November 16, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Infographics are a great way to explore vocabulary. Learners can make choices, view and comment, and even create their own infographics about words and topics. Check out these great infographics that can be used for vocabulary instruction. The key though is to use language facilitation and vocabulary instructions strategies to facilitate learning. 5 Words Visualized for Fun Direct Vocabulary Instruction Vacation Trucks Firefighters Photosynthesis Accolade (downloadable poster) & 3 Tools to Create Your Own Vocabulary Infographics With Your Students
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Infographics, Instruction, vocabulary
November 15, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Part of TEACHING vocabulary to AAC users (or any learner) involves reinforcement. Reinforcement is more than just facilitating positive self esteem. It is also about providing feedback that will help increase the skill you are trying to teach. It’s even more than learning specific new words but also about strategies to attack learning new words outside of the therapy or classroom environment. Below are some examples of ways to make the most of your reinforcement and some ways to NOT. 🙂 SAY THIS… General Principles of Reinforcement for Vocabulary: Be specific to the goal. Use words that explain the skill you want to occur more often. Use excited positive vocal inflection, Be impressed! We are continuing with the example of teaching the word consumed from Carole’s post on Monday, What Makes A Good Vocabulary Teaching Activity. ‘Wow you discovered a NEW WAY of saying take in, you used consumed’! ‘Awesome... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Learning, reinforcement, vocabulary
November 14, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Want to help AAC learners accelerate their receptive vocabularies? Here’s one quick and easy step in the right direction: Talk to them. We’re not trying to be snarky here. The truth is that we speak less to people who are minimally verbal than we do to people who talk. In general, kids with AAC needs hear far less language than speaking children do. Fewer words heard means fewer opportunities to learn language. That’s a cycle worth breaking. When we’re around typically developing children, they’re always asking questions. “What’s in the bag, Mom?” “Why is she doing that?” “How come Billy gets to have one and I don’t?” “Where are we going?” “Are we there yet?” Kids ask lots of questions, particularly in the early years. Annoying? Sometimes. Valuable? Always. From a language learning perspective, those pesky questions serve a very useful purpose: they invite (or demand) a linguistic response. They... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: intervention, language magnets, messages, questions, SGD, vocabulary, word learning
November 13, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
We’re always looking for engaging activities to use to practice words that our AAC friends are learning. For some learners, making avatars can be a great way to do have an authentic reason to use words for body parts and accessories as well as modifiers for size, shape, color, and other things. Plus…Who wouldn’t want an excuse to make a younger, thinner, cuter, or funnier version of themselves?! Here are some sites to check out. Pop Art Pixies: Basic avatar site oriented for girls. Good for using core language, making requests, color & size words. DoppelMe: Easy to use site for making cartoon-like avatars with several opportunities to choose elements, like clothes, hairstyles, and backgrounds. Use words for feelings to select facial expressions. WeeWorld: Another user-friendly site that can be a fun way to use descriptors in making selections to create, dress, and style your avatar. This site’s graphics would... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: intervention, language therapy, new words, repetition with vareity, semantics, vocabulary
November 12, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
This post is a follow-up to some others in which we introduced a general sequence of how we conceptualize semantic instruction and then went on to discuss the initial step in more detail. Today, we’ll be talking more about Step 2, Teaching the new word(s) with explicit instruction activities. There are so many creative ways to teach new word meanings, but for this step in the process we stick with those that meet a few basic criteria. Guidelines for Creating or Selecting Activities to Teach New Words Rich context: As we’ve said before, context reigns supreme. The cognitive, social, and linguistic cues that children use to learn new word meanings change over time, but at every stage they derive meaning from the surrounding context. Using contextual cues makes us more efficient learners and so it is something we want to encourage in our AAC learners. For a beginning communicator, a... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: intervention, language therapy, new words, semantics, vocabulary
November 9, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
No matter where they work, SLPs supporting people who use AAC generally do what they can to improve communication across environments. In an earlier Simple Start post, we talked about using photos of places within a school to support language comprehension. By showing a picture of the cafeteria or gym as we say those words, we can help both students with language processing difficulties and those with behavior regulation issues. — In this post, we extend the same concept to travels in and around the community. Here are directions for making visual supports that can be used with students who have community-based instruction or by families as they go about their weekly errands and routines. Simple Start: Visual Support for Places in the Community Take photo of locations in the community that the AAC user is likely to visit. Insert them into a document and add labels for each one... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: community, families, free download, home, photograph, picture ring, resources, visual supports
November 8, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
All this month we are talking about considerations in teaching new words to people who use AAC. We’ve talked about the role of focused aided language stimulation and wanted to follow that up with a few more ideas for implementing this strategy. Select the new (target) word to teach giving consideration to Tier 2 words that fit with their language or curriculum goals. Pronounce it. Provide a student-friendly definition Use aided language input: Model the word on the device if it is stored in there OR use the device to explain the new word in a student-friendly way. Find ways to use it throughout the day (and beyond). Hearing the word in various contexts is a great way to deepen the learner’s understanding. Have the AAC learners say it using their AAC (e.g., spelling it out on SGD) or natural speech. Segment it. (E.g., “One of our new words is... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: aided language input, focused language stimulation, intervention, language therapy, new words, semantics, vocabulary
November 7, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Earlier this month, we introduced a general sequence of how we conceptualize semantic instruction. We promised to elaborate on that. There are two things that I really love about this approach to to vocabulary teaching. The first is that is honors a principle that we know to be true: providing repetition with variety not only helps us reach learners with different strengths, but also gives our AAC learners much-needed practice. The other thing that makes this really work for us is that assessment has an active role but not a central one. Testing takes a backseat to teaching. As we all know, getting accurate assessment information from people who are learning their AAC systems is a huge challenge. Often, our AAC friends don’t have decent test-taking skills so we’re not really testing what we think we’re testing. Just last week I got to see Kristofer, an adorable little fellow who... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: aided, aided language input, intervention, language therapy, new words, semantics, vocabulary
November 6, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Lots of AAC learners make mistakes when they assemble words into sentences. Here is a brief screencast talking a little bit about what to think about when providing therapy to individuals with syntax errors. –
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: aided language input, intervention, language therapy, strategies, syntax, word order
November 5, 2012
by Robin Parker -
We originally talked about Avaz, the first commercially available AAC app developed in India, back when we introduced PrAACtical AAC in January of 2012. At that time, one of the primary developers, Ajit Narayanan, was recognized by the MIT Technology Review through the prestigious TR35 List, which applauds 35 innovators under 35 years of age. We were congratulating the team at Invention Labs and thinking that they would continue to improve communication for individuals with disabilities throughout 2012. They have succeeded. The Avaz team has worked this year seeking feedback from AAC professionals throughout the world. They have listened and have made many updates to improve the communication and language options of the Avaz App. We thought this was a great time for some follow-up information because many of the modifications and added options relate to vocabulary, which just happens to be our strategy of the month. Pre-loaded vocabulary has... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: literacy, vocabulary