Here are some posts you may have missed in your busy week. Monday: How We Do It: Assessing AAC Skills and Competencies to Inform Intervention & Show Progress Wednesday: Video of the Week: AAC Conversation Club Thursday: How I Do It: Using an App to Create AAC Materials & Visual Supports
Happy Mother’s Day! Here are some posts you may have missed in your prAACtical week. Monday: Site of the Month: Preschool AAC and Visual Supports from Orange County Public Schools Wednesday: Video of the Week: AACtual Advocacy Thursday: How We Do It: Pragmatic Skill Intervention in AAC with Dr. Jill Senner & Matthew Baud
Better Hearing and Speech Month is in full swing and we are excited to see SLPs talking about tools and strategies for supporting people with AAC needs. Many individuals with AAC needs have difficulty using language in expected ways, particularly in social interactions. In this post, we welcome back guest authors Jill Senner and Matthew Baud to discuss ways in which they target pragmatic language in their clinical work. They have a prAACtical approach to this subject and are generous in sharing AAC resources, including vocabulary/pagesets for some popular AAC apps/SGDs. Enjoy! ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Chat with Me: Pragmatic Skill Intervention in AAC with Jill E Senner, PhD, CCC-SLP & Matthew R. Baud, MS, CCC-SLP Pragmatic skills, commonly referred to as social skills, play an important role in the successful integration of individuals with disabilities. People with disabilities need adequate social skills to live and be educated in the least restrictive environment, to be... [Read More...]
April is just around the corner and that means we’re getting ready to support the acceptance and inclusion of autistic people. Looking for ideas? Here are some to get you started. Treat yourself to some goodies from The Chocolate Spectrum (where you can order online, visit the cafe, or take a chocolate-making class) or other places that employ people with autism. Read and share 5 references that support the use of AAC & Autism. Help your family or community go beyond awareness and into acceptance. Learn and share information about Autism Safety – Be AWAARE! Know an autistic MineCraft lover? Introduce them to AutCraft. Educate yourself on terminology that relates to autism and people with ASD. We may have learned people-first language back in grad school, but there are different points of view on that. This is a great time to learn about identity-first language. Apply your critical reasoning skills to... [Read More...]
Looking for information of use to service providers, people who use AAC, and their families? Our March Site of the Month features a website that fits the bill. Scope, an Australian disability service agency, has information and downloadable resources that you may want to explore. Here are some of the highlights. CIRCus Blog The agency supports a blog with content from Scope’s Communication and Inclusion Resource Centre and includes several topics related to AAC. Eye gaze: For people with significant motor difficulties, eye pointing or eye gaze may play an important role in their access to communication. Having communication partners who know how to maximize the success of this strategy can make the difference between incredible success and perpetual struggle. In this post, they walk us through the process of supporting people who use eye gaze. Schedules: Therapists and teachers regularly use visual schedules to help people with AAC needs... [Read More...]
Happy Sunday, prAACtical friends! Hope you are having a restorative weekend and are looking forward to a fulfilling week ahead. Here are some posts that you may have missed in your busy week. Monday: PrAACtical Resources: Data Collection Forms for Communication Partners Wednesday: Video of the Week – Voice by Choice Thursday: Free Resources for Making AAC and Visual Supports
Happy Valentine’s Day, prAACtical friends! Hope there’s a lot of AAC love in your week. Monday: Make it PrAACtical: Switch Mounts Wednesday: Video of the Week: Designing & Using Visual Supports for Older Students Thursday: PrAACtically Valentine’s Day: Core Vocabulary Activities
“He knows what to do. He just doesn’t do it.” “He’s prompt-dependent. How can I get him to use AAC on his own?” “I love his strong-willed nature, but it works against him sometimes. He doesn’t initiate.” If any of these remarks sound familiar, it may be time to think about alternative approaches to build independent communication. Here are a few things to try with AAC users who’ve learned to wait for support before communicating. Exaggerate the pause time: Many of our AAC learners need at least 5 seconds of pause time after a communication opportunity presents itself. This helps them process the experience, organize their thoughts, decide on a response, and then begin to execute that response. Sometimes, though, we work with people who’ve learned that if they just wait, the communication partner will start to help (whether or not they need it). We can sometimes nudge the learner... [Read More...]
Symbols, templates, software, tools, and more. That’s what you’ll find on the November PrAACtical Site of the Month: ARASAAC, the Aragonese Portal of Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Supported by the Department of Education, Culture and Sports of the Aragonese Government and the General Directorate of Innovation, Equality and Participation, this award-winning site has been serving the AAC community for over two decades. They may be best known for the picture symbols that they share so freely, which allows professionals, users of AAC, and families to create free resources in Catalan, Euskera, English, French, German, Italian, Galician, Portuguese, Spanish, and more. The online tools section has a variety of things to explore including tools to make communication boards, animations (gifs), schedules and calendars, custom symbols, and games. There are also wonderful resources for Spanish Sign Language in pictures and videos. There is also a Materials Exchange section where you can download communication... [Read More...]
And, just like that, another AAC Awareness Month is a wrap. (Seems like October just flew by!) Hope you had fun spreading the news about AAC options. Here are a few posts you may have missed. Monday: 5 Visual Supports for the AAC Classroom Wednesday: PrAACtically November: Resources for A Year of Core Words Thursday: How We Do It: A Collaborative Approach to Implementing Core Language within a School-Based Setting, Part 1