March 24, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
There’s nothing more depressing to us than walking into a classroom in the spring and seeing pristine visual schedules. Why? Because it probably means that the students aren’t really using them. We cheer when we see schedules that are rumpled and dog-eared, not shiny. Show me a battered and tattered visual schedule, and I’ll show you one that gets used every day. Sadly, that’s not always the case. – The bridge between having a visual schedule and consistently using it is one that many learners don’t seem to cross. Here are some of our ideas for helping your AAC learners to the other side. – 1. Have a plan to teach the schedule. If you are working one-on-one with a learner, you can easily implement the schedule and get them using it with most-to-least prompting. If you’re working with a group or a classroom, consider staggered implementation. Teaching 12 beginners... [Read More...]
March 24, 2012
by Robin Parker -
We were looking for some specific resources for a distant colleague. We wanted to get as much good information as possible because this colleague was not in our field but in another department that has direct impact over work. We do not necessarily see ‘eye to eye’ on many issues so we thought it might be helpful to our working relationship. In the process, a young man and his family would get some much-needed support. In our exploration, we found some great new videos about schedules- our topic of the month. We found several very prAACtical videos by the Watson Institute about mini schedules. We have found mini schedules to be very helpful for activities of daily living, community activities, leisure time activities and even in special event activities. We love that the Watson Institute put these on you -tube for everyone to learn from. They even have a you-tube video... [Read More...]
March 18, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
I Love Chef William has a nice video showing how she uses multiple levels of visual schedules. We love the idea of alerting students to an upcoming change by incorporating that within the daily schedule. – Take a look. –
March 17, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
When people think about visual schedules, they tend to think about a classroom schedule with PCS for each major activity of the day. These are great and we look for them whenever we do classroom visits. In this post, we hope to inspire some of you to use other types of visual schedules as well. We haven’t quite worked out the right terms for these (and we welcome your suggestions) but, conceptually we know that there are three main levels of visual schedules. Each level conveys information about what is happening in a specific segment of time. – At the Calendar Level, the schedule represents what’s happening throughout the month and/or week. – At the Schedule Level, we’re representing the events of a particular day, a portion of a day, or a session (or class period). – At the Task Level, the schedule reflects discrete steps of an activity or... [Read More...]
March 11, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
This month we’re focusing on visual schedules. Some of our AAC friends have had great success with object schedules, so we’re a little surprised that more people don’t use them. Here’s a nice video on the strategy from the wonderful team at OCALI.
March 10, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Visual schedules come in all shapes and sizes. The process of deciding which one to use begins with two questions: What is the purpose of this particular visual schedule? How will it be used? Both of these drive the decisions you make about which format to use. If my primary purpose in making the visual schedule is to help a student become more independent in following the steps in a task, and I know the person is going to be seated at a desk while doing this, I may choose a horizontal layout that shows the sequence. Because it is a school-aged child and we are activity working on literacy skills, I consider a stationary format on the desk surface that has the student use a check-off system. Having the student cross out or check off the steps as they are completed, gives authentic practice with writing skills. On the... [Read More...]
March 4, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
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