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AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 21: May 2024

May 26, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 21: May 2024

Happy Sunday, AAC friends. Here are some posts you might enjoy. Monday – PrAACtical Groups: Let’s Be Authors Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: Getting Ready for June School Year of Core Vocabulary Words Older Student Lessons Thursday – Starting a Journey with Stepping into AAC ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Have a little more time? These might be of interest. Five Places for Shared AAC Materials Five AAC and Related Resources to Explore AAC Teamwork: Encouraging Colleagues #1 (downloadable) AAC Teamwork: Encouraging Colleagues #2 (downloadable) AAC Teamwork: Encouraging Colleagues #3 (downloadable) AAC: More Teaching, Less Testing (downloadable)

Starting a Journey with Stepping into AAC

May 23, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

Starting a Journey with Stepping into AAC

Welcome back to our series on using the Stepping Into AAC program materials, a self-study program for families seeking to learn about and begin using AAC with their child, teen, or adult. In today’s post, we explore some of the things to do in preparation for starting an AAC journey and move into the first week of AAC learning activities. As you begin your Stepping Into AAC journey, there are 3 main things to do. Think about how you will organize your AAC learning materials and make a plan for incorporating AAC into your life. Starting in Week 1, you’ll do hands-on learning with your communication board (or device/app), watch informational videos, and read through documents. Prepare to select a communication board to use throughout this program. LINK to coom boards If you’re unsure of which one to use, don’t let that stop you. We’ll give you some guidance on... [Read More...]

PrAACtical Groups: Let’s Be Authors

May 20, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtical Groups: Let's Be Authors

Our series on AAC group therapy continues with guest authors Marisa Portanova and Marnina Allis. In today’s post, they share ideas for helping young AAC users enhance their literacy skills. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: PrAACtical AAC Groups Made Easy – Let’s Be Authors Last week, we discussed our ongoing weekly groups. Once we had success and saw progress made in the weekly groups, we came up with the concept of “AAC intensive groups,” where children would come in over a school break for a week and participate in the AAC groups for 5 consecutive days, for a longer stretch (about two and a half hours). This gave children a chance to interact with children from different classes and helped reduce the regression of learned AAC skills over the school break. During those weeks, we picked one book per day for the first 4 days. Day 5 was for review, discussing opinions of each... [Read More...]

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 20: May 2024

May 19, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 20: May 2024

Happy Sunday, AAC friends. We have some posts that you might enjoy. Monday – PrAACtical Groups: AAC Let’s Have a Weekly Social   Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: Eyegaze & ALS Thursday – A PrAACtical Guide to Stepping into AAC ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: While you’re at it, here are some previous posts that may be of interest. Helping Beginning Communicators Expand Their Sentence Length 5 Ways to Make Semantic Maps More Effective in AAC Therapy PrAACtical Questions with Vicki Clarke: What’s the Role of Core Vocabulary? Communication Boards: Colorful Considerations Zooming, Masking, Distancing, & More: AAC-friendly Resources for Managing Coronavirus Challenges Let Me Tell You Something- Narratives for the Beginning Communicator

A PrAACtical Guide to Stepping into AAC

May 16, 2024 by - 2 Comments

A PrAACtical Guide to Stepping into AAC

Parents of children, teens, and adults who are learning to use AAC often find themselves in need of more support than they typically receive. Today, we are excited to launch a new series that addresses this need. This series is built around a unique collaboration between PrAACtical AAC and the Angelman Syndrome Foundation (ASF), bringing together our expertise to create a set of training materials that caregivers can use to build an AAC presence in their lives or expand its use in daily living situations. These materials are now available on both of our websites, ready to empower and support you in your AAC journey. In today’s post, you’ll learn about the Stepping Into AAC program and how to access the materials. Future posts will focus on the implementation of AAC by families who want to enhance communication at home and in the community. Who is the target audience for... [Read More...]

PrAACtical Groups: AAC Let’s Have a Weekly Social  

May 13, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtical Groups: AAC Let’s Have a Weekly Social  

We’re excited to welcome back guest authors Marisa Portanova and Marnina Allis to extend the conversation about running AAC groups for children. Enjoy! :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: PrAACtical AAC Groups Made Easy – Let’s Have a Weekly Social  Lions and tigers and AAC groups, OH MY! Group therapy can be intimidating. We have some tips, tricks and ideas we want to share to help you get started. Let’s jump in!  So welcome back, and thanks for following along our AAC group’s journey with us. Within Blythedale Children’s Hospital, we have a school program run in coordination with the Mount Pleasant Blythedale Union Free School District. These children come to school on a regular school calendar, including the extended school year 6-week summer session. Once we were doing groups with our verbal children, we decided to start groups for our AAC users. We wanted to model core language and target literacy, so we made... [Read More...]

PrAACtical Groups: AAC Groups Made Easy – How to Get Started 

May 6, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtical Groups: AAC Groups Made Easy – How to Get Started 

Today we welcome two new guest authors, Marisa Portanova and Marnina Allis, to share their experiences in running AAC groups. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: PrAACtical AAC Groups Made Easy – How to Get Started  All speech language pathologists do group therapy. It’s a great way to work on pragmatic skills, but lots of other skills too. It can also be motivating and fun for the participants. Have you thought about groups for AAC users but weren’t sure where to start? We are Marisa and Marnina, SLPs at Blythedale Children’s Hospital, and we started groups for our AAC users.  Over the next few blog posts, you will learn more about these, but today, we will discuss the overview and some tips and tricks that helped make them successful.    Marisa and Marnina are SLPs at Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Westchester County, NY.  They are part of the Assistive Technology team, where they do multi-disciplinary... [Read More...]

PrAACtically Mother’s Day: AAC-friendly Ideas

May 2, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtically Mother's Day: AAC-friendly Ideas

Here in the US, we’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day soon. If you’re looking for resources that you can incorporate into your AAC work, we have some ideas for you. These are great for highlighting core vocabulary, such as these: Pronouns: I, you, she, we, her, our Verbs: can, do, give, help, like, love, make, read, see, write Adjectives: good, nice, pretty, smart, strong Conjunctions: and, because, but, with Time Words: later, now, today, tomorrow Questions: what, who, where ACTIVITY SUGGESTIONS Read about Mothers and Mother’s Day with some of these books. Mother’s Day Book for Early Communicators by AAC with Annie Mother’s Day book highlighting core words ‘like’ and ‘give’ from Speech by Carrie. You can also check out this one which focuses on the words ‘help’ and ‘make’ and offers practice with several pronouns. From Boardmaker  From Tarheel Reader (SDJ)   From Tarheel Reader (Nicolaus)   Cards and letters... [Read More...]

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 17: April 2024

April 28, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 17: April 2024

Happy Sunday, AAC friends. We have some posts for you to browse. Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: AAC in Shared Reading Thursday – School Year of Core Vocabulary Words – Older Student Lessons: AAC Resources for May ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Have time for a little more? Here’s a small selection for you to peruse. “Can I Ask You a Question?” Language Experience Surveys Language Experience Surveys: 8 Fun Ideas Strengthening the Communication Environment Barriers to Access for AAC Learners Living an Accessible Life AAC at a Distance: 5 Ways to Use Video Chat & Videoconferencing to Boost Engagement  

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 16: April 2024

April 21, 2024 by - Leave your thoughts

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week 16: April 2024

Happy Sunday, AAC friends. We have some posts that you might enjoy. Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: Getting Ready for May School Year of Core Vocabulary Words Older Student Lessons Thursday – Throwback Thursday: AAC Support for People with Vision Challenges —————————————————————— And while you’re here, check out some of these past posts. 5 Ways to Promote Consistent AAC Use Twin Powers Unite: Teaching AAC and Sight Words Pragmatic Skill Instruction and AAC with Matthew Baud and Dr. Jill Senner Parent Collaboration in AAC Therapies PrAACtical Questions with Vicki Clarke: What’s the Role of Core Vocabulary? Video of the Week: Telepractice in AAC – Working with What You’ve Got For our prAACtical friends who celebrate Passover, we wish you a joyous and meaningful holiday.