353 Search Results for aided language input
April 21, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
– Guest post by Stefanie Finocchio, M.S., CCC-CF As we’ve said before, we feel incredibly fortunate to have made our careers educating the next generation of SLPs. Sharing what we’e learned about AAC, AT, autism, literacy, and language intervention with graduate student clinicians is a challenge we both love. In this post, we share the wonderful ideas of a recent graduate, Stefanie Finocchio. Although she has only been out of grad school for a few months, Stefanie has some very prAACtical ideas about how to create communication opportunities for young children who are learning to use AAC. – One of my favorite “go-to” activities/games that I use frequently with my students diagnosed with autism is the Playskool Busy Gears game by Hasbro. It comes with 11 plastic gears of all different sizes and colors. Once a gear is placed on the board, you hit a button on the bottom and... [Read More...]
April 18, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
This is a strategy that is too powerful to ignore. Here’s why Aided Language Input is at the top of our list of skills that all clinicians should master. – 1. Helps children and adults learn their AAC faster: There is good research demonstrating how valuable this kind of modeling is for our AAC clients. See studies by Drs. Kathryn Drager, Cathy Binger and Janice Light, Jennifer Kent-Walsh, Shakila Dada and Erna Alant for starters.– 2. Helps the SLP get competent with the client’s AAC system: This is hands-down the quickest way for us to get familiar with our client’s AAC device. – 3. It’s common sense: Think about it: How many times does a typical 1-year old hear the word ‘more’ before she says it?? Don’t AAC kids need that much exposure to ‘their’ language systems?? – 4. Expands our sphere of influence: Other communication partners will imitate us. If WE use it, then parents and teachers are... [Read More...]
April 7, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
April is springtime where we live and spring is a time of beginnings. It’s fitting, then, that our AAC strategy of the month speaks to the very beginning of AAC intervention. Learning how to create focused opportunities to teach or practice an AAC skill is a pivotal skill for SLPs. The concept is a simple one: create an environment in which the learner WANTS or NEEDS to display the target skill. – Communication opportunities are related to the concept of communicative temptations. As SLP blogger Becca Jarzynski of Child Talk puts it “Communication temptations are pretty much just what they sound like: we set up the environment to tempt children to communicate with us.” Stop by and read her excellent post here . While Becca focuses on their use with young children, the approach can be used with people of any age. – Tempting people to communicate is all about... [Read More...]
February 29, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
The Fives 5 Features of AAC Apps & SGDs that Make Us Happy 5 Little Things that Make a Big Difference in AAC Intervention 5 Ways SLPs Can Support Friendships for People who Use AAC 5 Ways to Help People With AAC Needs Develop Inner Speech 5 Great Places to Get AAC Therapy Materials 5 Creative Ways to Use the Big Mack and Other Talking Switches 5 Genius Reasons to Discover & Love MeeGenius 5 Quick Wishes for SGDs & Apps 5 Reasons Why A ‘Speech-Only’ Approach Isn’t Good Enough 5 Sources of AAC Inspiration Strategy of the Month: Aided Language Input AACtual Progress: Learning to Use Aided Language Input Using the AAC Device/App: Getting the Team On Board Why We Love Aided Language Input Strategy of the Month: Aided Language Input Video of the Week: Aided Language Input Demo Teachers in Action: Aided Language Input Other Posts Malls &... [Read More...]
February 21, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Communication and language involves so much more than requesting. Without much effort, communicators with typical language development and even delayed language development communicate for many reasons. Showing or telling about a shared interest comes easily and is a form of commenting to communicate. Commenting is one of the most social reasons that we communicate. So, it makes perfect sense that children with social communication disorders may not have an easy time with these social aspects of communication and language. We know many children who frequently use long (or short) sentences to say ‘I want the blue truck’, ‘I want the big ball’, or even ‘Can I have the cold drink’. They may even communicate frequently to ask for toys, games, or activities of their choice. All of the requesting is GREAT but not enough to be part of comprehensive conversations and social language interactions. It is not that children with... [Read More...]
February 18, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Families and professionals often share a common frustration when a new SGD, communication aid, or AAC app is introduced: Getting people to use it. Whether we’re fighting with insurance companies or navigating the educational maze, our attention is often consumed by getting access to the device. Then, oh happy day, it arrives. Round 1 is over. We won! We get it set up (no small feat). We start teaching the communicator to use it and everyone shares the excitement of this new tool. For awhile, anyway. – And then, reality sets in. – We realize that learning to communicate through this tool and building language skills with it is a p-r-o-c-e-s-s. There’s an arc to that process. It slowly sinks in that this new tool is necessary but not sufficient for real communication and language learning to occur. Though we knew that having the AAC device or app wasn’t going... [Read More...]
February 17, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
We’re always looking for engaging ways to give our preschool children practice with their core word vocabulary. Stop and Go by ShortStack is an app that will get your little friends using core language without even realizing how much practice they are getting. — We love the simple structure of the app, which shows vehicles stopped at a traffic light. We see and hear the name of the vehicle and then press the green light for the vehicle to go. It has an English or a Spanish option and lots of interactive elements to try and then talk about. — Magic Moments with Stop and Go 1. Core Word Practice: As expected, there are tons of opportunities for the child to move the vehicles in this app. Using the strategy of controlled access, we can elicit ‘stop’ and ‘go’ multiple times in this game. 2. More Core Word Practice –... [Read More...]
January 6, 2012
by Robin Parker -
We know that ALL people communicate. However, when someone has communication challenges, their signals may not always be obvious or conventional. Here is our Quick Step Guide to getting to know about someone’s specific communication. Using these steps will help facilitate spontaneous communication and move communication along the continuum of conventionality and symbolism. 1. Observe: What are they doing that is potentially communicative? Look for clues in behaviors. Consider proximity, persistence, expressions, repetition, intensity, or anything else that might expresses a message. More ideas from the National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness. Great information that is applicable to a wide range of early communicators. Don’t rule this out until you’ve looked at it. 2. Interpret: What does that behavior mean? Think about what would they ‘say’ if there was no communication problem. It can be a positive message (‘I want that’, ‘oh come on pretty please’) or a negative message... [Read More...]
September 16, 2023
by Carole Zangari -
About Week 2 Welcome to the second week of your Stepping into AAC journey! Now that you have a communication board (or other AAC tool) to use and an idea of what to expect over the next 19 weeks, we’re going to dive into some concepts that will help you begin using this with your AAC learner. We will explore the following concepts this week: Word List: Get a preview of all the words that we’ll be focusing on over the course of this program. Shared Attention: Gain an understanding of the crucial role that joint attention plays in learning and communication and how to maximize it for the benefit of your AAC learner. Multimodal Communication: Learn about different forms of communication and how to incorporate them when supporting a beginning AAC user. Modeling Language with AAC: Consider how to help your AAC learner expand their language abilities by giving... [Read More...]
July 20, 2023
by Carole Zangari -
Our series on multilingual AAC support guest authored by BilingüeAAC continues. In today’s post, Sarah Lee addresses issues specific to features of AAC apps and SGDs. BilingüeAAC is a group of SLPs with a shared belief in providing evidence-based intervention strategies and resources to bilingual Spanish AAC clients, families, caregivers, and professionals. If you are new to this series, you can check out the previous articles using the links below. Bilingual AAC Support from Monolingual Professionals: An Introduction Cultural-Linguistic AAC Intervention: A Framework for Consideration Gathering Information from Families with Questionnaires and Surveys Most of us WANT to provide culturally-linguistic responsive bilingual Spanish AAC intervention, but we don’t feel confident without knowing/speaking the language. In an effort to foster Spanish heritage language development and empower the monolingual SLPs*, we have created context-specific templates using the sociocultural approach (Soto & Yu, 2014) for the monolingual English-speaking SLP*. We will be referencing... [Read More...]