Balance Pans: A Learning Toy that Helps Build Conversation Skills

September 2, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts


Balance Pans: A Learning Toy that Helps Build Conversation Skills

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about the social skills of some of our AAC friends who are not quite fitting in the way that they would like. SLPs frequently work on social interaction skills with learners on the ASD spectrum, but it’s not something that we always think about with learners who have cerebral palsy, apraxia, or other developmental disabilities. – The idea of using a balance scale as a metaphor for balance in conversational turns is intriguing and one we’ve explored a bit. In this video from Autism Teaching Strategies, Joel Shaul demonstrates the strategy and discusses it relative to turn-taking (Click here for Part 1 and click here for the second video). That makes sense for a lot of learners who don’t respond to non-obligatory situations as well as they could. – We’ve also used it for helping people with AAC see how their utterances compare to... [Read More...]

Filed under:

Tagged With: ,

Singing in the Rain (Thanks, Isaac!)

August 26, 2012 by - 2 Comments


Singing in the Rain (Thanks, Isaac!)

By tradition, we post an AAC-related video on Sundays. Today, we’re thinking that it’s time for a song, and those who attended ISAAC 2012 know that there’s nothing like the songs sung using AAC. This video features an adaptation of a classic folk song, If I Had a Hammer, performed by the talented Snoopi Botten. Direct Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG0kXjXu2Yo  

Filed under:

Tagged With: , ,

A PrAACtical Look at PODD

August 26, 2012 by - 1 Comment


This week, we return to the team at the Autism and Tertiary Behavior Supports Project of the Kansas Technical Assistance Network. They have two wonderful videos by Jane Goetz and Lori Chambers on Pragmatically Organized Dynamic Displays. You can view ‘It’s All About the Interaction,” Part 1 and Part 2 . Also, look for the handout and tip sheet that accompanies these videos. –

Filed under:

Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A PrAACtical Look at Partner Assisted Scanning

August 12, 2012 by - 4 Comments


A PrAACtical Look at Partner Assisted Scanning

Awhile back, we listed a few strategies that seem to be under-utilized in AAC. One of those is partner assisted scanning, a strategy we love for its boundless flexibility. In this week’s video we turn to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s Aaron W. Perlman Center. Tune in for a clear description of the strategy and lots of wonderful examples. You can learn more from them here. – –

Filed under:

Tagged With: ,

More Ideas for Using Visual Supports to Build Conversational Skills

August 5, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts


More Ideas for Using Visual Supports to Build Conversational Skills

Cohesion is a tough concept for many of our learners who are developing their AAC skills and struggling to build relationships. In this week’s featured video, Joel Shaul, from Autism Teaching Strategies, discusses how to use two metaphors for building cohesive conversations. One is the idea of links in a chain and the other is the girders of a building. Of course, we are big fans of the use of visual supports whenever we talk and teach. — Although the focus here is learners with ASD, we’ve used this and similar strategies many kinds of learners. Hope you enjoy this informative video. – – – –

Filed under:

Tagged With: , , ,

PBS & Visual Supports

July 22, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts


PBS & Visual Supports

This week’s video comes from Katie Thomas of the Autism and Tertiary Behavior Supports Project of the Kansas Technical Assistance Network and deals with the who, what, when, where, and why of using visual supports to promote positive behavior. – There are several supporting documents including the PowerPoint handout, and some of the supports they review (e.g., calendar, first/then, wait card). We love the detailed description and the many examples they share. – Click here to view the video. –

Filed under:

Tagged With: , , , , ,

Building Conversational Skills with Visual Supports

July 8, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts


Building Conversational Skills with Visual Supports

A young AAC user whom I know shared a story with me recently about feeling left out and struggling to find out why. Although she is smart, has age appropriate receptive language, and good command of her high tech SGD, building and maintaining friendships is a struggle. One of the things we’ll be doing to make changes in that area is to learn more about what makes a good conversation, adding vocabulary to make small talk easier, and practicing that. – Here’s a nice video, from Autism Teaching Strategies, that shows how to use visual supports and music to help learners remember to use some of the conversational continuers. Although Joel Shaul demonstrates this with visual supports that have words and phrases, the strategy works just as well with pictures for pre-literate communicators. – – Enjoy!

Filed under:

Tagged With: , , ,