802 Search Results for praactical teaching
February 25, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
The only thing better than watching someone who uses AAC get the hang of it, is having the privilege of seeing this develop in future SLPs. Turn up the music, it’s time for the Happy Dance! I had the distinct pleasure this week of watching some of our graduate student clinicians ‘get it’ with respect to using the Strategy of the Month, Aided Language Input. It’s taken a few weeks, but then again they only see their AAC friends for a short amount of time. – Here are a few things we learned along the way. – 1. It takes time to get good at this. We’re speaking pidgin AAC until we get fluent, so just keep at it. Give yourself permission to be halting at first. Keep at it and the fluency will come. 2. It helps to start small. If the communication aid, SGD, or app is complex,... [Read More...]
February 19, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
This is the first in an occasional series of posts in which we take activities designed for students in general education and tweak them a bit to make them into opportunities for AAC teaching. We’ll be building on great ideas from clinicians, parents, and educators (giving credit where it is due, of course). – The first HijAACked activity is from the Classroom Magic blog by Selina Smith. We chose this one because it gives us a chance to promote one of our favorite online book sources, We Give Books and share a wonderful book that supports Black History Month. We Give Books is a project of the Pearson Foundation and Penguin Books (you can find out more here). The Hallelujah Flight is the story of pilot James Banning and his good friend, mechanic Thomas Allen, flew cross country during the Great Depression. Written by former teacher Phil Bildner, this book... [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 15, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
We wanted to take a breather from all the busyness to reflect on the year and to offer up some words of appreciation. For us, 2011 started with our version of a retreat: a long walk in the sun, a half day of venting our frustrations and a half day of planning new projects interspersed with lunch at the beach. (There might have been a bottle of wine in there somewhere, too.) We’d both been feeling more than a bit discouraged that the quality of AAC services is still so spotty. There are some fantastic SLPs and teachers, of course, but not enough to go around. The ‘good ones’ are too busy. And the not-so-good ones were doing too much damage. It seemed to us that too many folks with significant communication challenges weren’t getting what they needed and that stressed us out to no end. Just when we had calmed down, we... [Read More...]
February 11, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
The concept of Aided Language Input is simple: Speak AAC to the learner. If you were teaching her French, you’d speak to her in French. No one would dispute that hearing the new language is an essential prerequisite to learning it. It’s the same in AAC. If we want our folks to learn to express themselves with AAC, they have to have a lot of expose to people speaking AAC. – Here are the top reasons we are such strong advocates of this as an intervention strategy. – 1. It has a strong research base, thanks to studies by Kathryn Drager, Cathy Binger and Janice Light, Jennifer Kent-Walsh, Shakila Dada, and others. – 2. It is the fastest way for a clinician, teacher, or parents to get familiar with the language in the AAC device. If we don’t know what words are in there and where they are located, can... [Read More...]
February 10, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Magic Moments: AAC Intervention with Apps You Love- Toca Boca Doctor “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”… If it were only that simple. But it is not that easy and since we are right in the middle of cold and flu season, it reminds us about teaching AAC users to let us know when they are not feeling well. The more we can find ways to make the concepts of pain, injury, and distress more concrete and specific, the easier it is to learn. Telling others about your own discomfort is an important self-advocacy and self-determination skill. —- On a more PrAACtical note, telling about your symptoms... [Read More...]
February 7, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Rainy days and movies go together like peanut butter and jelly. We had a dreary afternoon the other day and it seemed like we would never see the sun again. I settled in to watch a documentary that I’d bookmarked awhile ago but couldn’t quite bring myself to watch. Refrigerator Mothers is a look back to the 1950’s-60’s at the devastating experience that families of children with autism had during an era when medical professionals attributed the cause of ASD to poor mothering. It follows the stories of several American mothers and their adult children who were challenged by autism but traumatized by the professionals whose help they sought. – Surely we know better than this, right? One would thank that we’d never again blame families for causing a disability. And one would be wrong, as this article from the Huffington Post points out. The Bruno Bettelheim era is... [Read More...]
February 5, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Disney’s free app, Disneyland Explorer, is literally a walk in the park. We love the quality of the graphics, which are incredibly vivid and reminiscent of the old ViewMaster toy. The app is simple-just some views of Disneyland but because many of our kids have such intense memories of the Florida version of this theme park, it’s a natural for language therapy. Not everyone is lucky enough to live near a Disney park, but even so, there are lots of fun things to explore on this app.Take a peek at a video of the app here and you’ll see what we mean.There are lots of clinical/educational uses for this app, particularly for those kids we know whose lives are punctuated by trips to the Magic Kingdom. Here are some suggestions for AAC users of various ability levels. = Magic Moments: AAC Intervention with Disneyland Explorer 1. Multiple opportunities for using AAC... [Read More...]
February 4, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Imagine having one key communication strategy and no one knew that it existed. This horrifying experience was documented in the book ‘I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes,’ the autobiography of Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer. For years, she effectively used eye gaze with her family to answer yes/no questions, but when Ruth was placed at a residential facility, things eventually changed. Staff turnover, something we’re all familiar with, was the culprit. With time, new staff came in and didn’t realize that Ruth communicated with her eyes. Ruth was silenced for years until someone noticed that her ‘eyes up’ movement wasn’t reflexive or random. She was talking, but no one was listening. — While this was an extreme example, most AAC practitioners can recount their own stories of people whose AAC messages weren’t effectively translated once they moved to new settings. The transition to a new environment, where untrained partners may fail to recognize... [Read More...]
February 3, 2012
by Robin Parker -
How we integrated AAC strategies into a community event… The name of our website is PrAACtical AAC. We continue to look for ways to make AAC strategies fit praAACtically into ALL activities. We are extremely proud to be part of the Dan Marino Foundation WalkAbout Autism, which is a large South Florida Community Event. The Walkabout helps raise money services for individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities and their families. It also promotes a sense of community collaboration and awareness about autism spectrum disorder and developmental disabilities. We are including this information about the WalkAbout not as a plea for money (although read about the WalkAbout and donate if you are so inclined), but instead to tell you how we are incorporating AAC into community events. This past weekend was the 2nd WalkAbout Autism. It was a truly amazing event and day! There was great music and bounce houses,... [Read More...]