5 Things Families May Not Know about SLPs and AAC Assessment

February 5, 2015 by - 8 Comments

5 Things Families May Not Know about SLPs and AAC Assessment

A truth: People with significant communication difficulties need and deserve high-quality AAC assessments by experienced professionals. Some other truths: We want to do a good job. It feels a lot better to go home at the end of the day when we feel like we’ve really, REALLY helped your loved one. For us, there isn’t much that tops that feeling. We may have had little or no training in this. Most SLPs in practice today didn’t have any coursework in this area when they were in their graduate programs. Even if they did, they had little to no mentorship in applying the information to real clients in a real world setting. And even those who did get some clinical experience in AAC might not have worked with people similiar to your family member. Any learning we do about this is usually on our own time and at our own expense. People... [Read More...]

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How We Do It: Auditory & Visual Scanning with Jack and Mary-Louise

February 4, 2015 by - Leave your thoughts

Most of us learn better when we get to see examples of how things are done. In AAC, we don’t have nearly enough examples to learn from so I’m always grateful when someone agrees to show us how they implement particular tools or strategies. Today, we send a big prAACtical “Thank You” to Jack and Mary-Louise in Australia. When children have significant motor limitations, partner-assisted scanning may be their best option for message selection. In this video, Jack and Mary-Louise show us how they use a combination of visual and auditory scanning. Mary-Louise points to choices in his PODD book and says the message aloud so Jack can consider his options. Jack does his part by signaling when he sees/hears a desired message. Because his body is terribly unoccoperative, he signals in a few different ways (i.e., ‘Yes’ with vocalization, eyebrow raises, head nods, &/or eye gaze, and ‘No’ with a... [Read More...]

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Core Words for February: Putting Together Sentences

February 3, 2015 by - Leave your thoughts

Core Words for February: Putting Together Sentences

The recent ATIA 2015 Conference in Orlando served as validation that core vocabulary is now a widely accepted practice in supporting language development with AAC learners. Presentation after presentation discussed the rationale, research support, and strategies for implementation. In 2013, 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. In this post, we share some sample sentences to model for our February 2013 and 2014 core words. The target words for this month are in CAPS. 2013 Year of Core again... [Read More...]

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Fun Finds at ATIA 2015

February 2, 2015 by - 2 Comments

Fun Finds at ATIA 2015

The ATIA 2015 Conference was one of the best ever, with strong presentations, a vibrant exhibit area, lots of fun social events, and great networking opportunities. There were lots of highlights, but here are a few prAACtical ‘finds’ that might interest you. Spanish version of Word Power: The language options for AAC devices and apps keeps getting better and better! I love that you can purchase the Spanish pageset/voices, then configure Word Power so that the user can toggle back and forth between English and Spanish user profiles. Once configured, your client can independently go from English to Spanish words, phrases, grammar, and voices (and vice versa). This will help our prAACtical friends who speak English in school and Spanish at home. I explored it on the Nova Chat from Saltillo but there is also a Spanish add-on to the TouchChat app. Book Bridge: We’re all looking for better ways to make... [Read More...]

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Stimming or Learning? Considerations For Kids Who Repeat Themselves with AAC

January 29, 2015 by - 17 Comments

Stimming or Learning? Considerations For Kids Who Repeat Themselves with AAC

At the CARD 2015 conference earlier this month, I had some great conversations with professionals who wanted to integrate more AAC into their work with beginning communicators. One of the issues that came up was this: What about kids who keep using their AAC to say the same thing over and over? Here are some of the things we discussed. For beginning communicators, repetition is part of exploration. And exploration is part of language learning. Extinguish repetition and we have effectively shut down a tool for language development. Turning off the device, taking it away, or turning the volume controls to silent is NOT an option. (Whew! I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear consensus on that point!) No feeling person would tape the mouth of a speaking child to keep them quiet, and this is the AAC counterpart. Silencing a person by restricting access to their... [Read More...]

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Super-Size It! 5 Ideas for Making Large Communication Displays

January 26, 2015 by - 9 Comments

One of the coolest things about 2014 was that it seemed like the field of AAC reached a tipping point regarding the idea of aided language input. There are some differences in terminology (e.g., aided language stimulation, aided modeling), but the Big Idea is this: To teach AAC, be a speaker of AAC. Learners need competent language models, and if we’re not using the AAC ourselves, chances are that no one else is easier. If you don’t think that’s a problem, try learning a foreign language from a teacher who doesn’t speak it to you. Not the most enjoyable, effective, or efficient way to learn. I had such a great visit to schools in Oakland, Michigan this fall, and one of the (many) highlights was being in classrooms where teachers and SLPs are taking this to heart. True, they have some great AT leadership and had lots of training, but... [Read More...]

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