January 18, 2018
by Carole Zangari -
For several years, those who specialize in supporting AAC learners have stressed the need to develop AAC systems and programming that go beyond the communicative function of requesting in order to target the ability to protest, reject, comment, etc. This has been an important trend that will empower users of AAC to express themselves in much fuller ways. What other things should we be targeting in order to help our clients and students become more linguistically competent? Here are some ideas for goal areas to consider. Temporal Markers: While no one can overstate the importance of talking about our current needs, interests, observations, and preferences, we have to be careful not to get stuck in the moment. It is also important for our AAC learners to develop the language skills to be able to talk about things that already happened or that will/might be happening. Why? Among other things, this... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: goal setting, goals, language development, language goals, language intervention
August 7, 2013
by Robin Parker -
We love music, we love apps, we love great language opportunities and with these apps we can combine all these loves. These awesome music apps were selected because they have great choice making and commenting opportunities. You can use no tech, low tech, or an extra high-tech device to make choices and comment while you play with the app. Core words work great for choice making and commenting. Whenever I play or sing, my kids love to say “stop that” or “don’t do that pleeeeease”. When they play, I love to use aided language input (ALI) to say “good”, “more”, “again”, “love it” . We play the music “fast” and “slow”. We “find” our “favorite one”. We all like to say “let’s play with that one” or “let’s do it together”. The possibilities are really endless (and that is one of the reasons we love core words). These apps sound... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: aided language input, Apps, language goals, music
June 4, 2013
by Carole Zangari -
One of the things SLPs frequently do at the start of their therapy sessions is have some casual conversations with their clients to catch up on what happened since their last visit. Whether it is an elementary school student with ASD, a teenager with cerebral palsy, or an older adult with aphasia, we engage in polite conversation to find out what they’ve been up to and perhaps share a bit about our own experiences. Here are some thoughts on making those ‘catch-up conversations’ work from a prAACtical perspective. 1. Possible goal areas: initiate conversation; maintain dialogue on an established topic; redirect conversation to a new topic; respond to non-obligatory communication opportunities; use temporal terms in multi-word utterances; convey a personal narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end; use regular past tense verbs; ask partner-focused questions 2. Core language targets: it, we, they, do/did, have/had, was/were, not It was (not);... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: core vocabulary, fringe vocabulary, language goals, pragmatics, prompting, session planning