690 Search Results for communication book
June 24, 2019
by Carole Zangari -
Thanks to all who reached out to express appreciation for Katherine Dally’s series on making and using flipbooks for adults and teenagers with complex communication. Today, she continues that series with a case example of how she used this to support a young woman who communicates through multiple modalities, including an SGD. Katherine is an SLP who works both as an AT consultant for an educational service center and as a home health SLP serving adults with neurological conditions in Ohio. We’re grateful to Katherine for sharing her experiences and for the downloadable materials that are linked at the end of her post If you missed her previous posts in this series, you may want to check those out: How I Do It – Pocket Flipbooks for Adults & Teens: Part 1, Part 2. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: How I Do It: Pocket Flipbooks for Teens Let’s go through a teen case example... [Read More...]
June 19, 2019
by Carole Zangari -
Teachers and therapists sometimes struggle to find effective ways to support students with multiple disabilities who have visual impairments. In today’s video, Faye Gonzalez, a teacher of the visually impaired, helps us understand ways that we can incorporate sensory activities to help these students further develop their communication, language and literacy skills. Many thanks to Faye and to Perkins for hosting this archived presentation. You can access the handout for this session here. The downloadable blank book template is available here. Direct Link to Video Page: https://www.perkinselearning.org/videos/webinar/sensory-activities-experiences-improve-communication-and-literacy-children-visual-and
June 17, 2019
by Carole Zangari -
Grilling, wine tasting, horse racing…What did you talk about this weekend? The vocabulary and messaging needs of adults who have significant communication difficulties are often quite different than those of children and youth. Today, we welcome back SLP Katherine Dally who continues to share her experiences in creating and using small flipbooks for adults with complex communication needs. The flipbooks in this post (which can be downloaded via a link later in the article) focus on leisure activities that are perfect for summer. You can see Part 1 and download the template here. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: How To – Pocket Flip Book For Adults and Teens Have you worked with a client who was given a generic, low-tech paper communication board at the hospital? These are the boards that include pain, yes/no, and bathroom, among other basic needs and wants. With these boards, personalization is limited. The topics can be important, but... [Read More...]
June 10, 2019
by Carole Zangari -
There is no doubt that adults with complex communication needs are an underserved population, something that is on our minds a lot during June, which is Aphasia Awareness Month. We feel fortunate to have a guest post today from Ohio-based SLP Katherine Dally, who works both as an AT consultant for an educational service center and as a home health SLP serving adults with neurological conditions. Katherine has served as the SLP on an ALS clinic focusing AAC evaluations, the use of voice banking, and no-tech/low tech communication. In today’s post, she provides some wonderful ideas for using activity-specific communication books with adults and teenagers and shares her templates for you to download. Pocket Mini-Communication Flipbooks Need a low-tech idea that’s pocket-sized and accessible everywhere for adults? Take a look at these pocket mini-communication flip books. These flip books were originally created for clients with a diagnosis of ALS to... [Read More...]
May 23, 2019
by Carole Zangari -
Looking for a fun way to integrate more emergent literacy into your AAC work? You’re in the right place! Today, SLPs Maggie Judson and Jeanna Antrim share one of their many ideas for engaging therapy sessions. Maggie and Jeanna 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. You can see a previous guest post that Jeanna wrote here. Let’s hear how they make and use squishy books in their therapy sessions. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: AAC, Literacy and Squishy Books If you’ve done any reading or research around the topic of AAC and literacy, you know that students with complex communication needs do not typically get the same kinds of experiences with literacy activities as do their peers (Light & Kent-Walsh, 2003). So we are always on the... [Read More...]
January 21, 2019
by Carole Zangari -
This is an updated version of a post originally authored by Dr. Robin Parker in 2013. We hope you find something of value in the resources that were shared. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: To integrate reading and writing into communication and language learning we need to have lots of books that are easily accessible. Books should be accessible physically as well as through content and interest. This holds true for ALL learners even those that don’t like books but do like…… wheels. We have made literacy accessible for a young girl who only liked elevators, and a boy who only liked balls, and a young adult who liked Barney books but not much else. It holds true for ALL disabilities and ALL levels of reading and writing. Today, we share resources for making and using adapted books to make literacy more accessible. Check out these awesome resources for making your own adapted books... [Read More...]
June 18, 2018
by Carole Zangari -
Looking for more ways to build AAC skills? Book reading can be incorporated into therapy sessions and instructional lessons, as well as part of the daily routine at home. Here are some ideas for using books to support AAC and language learning. Choosing a book: In most cases, we want the AAC learner to have the autonomy to choose a book. However, we can make this part of the AAC learning process by teaching the skill of choosing something to read and talking about it before the learner makes his/her choice. Goal Areas: We can use this time to build basic turn-taking skills, requesting, sentence-building, and new vocabulary, among other things. It’s also a great opportunity to develop more advanced syntax using words like ‘since’ and ‘because’ (e.g., “I want to read about sport because it is World Cup time.”) and various sentence structures (e.g., “First, let’s read a sports... [Read More...]
June 11, 2018
by Carole Zangari -
Vicki Clarke, CEO of Dynamic Therapy Associates and Director of DTA Schools, is back with another wonderful edition of AAC Assessment Corner. In addition to their clinic, Vicki and her team support school districts in AAC evaluation, equipment procurement, and implementation for individual students in the academic environment. DTA Schools also supports district-wide AAC implementation through the Classroom Communication Goals Project, training, and supporting all team members in classroom AAC implementation. In today’s post, Vicki shares her thoughts on how we can look at the use of AAC symbols for nouns as part of our evaluations for comprehensive AAC systems. You can view her previous contributions to the AAC Assessment Corner here. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Evaluating Skills For Use of Comprehensive AAC Systems, Part 2: Language Representation Elements – Noun Symbol Use for Functional Communication It was a crazy, busy month full of evaluations, trainings, and report writing. I’ve spent a lot of time with... [Read More...]
January 25, 2018
by Carole Zangari -
Reading together with AAC learners can be a great activity for building engagement, language, and literacy skills. Like any other activity, though, it won’t be very helpful in doing that unless we use effective strategies. Today, we share an online module that will help with the basics of interactive book reading. Part of Project CONNECT, The Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge, which offers full courses for a fee and a limited set of modules (like the one we are sharing today) at no charge. This is a great starting place for anyone looking to better understand how to use shared reading as a way to build communication skills. From there, we can guide families, paraprofessionals, and professionals who work with AAC learners to utilize additional strategies, such as aided language input and descriptive talking, to support those who use some form of augmentative communication. Enjoy learning more about Dialogic... [Read More...]
December 14, 2017
by Carole Zangari -
Today, we hear more from Colorad0-based SLP Kimberly Walker who explains more about how they use the Treat Cart activity to support the communicative development of her students with AAC needs. You can see the first part of her post here. ——————————————————— The Treat Cart has made our co-treating planning so simple. The first Thursday of the month we take inventory to see what things we need to buy to restock our cart. We have done this by making a graph with paper and also doing an actual object graph with the products and sticky notes to simulate the products gone. We target the language of more and less and also work on making a list to take to the store. On the second Thursday of the month, we work on identifying environmental print of the products we are selling and practice selling to each other targeting the skills in... [Read More...]