Hope you’ve had a productive week of AAC teaching and learning. Monday – PrAACtically March: AAC Core Vocabulary Resources Wednesday – Video of the Week: Scaffoldingand Anchoring Thursday – PrAACtical Resources: AAC Partner Strategies Handout Not too old, not too young. Not too intellectually impaired or gifted. Not too motorically limited or talented. Everyone deserves a voice.
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
It is exciting to hear about the many AAC trainings offered by schools, clinics, and other organizations. Whether it is through small group consultations, inservice trainings, workshops, or conference presentations, more and more of our colleagues are helping others gain an understanding of AAC issues and practices. We’d love to support those efforts, and appreciate the opportunity to share information, handouts, and materials that can be useful in that work. Today, we are pleased to share a wonderful handout by Alicia Garcia, a lead SLP at the AAC Clinic at One Kids Place, a children’s treatment centre in northern Ontario. Alicia has more than two decades of clinical experience in a variety of settings and locales. You can see a guest post Alicia did on avoiding pitfalls in aided language input here. The handout she is sharing today is used primarily for providing initial training to people who live, work... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: download, handout, partner strategies
In this week’s video, we feature SLP Shannon Hennig who talks to us about some of her strategies for teaching language learners. As with her previous video, Shannon’s suggestions are clear, relevant, and prAACtical. Enjoy!
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: intervention, language therapy
Why spend valuable intervention time teaching words that relate only to one specific activity or environment when you could be teaching words that the learner can use all day long? Building competency with a robust base of 300-500 core words gives people the vocabulary they need to function in any environment. (Try that with AAC systems that are mostly nouns and action verbs!). How can we continually increase our clients’ competence with core words? A few years ago, we decided to approach this by focusing on 12-16 core words each month. Each month, we would highlight those words in our conversation (aided language input), direct intervention, and home programming activities with AAC learners. The repeated experiences with those 12-16 words helped the learners develop new skills, and kept the team focused on the same things. An added bonus: We were less likely to be overwhelmed. It’s gratifying to see many... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Year of Core
Here are some AAC posts you may have missed. Monday – PrAACtically Pinteresting with Lauren Enders: Apps for Implementation Tuesday – From Conversation to Skill-building Thursday – AAC Assessment Corner by Vicki Clarke: Thinking Inside the Box
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
AAC assessment is a challenge in almost every service delivery setting, and many of you have reached out to us to ask for advice on how to strengthen your assessment practices. Luckily, Vicki Clarke, an AAC Chick who has a great deal of experience assessing learners in clinical and educational settings, has tips and resources to share. In this continuation of the AAC Assessment Corner series, Vicki talks about a key feature in any AAC system: vocabulary organization. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Thinking Inside the Box for AAC Evaluations: What Type of Vocabulary Organization is Right For Your AAC User? Professionals often spend a great deal of time concerning themselves with which box they should get their AAC user. Should I pick a Prentke Romich or a Tobii Dynavox? But what about the iPad? And what about the money? Should I pick a CheapTalk or a GoTalk instead? Here’s the good news: The box is not the... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: assessment, feature match, language organization
AAC learners need a lot of support as they build the skills needed to have rich and effective conversations. Often, their role in the conversation is punctuated with partners’ reliance on context, prior knowledge, and questions to make sense of the message. What do we do when the learner gives us partial information or uses language skills below his/her capability? Do we accept the limited language so that we get to the bottom of the message our learner is trying to express? Or do we use it as an opportunity to shape improved language skills? One approach to making this decision is to start with a question. “What is the top priority for this interaction?” Making a decision about the most important goal of the conversation is a critical step in determining how to respond. In some cases, the time is right to use the opportunity to improve skills in... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: intervention
Today, we welcome back an old friend, Lauren Enders. Many of you are already familiar with Lauren through the posts she has shared on AAC in the IEP, encouraging AAC implementation, and writing AAC goals, and also the wonderful work she does in curating resources on Pinterest. We’re thrilled that she will be joining us each month to highlight a different Pinterest board that has AAC-related content. Lauren identifies interesting and helpful resources and adds relevant commentaries to all of the items she includes. In this first post, she shares a collection of resources on apps that can be used to engage AAC learners in therapy, instruction, play, and leisure time. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: For the past few years, I have been building a Pinterest site with the goal of providing visual, categorized, and easily accessible resources that relate to AAC as well as Assistive Technology, Speech and Language Therapy, Special Education, iPads,... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: digital curation, resources
Hope you had a week of AAC fun and inspiration. Monday – PrAACtically Reading with Karen Natoci: Are You My Mother? Tuesday – Efficiency or Precision: Striking a Balance for AAC Learners Thursday – Video of the Week: Aided Language Input with Gail Van Tatenhove
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Elliott has been using some form of high tech AAC since he was in kindergarten and can express wants/needs easily. Though his language is simplistic compared to his 5th grade peers, he is able to use his SGD to give opinions, explain them, ask questions, engage in small talk, and tell short narratives. His SLP has targeted skills in inferencing, use of prefixes (‘un’ and ‘re’), verbal reasoning, Tier 2 vocabulary, and embedded clauses to help Elliott acquire the language skills that will allow him to be more successful in his academic work. She is keenly aware that, as he transitions to middle school, the academic and social demands on him will increase significantly. Although Elliott can spontaneously produce 9-12 word sentences, he usually communicates in short, simple utterances. In a recent interaction he used a single word, ‘good,’ to describe a video, and a short sentence (‘I was mad’)... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: interaction, language intervention