Yesterday, we posted about using special interests to create prAACtical communication opportunities, our AAC intervention strategy of the month. Today, we share this Video of Week on the same topic. The team at ConnectAbility presented this video workshop on Special Interest Areas and Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. –
More About Communication Opportunities: It doesn’t matter your personality, but for students who do not naturally comment, you need to go ape! And then still, you need to teach with wait & signal cues, visual supports, aided language input, modeling, expansions, and positive feedback. We will never forget a semester with Mikey and our hair clips of butterflies, whales, dinosaurs, and even a spider. These hair clips allowed for the item to hang in our face…… until Mikey commented and we could ‘go ape’ with surprise. A great strategy to use with commenting communication temptations is Wait & Signal. Wait and Signal involves setting up the temptation and then pausing with raised eyebrows like you expect the learner to take a ‘turn/a conversational turn’. As always, make sure the learner has access to the appropriate communication device or communication boards. 10 additional commenting communication temptations and opportunities: Move a huge stuffed... [Read More...]
Gesture Recognition in Aphasia Therapy (GeST) is a project that emphasizes the use of gestures to help individuals with aphasia communicate effectively. GeST is a computer-based program to teach simple gestures and provide home practice opportunities. Project leaders used a participatory design to gain the input from 5 people with aphasia in developing the program. They are currently evaluating its effectiveness in a pilot study. We are big fans of multimodal communication and love the prAACtical applications of this program. You can check it out for yourself at this video.
We have many students who are getting older. It’s a time many of our families are looking at transition steps. Some families are interested in employment opportunities, others in having their now adult children live outside the home with a little or a lot of support, and others just wish there was a place for them to go after school ends. . It is difficult finding quality options. Even if there are options, it seems ‘they’ want the ‘easy’ people. (disclaimer: Now I move from the ‘we’ into the ‘me’ since Carole has been on vacation and I have been dealing with some ‘crap’ and don’t want to speak for Carole since I am hoping she is relaxed and positive). So here goes…. I could argue now that there are no ‘easy’ people. I could rant now because it has been one of those days where not a lot has... [Read More...]
The Chicago P.L.A.Y. Project is on a mission to empower parents to help their children build language through play. We love the joyful nature of their mission. – Of course, the clinical educators in us see huge potential for adding visual supports to enhance the language learning, but this is an amazing way to build good interaction and language opportunities. – Enjoy!
Toca Boca App Developers make general education preschool apps. They are dedicated to providing interactive play opportunities using mobile technology. We have loved every one of their apps since we first saw them. There seems to be some philosophical similarities between the Toca Boca Apps and so we will begin with why we love ALL of them. We have found them to be engaging to all ages (including us). They also provide practice and interaction with life experiences in a fun and pretend tech way. We love the beautiful artwork. We love that they are reasonably priced, often participate in ‘give aways’ and they even do free GIFTS (think Toca Hair Salon Christmas Gift and now Toca Kitchen Monsters). We use these apps so often that we can say we have officially HijAACked them for PrAACtical AAC. We have HijAACked ALL of these apps to use with AAC... [Read More...]
Toca Kitchen Monsters – FREE, A GIFT FROM TOCA BOCA Wow, another amazing & educational app from Toca Boca. Learn to cook and feed the Toca Kitchen Monsters. This app is really fun to play and it’s free (not even any in-app purchase opportunities). The educational part of this app can be focused on cooking and eating language concepts, sequencing of language, and real-life skills (choosing food, cooking, and feeding or eating someone). Although the scope and sequence of this app is ‘real’, there is a main fantasy or pretend play aspect (other than the cooking and eating) – you are feeding funny looking monsters. This is great because all pretending is symbolic and so is language! So get your Toca Kitchen Monsters now! Look out for an updated post tomorrow about how we have HijAACked this app.
Please check out the most recent set of suggestions here. We love getting EVERYONE involved in Autism Awareness Month. We like to take a goal focused approach to our Autism Awareness Month activities by choosing projects that facilitate positive attitudes & discussions. We pass out materials, have contests, go to events, do extra talks, and try and engage EVERYONE we know and even some we do not know. We do a lot of shopping (with small amount of money, but we have to EAT and accessorize). Our families, pets, friends, and students all participate. It is a month filled with purposeful fun. Here are some of the things we will be doing. Please share any activities or projects that you know about. Bake, share, & eat some desserts. Need inspiration?.. try these Puzzle Piece Rice Crispy Treats Join the webinar Autism Explosion by Dr. Coplan will be shown... [Read More...]
There’s nothing more depressing to us than walking into a classroom in the spring and seeing pristine visual schedules. Why? Because it probably means that the students aren’t really using them. We cheer when we see schedules that are rumpled and dog-eared, not shiny. Show me a battered and tattered visual schedule, and I’ll show you one that gets used every day. Sadly, that’s not always the case. – The bridge between having a visual schedule and consistently using it is one that many learners don’t seem to cross. Here are some of our ideas for helping your AAC learners to the other side. – 1. Have a plan to teach the schedule. If you are working one-on-one with a learner, you can easily implement the schedule and get them using it with most-to-least prompting. If you’re working with a group or a classroom, consider staggered implementation. Teaching 12 beginners... [Read More...]
Wishes are wonderful things, seducing us with their promise and possibility. So with the luck o’ the Irish in mind, we’re sending forth a wish for something intangible, the big O: Opportunity. — Our AAC wish list for this month is all about opportunities. Opportunity. It has such a nice ring to it. Our parents and teachers tried to prepare us to recognize opportunity, and promised us that it would come knocking. – But sometimes the knock of AAC opportunity is drowned out by other things. Sometimes we just don’t hear it. We may miss the opportunity to teach a new clinician how to expand the language of a teenager learning to use a speech generating device. We may miss the chance to create the teachable moment for a child just learning to use AAC to make a comment. We might miss the opportunity to encourage a parent to give... [Read More...]