It is National Fire Protection Week October 7-13, 2012. Check Out These 5 Great Tips, Tricks, and Teaching Ideas: Sensory Breaks & Learning Activities Firefighters are being Educated in Auburn On-Line Fire Safety Games for Kids How To Teach and Present Information, Lesson Plans, and Visual Supports for children and adults with Intellectual Disabilities For Teachers and SLPS
Our July Strategy of the Month, PrAActical AAC Supports for Behavior, is a favorite topic for us, because with a little planning, we can adhere to the old adage that an ‘ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ (as Carole said last week). We also find that behavior challenges are often one of the main reasons, our students (and colleagues) get stressed about working with children with significant communication impairments. And since stress for ANYONE does not make for an optimal learning environment, we love to show how effective preventative strategies work. This week we are focusing on ‘setting the stage’ for conventional and appropriate behavior by engineering the physical environment. We are talking about more than keeping the room neat, clean, and generally organized. We are talking about arranging the physical environment in a planned and careful way in order can make a huge difference in helping... [Read More...]
It’s not too early to begin. It seems that everyone is talking about the London 2012 Olympics. The Olympic conversation is an interesting teaching and learning platform for almost any communication and language goals. It is fun, educational, and most importantly, most smaller and larger ‘communities’ will have Olympic images, videos, television shows, and conversation. There will soon be Olympic immersion. You can TALK and TEACH before the Olympics start, while they are happening, and even after they are over. It is easy to include ALL learners at ALL levels with these free resources that do the time-consuming preparation work for you. Just use your language facilitation strategies and have fun! News 2 You London 2012 Olympics Widget Free Pack- Olympics 2012 Primary Treasure Chest- Olympic Printable Free Resources **Bonus- we often also use these resources for home programming because our clinic is closed... [Read More...]
One of the best things about being an AAC interventionist is that it allows you to play and find creative ways to teach and practice language. In this post, we’ve compiled some of our favorite posts about teaching core vocabulary, early communicative intents, and more advanced language skills to people learning AAC. – – Early Language Magic Moments with Toca Store (app) Magic Moments with Toca Boca Doctor (app) PrAACtical Play with Playskool Busy Gears (toys) Magic Moments with Stop and Go (app) HijAACked! Putting an AAC Twist on The Hallelujah Flight (free e-book, website) Magic Moments with Disneyland Explorer (app, free) Magic Moments with Painting with Time (app, free) 5 Apps to Tempt Commenting and Other Language Functions (app) – More Advanced Language Magic Moments: AAC Intervention with BrainPOP (app and website) Magic Moments with Qwiki (app and website) HijAACked! AAC & Anti-Bullying with Stand Tall, Marylou Melon (free... [Read More...]
Magic Moments is an occasional series that discusses prAACtical ways of using favorite toys, games, apps, and selected websites for language and literacy learning. Our last Magic Moments post featured Toca Store, an app for children, so this time we raised our sights to address an older demographic. There are fewer age-appropriate, interesting materials designed especially for the AAC and learning needs of this age group so we are always on the hunt for creative ideas. Since we’re sharing digital curation tools as part of our May Strategy of the Month, we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to talk about ways to use Qwiki with clients who use AAC. and websites for communication learning. – Qwiki is an aggregation tool that combines video and web interactivity into a brief multimedia presentation. In their reference site, Qwiki allows you to enter a search term and get an interesting overview of that topic with images,... [Read More...]
Our BHSM Strategy of the Month has focused on developing our Professional Learning Network, and in this past week we’ve shared some of our favorite internet sites. We can’t finish out the topic, though, without mentioning some of places where we spend time each week. When I first started following blogs by other SLPs, K-12 educators, and professors, I had no idea how much content was out there. Over the years, I’ve become more and more thankful for the wealth of information these bloggers so generously provide. Like anything else, blogs are a varied lot – some good, some not so good, and a few seriously excellent ones. – Here is ASHA’s 2012 list of the best blogs in SLP and some of our favorite blogs for AAC, AT, and tech-related content: Jane Farrall (http://www.janefarrall.com/blog/) Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs (http://teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com/) Speech Techie (http://www.speechtechie.com/) The Speech Dudes (http://speechdudes.wordpress.com/) Spectronics (https://www.spectronicsinoz.com/blog/)... [Read More...]
Did we fail to mention that we are at Twitter Stage 4 ? (uh oh… we just found a 1-46 Twitter Stage Scale). Twitter seems to be our favorite medium for getting and giving information quickly. Although we still have so much to learn, as the song goes, here are a few of our favorite things: 140 Characters– We love to shorten directed learning and teaching. We only recently realized that listening to long (or short) lectures is not how we PrAACtically learn. The 140 character limit helps us ‘flip’ the learning by letting us give a short ‘teaser’ and a link. We love this. HashTags- It took us awhile to understand hastags and now we love them. Edudemic published a great A-Z Dictionary of Educational Hashtags that we refer to often. It is great to have everything in 1 place. Twitter Speak- We love the cool abbreviations that help you say... [Read More...]
– This is the first week of a new semester for us, and that means we get the pleasure of introducing a new crop of student SLPs to clients with AAC needs. We’ve been busy looking at lesson plans, discussing goals and objectives, listening to ideas for therapy activities, and helping to develop plans for data collection. With those recent conversations buzzing in our ears, here are some thoughts about getting AAC therapy sessions off to a good start. – 1. Connect with the client and family before the first session. Take some time to plan out questions that will help you get to know their expectations, family culture, and daily routine. 2. Know the history. Go beyond the diagnosis and device. Take time to research what’s been done before, how that worked out, and, if you can, how that was perceived. Knowing where the client has been on his/her... [Read More...]
Hope you are having a great Better Hearing and Speech Month! Our May Strategy of the Month continues to focus on building our Professional Learning and Resource Network in prAACtical ways. This week we’ll be posting about Twitter. – While some of you may have been early adopters of the microblogging trend, I just didn’t see the value of Twitter until the past year. As one who doesn’t much care what Paris Hilton had for breakfast or who sat next to whom at the Heat game, it just didn’t interest me. Robin, on the other hand, was tweeting away and kept telling me about wonderful connections she’d made that way. “I’ll get around to it one of these days,” I thought but kept putting it off until I was out of excuses. Once I was involved, it only took a week or so before I was hooked on the vast... [Read More...]
It’s easy to daydream when you’re sitting in the sun. It is a stunningly beautiful day here in south Florida. “Too nice to stay indoors,” my mom would have said, and so I’m sitting outside with my laptop working away. Before long, my mind starts to wander. – Ever think about what you would do if you weren’t an SLP? For me ‘reading teacher’ would be pretty close to the top of the list. – I was one of those kids who spent hours in the children’s library just devouring books. Melinda Cox Free Library was my home away from home, and In those days it was run by the Edgar sisters, Miss Martha and Miss Alice. They tolerated no nonsense in ‘their’ library and the adult books were strictly off-limits to young people. We were confined to the Littleton room, a well-stocked children’s section, where I spent most of... [Read More...]