Taking time today to remember and honor all those who have sacrificed so much in service of their countries. Wishing all of you a meaningful day of reflection and remembrance.
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Tagged With: Memorial Day, memory, remembrance
Hope you had a wonderful week, AAC friends. Here are some posts you may have missed. Monday – PrAACtically June: More AAC Resources for A Year of Core Vocabulary Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: Is AAC the Right Choice for Adults with Developmental Disabilities? Thursday – AACtual Therapy: AAC, Literacy and Squishy Books Before you go, we’ve got a few more topics that may be of interest. Building Sentence Length Through Conversational Routines and Games Be More with Core Helping Learners Build Self-regulation Skills Helping Students with Autism Prepare for Non-routine Events It’s PrAACtically Memorial Day! Join the fun! More info here.
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Tagged With: AACtual therapy, adults, ASD, MLU
Looking for a fun way to integrate more emergent literacy into your AAC work? You’re in the right place! Today, SLPs Maggie Judson and Jeanna Antrim share one of their many ideas for engaging therapy sessions. Maggie and Jeanna who work in the Assistive Technology Department for the Belleville Area Special Services Cooperative (BASSC) in southern Illinois. They are AT/AAC facilitators and provide evaluations, direct therapy, consultations, and trainings with school teams. You can see a previous guest post that Jeanna wrote here. Let’s hear how they make and use squishy books in their therapy sessions. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: AAC, Literacy and Squishy Books If you’ve done any reading or research around the topic of AAC and literacy, you know that students with complex communication needs do not typically get the same kinds of experiences with literacy activities as do their peers (Light & Kent-Walsh, 2003). So we are always on the... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: beginnin communicator, Books, DIY, emergent literacy, reading
Before you know it, we’ll be ready to flip the calendar to a new page. That means it’s time to prepare to highlight a new set of core words to keep our AAC learners moving forward and expanding their use of AAC throughout the day. Before we dig into this, though, we’ll take a quick detour. Last week, we announced the start of a Spanish language initiative here at PrAACtical AAC, and invited anyone who is Spanish-English bilingual to volunteer their time and skills. In that process, we’ve had a lot of requests for a Spanish version of this series. That’s where YOU come in. If you would like to help us by translating one of the Year of Core Vocabulary posts, please reach out and join our efforts. You can sign up to participate here. We’d love to get enough volunteers to have a full set of these posts... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: A Year of Core Words, Another Year of Core Words, core vocabulary, core words
Happy Sunday, AAC friends. Here are some posts you may have missed in your busy week. Monday – PrAACtical AAC Spanish Language Initiative Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: The Role of AAC For Learners with Autism Thursday – Let’s Play! Using Switch-accessible iPad Games for AAC Learning ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Have time for a little more reading? Maybe one of these suggestions will interest you. Let’s Go Outside! 5 PrAACtical Ideas Structured Play Groups Using Visual Scene Displays to Build Language and Literacy Aided Language Input During Play From Solitary Play to Interaction: 5 Things to Try With Kids Who Love Their iPad Games One last thing: Happy Better Hearing and Speech Month! In honor of our PrAACtical AAC Spanish Language Initiative, we’re sharing this wonderful graphic from a wonderful young SLP who graduated on Friday. Congratulations, Susana!
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Tagged With: summary post
If you’ve been planning to begin using switch-accessible iPad games in your AAC work but haven’t quite gotten it all figured out, this post is for you. We’re delighted to introduce PrAACtical AAC readers to Daniel Rigney, an SLP who with students who have complex communication needs at the Rosedale School in Austin, Texas. Daniel’s professional interests include the AT/AAC Maker Movement (see this post for info on that topic), language development for students with moderate to severe disabilities, and disability rights. He also maintains a YouTube channel, Assistive Technology ATX, with helpful AT content and tips. In this post, Daniel shares the process he uses for integrating iPad games into AAC therapy for students who use switches rather than direct selection. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Let’s Play! Using Switch-accessible iPad Games for AAC Learning iPad games can be a great teaching tool for core vocabulary. From having your angry birds “go” to... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: access, Gaming, play, Switch Access
Happy Tuesday, AAC friends! Once a week, we invite you to share your own AAC-related content, product news, or anything else that you’d like others in the AAC community to know about. It may be a recent post you’ve written, a slide deck from your AAC presentation, a handout, video, or meme that you’ve posted online, an AAC product you’ve created, an announcement for an AAC camp or conference, or any other prAACtical content you developed and want to share with the AAC community. To post your own link, scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post and complete the form. Enter the URL and the name/title in the boxes provided below. If you are on a mobile device, click over to the full website version to do this. The AAC Link Up is moderated to keep us from being spammed, so it may take a little while... [Read More...]
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Tagged With: AAC Link Up
We couldn’t be more excited that the world’s AAC experts will be coming together in Mexico next summer for the ISAAC 2020 Conference. In recognition of this wonderful event, we’re excited to embark on a new project here at PrAACtical AAC. We hope that you will support this initiative and help us get this new project off the ground. PrAACtical AAC en Español is our effort at supporting the Spanish-speaking community and we are thrilled that this will be headed up by AAC specialist and veteran SLP, Deanna Wagner. Many of you are familiar with Deanna through her work in Arizona, her presentations around the world, her articles on the wonderful blog AAC Girls, and her guest posts on these pages (like her AACtual Therapy posts here and here, and videos such as this one). Over the next few months, she will be coordinating efforts to build a collection of Spanish-language... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: collaboration, crowdsource, Spanish
Happy Sunday, AAC friends, and Happy Mother’s Day! If AAC is on your mind, we have some reading material for you. Monday – PrAACtically Reading: Over on the Farm with Karen Natoci & Karen Baca Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: Classroom-based AAC Thursday – How We Do It: Increasing AAC Acceptance and Making Better Communication Partners In Our School Have time for a little more? Here are a couple of suggestions. AAC Funding Help Building Your AAC SLP Toolkit: Obtaining Free Apps for AAC Evaluations Check Your Knowledge of AT History AACtual Therapy: Making Core Words Fun for Students with Autism AAC Goes to Summer Camp
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Tagged With: camp, classroom, funding, reading, summary post
We are pleased to welcome Beth Waite-Lafever, an SLP with over 30 years of AAC experience, back to these pages. She has worked in outpatient rehab, private practice, and public school and has the RESNA ATP credential and LAMP certification from The Center for AAC and Autism. Beth has given many presentations at the state, national and international levels on AAC and related topics. In her private practice, she has provides evaluations, therapy, and training. Beth is the proud co-creator of The Indiana AAC Summit. Currently, she provides monthly online training for PRC as a contracted employee and is an SLP and AT Coach for MSD Martinsville, a public school system in Martinsville, Indiana. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: How We Do It: Increasing AAC Acceptance and Making Better Communication Partners In Our School Each May when I see the Better Hearing and Speech campaign gear up, I wonder what more I can do... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: AAC Acceptance, Better Hearing and Speech Month, BHSM, classroom, partner training, school