicate with families about the students’ day at school and we love seeing their work. There are many ways to give daily/weekly updates, of course, but many use the tried-and-true strategy of sending a note home. There are lots of examples on the wonderful sharing site for Boardmaker Online. Here are some of them. 1. Katie Crayons   2. Orange County PS1 3. TASN Autism and Tertiary Behavior Supports 4. Megan Little   5. Evet Bresseas   6. Kristen Schmidt (English... [Read More...]

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PrAACtically August: Resources for A Year of Core Words

July 28, 2015 by - 2 Comments

It’s just about back-to-school time where we live, and many students who are learning to use AAC will be working to become more competent with their augmentative communication systems. Teachers, therapists, and aides can help them in that journey by teaching core vocabulary so that they have a body of words that can be used across activities, environments, and communication partners. There are lots of ‘right’ ways to support these students. Among them is an instructional approach in which a new set of core words is introduced every few weeks in order to build their experiences with AAC. Our Year of Core Words materials has two versions, one from 2013 (12 words/month) and one from 2014  (16 words/month; Different than the previous year’s core words). If you’ve been following along, or are just getting started, these resources may be of interest. 2013 Words: any, bring, day, fall, give, hot, job,... [Read More...]

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PrAACtical Resources: Comparing AAC Apps

July 27, 2015 by - 3 Comments

PrAACtical Resources: Comparing AAC Apps

Seasoned AAC professionals are well aware of need to select AAC apps based on the goodness-of-fit between the app itself and the needs and abilities of the communicator. An app that works very well for one person may be completely inadequate for another. As SLPs, one of the main things we look at carefully is how language is represented and structured within the app. A few years back, Robin Parker and I developed an informal tool to help us be more systematic in our analysis of different AAC apps. The Rubric for Evaluating the Language of Apps for AAC (RELAAACS, pronounced “relax”) allows us to think about the various communication functions and make some judgments about how well a particular app performs in each area. It can be used and distributed freely with attribution. One caveat in using this or other app rubrics: Be sure to note the version of... [Read More...]

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The Baby, The Bathwater, and Core Vocabulary

July 20, 2015 by - 17 Comments

The Baby, The Bathwater, and Core Vocabulary

When we first started writing to advocate for core vocabulary, it was as a counterpoint to the noun-heavy, activity-specific AAC supports that were widely used among beginning communicators. Many times, those communication aids were great for getting communication started with our beginning communicators, but limited their ability for generative language development. Adding core vocabulary provided a lot of linguistic power, and for many learners, that’s a great thing. These days, most clinicians serving people with AAC needs are well aware of the need to populate their AAC systems with a sizable array of high-frequency core words. SLPs have, by and large, gotten the message that core vocabulary plays an important role for AAC learners. In some cases, though, the pendulum has swung a bit too far. An AAC a system built exclusively of single words with only core vocabulary is not likely to meet the needs of most AAC learners.... [Read More...]

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