585 Search Results for tell me about it
September 5, 2012
by Robin Parker -
AAC Supports- Don’t Go ANYWHERE Without Them.. Access To AAC & Visual Supports Allows Students to: Let you know what they want Let you know nicely what they don’t want Answer class questions Ask a question Say ‘I don’t know’ Ask for help Tell you they are having fun Create a Sentence Argue Negotiate Say a line in a school play Say ‘here’ during attendance Tell what they did on the weekend Tell what they did over the summer Tell you what they want to do at home Tell you if they are happy Tell you if they are scared Tell you if they are frustrated Tell you about their family Tell you about their pets Say please Say their name Say hello to a person Tell you what they like to do Ask for more Tell you which color they want Ask for a break Tell you why they are... [Read More...]
September 2, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
We’ve been thinking a lot lately about the social skills of some of our AAC friends who are not quite fitting in the way that they would like. SLPs frequently work on social interaction skills with learners on the ASD spectrum, but it’s not something that we always think about with learners who have cerebral palsy, apraxia, or other developmental disabilities. – The idea of using a balance scale as a metaphor for balance in conversational turns is intriguing and one we’ve explored a bit. In this video from Autism Teaching Strategies, Joel Shaul demonstrates the strategy and discusses it relative to turn-taking (Click here for Part 1 and click here for the second video). That makes sense for a lot of learners who don’t respond to non-obligatory situations as well as they could. – We’ve also used it for helping people with AAC see how their utterances compare to... [Read More...]
August 27, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
“How was school?” (Good) “What did you do?” (Nothing) This scenario plays out in many cars and kitchens in the after school hours and it can be hard to know who is more frustrated: the kids for being asked or the parents for not getting satisfactory answers. And still, we repeat the process day after day. Of course, we want to know the fine details of what happened and how our children felt, but in some cases, we’d settle for ANY school-related conversation at all. I’ll be the first to admit that it took me way too long to get the hang of how to get information about my children’s school days, and it seemed like just when I did, pow! They were pre-teens and then teenagers. New rule book. Here are some ‘lessons learned’ along the way about those afterschool conversations and some suggestions for parents of the kids... [Read More...]
August 1, 2012
by Robin Parker -
We wrote about how a ‘funny area’ helped a student communicate more frequently. In the postscript at the end, we said that the student only asked for the ‘funny area’ once in a while. Now we have a second postscript, the student asked for the ‘funny area’ yesterday. He had a lot of energy and definitely had the giggles. To show he learned more with a communication high priority approach, Tommy quickly asked for the ‘funny glasses’ and ‘funny hat’ but then also went on to initiate telling of a joke for the first time! Take a look at these great jokes from AAC users –courtesy of the University of Washington.
August 1, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Lots more ISAAC fun to tell about in Day 4! — My day started with a shorter version of the presentation on the preschool core language curriculum that I’m working on with Lori Wise. You can see the handout for that presentation here. — There is some fascinating work going on in the area in supporting the emotional development of children with AAC needs. Dr. Sarah Blackstone and colleagues talked about the developmental sequence in which emotional competence emerges. They are working on an observation and interview tool used to collect information on a child’s emotional development and the caregiver strategies. They are planning a pilot study with the tool they are developing and actively looking for volunteers to use this tool with children who are developmentally between 12 months and 10 years. – Terry Foss and and Jane Korsten did an interesting presentation called Promptology 101 where they reviewed some... [Read More...]
July 29, 2012
by Robin Parker -
When we first started PrAACtical AAC, Carole wrote a post titled “5 Nice Things To Say To A Student Who Uses AAC”. We thought it was time to update these by adding visual support (and a few extra nice things to say). Why did we want to add visual support? Because then we are able to implement a favorite language facilitation strategy— Aided Language Input (ALI). We try to implement aided language input (ALI) when providing positive specific feedback so the message can be ‘seen and heard’. We can definitely say nice things without visual support (and we do), but when we can, we do. Everyone needs to hear nice things, A LOT. Just ask yourself, do you get all the positive feedback you want? Visualize- 9 Nice Things To Say To A Student Who Use AAC *All images created from Open Clipart Library which is the library for high-quality free clipart and ImageBot. A PDF... [Read More...]
July 29, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Welcome to ISAAC, 2012! — It’s the first day of the ISAAC pre-conference and the focus of the workshop I attended was on healthcare. It was quite an honor to learn from such a stellar group of AAC professionals, including Sarah Blackstone, John Costello, Kathryn Garrett, Richard Hurtig from the US and Cristina Cerantola, Elisabeth Cataix Negre, several others from around the world, who came together to talk about effective patient-provider communication. As we well know, the AAC community is one of several communication vulnerable populations that require special supports when accessing health care. This presentation was highly interactive and covered best practices, strategies, and technologies that we should be putting into place for people with AAC needs as they interact with medical personnel. – There was a wealth of resources shared during the workshop, mostly of very prAACtical resources. We have permission to share many of them here. Watch... [Read More...]
July 28, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Some PrAACtical AAC thoughts about challenging behavior: I wonder if it is ok to say that we love seeing challenging behavior during speech-language therapy sessions or observations. Well, I said it, both of us do, because if we really ‘listen’ then we can figure out what to teach that will really help our students. We tend to prioritize our goals into High Priority and General Priority. Challenging behavior and the communication message behind it, definitely falls into high priority. This is because challenging behavior in students limits experiences, limits interaction, and overall limits opportunities for people to get to know you. Consider Challenging Behavior through Communication Glasses Is it really Challenging Behavior? behavior that is or can be destructive or hurtful. Examples include but are not limited to: hitting, biting, spitting, throwing, pounding, etc. (Note: we are not talking about poor eye contact or poor attention to task or even laughing... [Read More...]
July 25, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
In an earlier post, we lamented the under-utilization of a quick and effective strategy: qualitative rating scales. You may not know them by that name, but we all know them. Also called Likert-type scales, we’ve seen these a multitude of times when we were asked to give an opinion. Strongly agree to Strongly Disagree. Excellent to Poor. Always to Never. – There are only a few guidelines to using these with AAC folks. One is to make sure to use appropriate visual supports. Literate AAC users may be very comfortable with text-only options, but for other learners, we need to add images so it makes sense to them. Another suggestion is to stick with an odd number of options: 5 seems to be the norm in clinical practice, but you can certainly adjust to fit the learner’s needs. For some, a 3-point scale would be best. Others may want more... [Read More...]
July 18, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
This post was inspired by a budding young professional who loves AAC and is DETERMINED to provide best practice services for the young students she serves. (See?? This is why we love being clinical educators!) We were chatting about a youngster on her caseload who uses an eyegaze SGD and is making some good progress with the technical aspects of it. Our conversation turned to goal setting. – First, a word about how to talk about AAC in the goals and objectives. For people who use SGDs, there are pros and cons to naming the actual device in the goal. Some SLPs favor that, while others prefer a more flexible approach and describe the device features. More about that another time. A more general concern about writing AAC goals is the tendency to focus more on operating equipment than on becoming an effective communicator. Clearly, we advocate the latter: AAC... [Read More...]