174 Search Results for gail van tatenhove

PrAACtically April – AAC Resources for A Year of Core Words: The Learn-at-Home Edition

March 30, 2020 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtically April: AAC Resources for A Year of Core Words – Learn-at-Home Edition

We’re entering a new era in AAC learning, one that’s centered around learning at home. Whether you are a parent trying to keep your child’s AAC skills up in the absence of their regular therapy and schooling, or a professional who is providing AAC support from afar, we hope that our monthly Year of Core Vocabulary Learn-at-Home Edition posts help you stay focused and keep your learners using their AAC skills. In today’s post, we share some ideas for boosting core word learning throughout the week with a focus on a small set of words. Whether you are following along with the Set 1 (12 words/month) or the Set 2 words (16 words/month; Different than the previous core words), or are just getting started, this post has some helpful resources. Our words for this month are as follows. Set 1 List: big, busy, do, drink, feel, he, in, make, out, some, tell, who... [Read More...]

PrAACtically March: More AAC Resources for a Year of Core Words

February 24, 2020 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtically March: More AAC Resources for a Year of Core 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: More AAC Resources for a Year of Core Words

January 27, 2020 by - 1 Comment

PrAACtically February: More AAC Resources for a Year of Core Words

It’s just about time to turn the page on the calendar 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, with using aided language input and focused language stimulation. What else? Here are some ideas... [Read More...]

PrAACtically January: Some AAC Resources for A Year of Core Words

December 26, 2019 by - Leave your thoughts

PrAACtically January: Some 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...]