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A PrAACtical March: Resources for A Year of Core Vocabulary Words

March 1, 2021 by - 1 Comment

A PrAACtical March: Resources for A Year of Core Vocabulary Words

Do the AAC users in your life use only a fraction of the core words in their SGD, AAC app, or communication board? One way to help them move forward is to make a concerted effort to use, highlight, and provide additional teaching on a variety of words. It’s hard to do this without getting overwhelmed, so find a strategy that works for you.  A few years ago, we decided to approach this by focusing on 12-16 core words each month. (If this is too much for the teams with whom you work, that’s not a problem. Just cut it back to 4-6 words/month.) Each month, we can highlight those words in our conversation (aided language input), direct intervention, and home programming activities with AAC learners. The repeated experiences with those 12-16 (or 4-6) words help our AAC learners develop new skills, and keeps the team focused on the same destination. ... [Read More...]

PrAACtically February: AAC Resources for a Year of Core Words

January 28, 2021 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtically February: AAC Resources for a Year of Core Words

February is just around the corner and that means we’re looking ahead to ways we can highlight more of the core vocabulary words in our clients’ AAC devices and communication aids. One approach to boosting practice opportunities is to select a dozen or so core words to focus on each month. Throughout the month, we can then pay special attention to that small group of words by highlighting them with focused language stimulation, aided language input, and specific activities designed to teach or practice those words. In previous years, we shared lists of some core words to help you do just that, and every month we share some ideas for prioritizing a small set of words. You can use these materials to remind yourself which words to highlight this month using aided language input and focused language stimulation. What else? Here are some ideas to get you started. Print them... [Read More...]

PrAACtically January: AAC Resources for A Year of Core Words

December 28, 2020 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtically January: AAC Resources for A Year of Core Words

It’s almost time to switch to a new calendar so we’re looking ahead to January and gearing up to model and teach some more core words to our AAC learners. If you have some prep time this week, join us! This is a great time to get the word cards and other materials for the Year of Words (Set 1; Set 2) ready to use with the AAC learners in our lives. Thanks to the generous spirit of PrAACtical AAC readers we have posts with a variety of resources: Templates for you to plug in your own symbols: Set 1 words, Set 2 words Minspeak/Unity version: Set 1  PCS versions: Set 1, Set 2 Speak for Yourself version: Set 2 SymbolStix version: Set 1 Lesson Pix: Set 1 Smarty Symbols: Set 1 words, Set 2 words CoughDrop: Set 1 words; Set 2 words WordPower: Set 1 words (Note: This is a large file... [Read More...]

TELL ME About It: AAC Learning with ‘Dear Zoo’!

November 9, 2020 by - Leave your thoughts

TELL ME About It: AAC Learning with ‘Dear Zoo’!

Ready for another post with book-related ideas for supporting core vocabulary learning in preschool classrooms? We’re excited to welcome Jeanna Antrim and Maggie Judson back to these pages with another guest post the TELL ME About It series. Today, they share ideas for core vocabulary experiences with an old favorite, Dear Zoo.If you’re in search of ways to support preschool teachers who are implementing the TELL ME program with their young students, this post is for you. There are quite a few resource links embedded in this post, ready for you to download. Maggie and Jeanna are speech-language pathologists who work in the Assistive Technology Department for the Belleville Area Special Services Cooperative (BASSC) in southern Illinois. They are AT/AAC facilitators and provide evaluations, direct therapy, consultations, and trainings with school teams. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: TELL ME About It: AAC Learning with ‘Dear Zoo’! TELL ME About The Book The third book... [Read More...]

How I Do It: Functional Ideas for AAC Use at Home

October 22, 2020 by - 1 Comment

How I Do It: Functional Ideas for AAC Use at Home

Speech-language pathologists who serve individuals with complex communication generally have less time than they’d like to support families in implementing AAC at home. In today’s post, guest author Jesse Kleinman shares her ideas for using functional activities to support AAC learning. As an SLP in Brooklyn New York, she provides in-person and remote therapy to students with AAC needs. Enjoy! ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: How I Do It: Functional Ideas for AAC Use at Home During this time, we have all been spending a lot of time at home to stay safe. It has been a trying time in these past couple of months, but as therapists, we are always adapting. As a speech-language pathologist, I was thrown into the world of teletherapy for about 6 months, and I’m now doing a hybrid approach where I see some of my students in person and others remotely. I’ve been seeing a majority of my... [Read More...]

How I Do It: Supporting Spanish-speaking AAC Learners

October 19, 2020 by - Leave your thoughts

How I Do It: Supporting Spanish-speaking AAC Learners

We’ve been on a mission to add our support to the population of AAC users from Spanish-speaking communities, so when AAC SLP Deanna Wagner shared this piece she wrote on strengthening her Spanish language skills, we knew we wanted to share it. Here in the US, where speaking a second language isn’t as highly valued as it should be, many professionals struggle to become confident in languages other than English. In this post, Deanna shares her tips for strengthening her Spanish so that she can better serve the families she supports. In addition, she provides a helpful table of AAC apps that are available in Spanish that you won’t want to miss. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Building Spanish Language Skills As an AT professional who supports families who speak Spanish at home, I am always looking for ways to brush up on my AAC vocabulary and Spanish terminology.  I am not a native... [Read More...]

PrAACtically October: AAC Resources for A Year of Core Vocabulary Words (Remote or In-person Learning)

September 28, 2020 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtically October: AAC Resources for A Year of Core Vocabulary Words (Remote or In-person Learning)

Do you know any AAC learners like these? Jeremiah has an SGD with thousands of core and fringe words, but he uses less than 100 of them in day-to-day life. Bella used an AAC app with visual scene displays to interact at playtime and during daily routines for the past several months. Her team just added an app with a grid-based vocabulary so that she can begin to create novel sentences and expand her language abilities. Mason was recently evaluated for an AAC device, but it will likely take a few months to get the funding situation straightened out. In the meantime, his team created a manual communication board that mirrors the main screen of the SGD’s language software. Each of them needs lots of practice to become fluent with the core words in their AAC systems. Are you looking for resources to support your use of core words in... [Read More...]

Growing AAC Professionals: Resources for Mythbusters

September 10, 2020 by - Leave your thoughts

Growing AAC Professionals: Resources for Mythbusters

We’re excited to have another guest post today by Vicki Haddix, an AAC SLP and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis. Vicki joins us periodically to share some of the work completed by her SLP graduate students. Under her leadership, they create videos, handouts, and other materials that can be used by families, clinicians, and educators. Let’s take a look.   ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: As I have said in previous posts about teaching the graduate class on AAC, I find Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to be a very helpful framework when designing the course, although I’ve realized I don’t typically name UDL when I discuss activities or assignments. But I was thrilled when Lindsey Hull came to me wanting to look at integrating students who use AAC within the general education classroom, and we got to talk about UDL. She put together a narrated PowerPoint full of great ideas for... [Read More...]

When Repetition Becomes Problematic

July 2, 2020 by - 2 Comments

When Repetition Becomes Problematic

Have you worked with learners like these? Shameka wore a favorite t-shirt, featuring her beloved Moana, to her teletherapy session. She pointed to it to show her therapist and used her AAC device to say “Moana.” After acknowledging her Moana shirt and having a brief conversation about it, the therapist was ready to move on to the activities planned for that session. Shameka continued to bring up Moana many times throughout the session.  Bryce’s love of pizza is no secret. It’s so important to him that Bryce can say ‘pizza’ with a word approximation, sign it with his unique version of the manual sign, or use a manual communication board or SGD to say the word. Most days, that’s a very good thing. But sometimes, Bryce starts mentioning pizza early in the morning and brings it up a few times an hour for the rest of the day.   Many of... [Read More...]

Growing AAC Professionals: When Learning Meets Service

May 21, 2020 by - 2 Comments

Growing AAC Professionals: When Learning Meets Service

Teaching AAC to future SLPs is a longstanding passion of mine so when a fellow instructor, Vicki Haddix, reached out to talk about the AAC projects her graduate students had done, I knew that I wanted to share them with you. In today’s post, Vicki, a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis, tells us about her most recent students and their projects. The materials they created can be used by parents and professionals alike. Make sure to check out the link at the bottom to access the full array of materials that these talented students created. Enjoy! ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: As a professor, it’s always exciting when you see the great work that graduate students are doing and think about the potential that they are bringing to the field. I’ve taught the AAC class at the University of Memphis’s SLP graduate program for 5 spring semesters, and I always learn... [Read More...]