822 Search Results for core vocabulary
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...]
June 13, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
There’s so much to love about BrainPOP. Geared for students in 4th-12th grades. Solid curricular content. Engaging animation and really fun educational games. Aligned with Common Core. Searchable by learning standard, subject, or grade level. Built-in assessment. Evidence-based. Web-based and app versions. Closed captioned videos. English and Spanish editions. Additional resources for educators. A simplified version for younger learners. And lots of it for free! – I’ve just scratched the surface of this wonderful site, which has been around since 1999, and is growing in depth and breadth. It’s perfect for some of the older students with whom we work and has a lot of potential for AAC learning. – Magic Moments: Ideas for AAC Intervention with BrainPOP 1. Navigation: Even some of our older students are still learning to find their way around complex AAC systems. The engaging content in the BrainPop videos create a fun context for activities... [Read More...]
May 21, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
It’s no coincidence that some of our favorite apps to use with AAC kids don’t rely on good receptive language in order to be successful and have fun. Count us among the fans of Toca Boca for their creative play-based apps with great graphics and lots of repetition with variety. In this post, we share some Magic Moments for using Toca Store as a communication-building experience.– 1. Core Word Practice: Lots of opportunities for practice with familiar nouns (e.g., banana, doll), common verbs (e.g., get, see, want) and modifiers (colors, some, little). 2. Negation: This is another fun app to use when teaching a child to use language appropriate for negation, protests, and rejection. We like teaching that under low stress conditions like this at first to build their skills. Once they get the hang of it, then we help them use it under more natural conditions. That way we can... [Read More...]
April 28, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Mining everyday routines at home, in school, and in therapy sessions for communication teaching opportunities is a great way to get started in boosting the effectiveness of AAC intervention. We are inspired when we see clinicians enhance their clients’ learning by making subtle, but important changes. – I was thrilled to hear one SLP talk about how she ‘found’ more AAC practice for a teenager by offering more choices in her therapy games. Once he chose a TV character for the activity, LeVon then had to specify what action he/she would do (e.g., dance, drive, clap) and a location in which to do it (e.g., home, school, beach). Agent, action, location. Hmm…sounds like a good start for sentence-building, with a little aided language input and expansion thrown in for good measure. “Quinn drive beach.” “Yes. Quinn drove to the beach in his truck.” And it gives us great pleasure to... [Read More...]
April 7, 2012
by Robin Parker -
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...]
April 7, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
April is springtime where we live and spring is a time of beginnings. It’s fitting, then, that our AAC strategy of the month speaks to the very beginning of AAC intervention. Learning how to create focused opportunities to teach or practice an AAC skill is a pivotal skill for SLPs. The concept is a simple one: create an environment in which the learner WANTS or NEEDS to display the target skill. – Communication opportunities are related to the concept of communicative temptations. As SLP blogger Becca Jarzynski of Child Talk puts it “Communication temptations are pretty much just what they sound like: we set up the environment to tempt children to communicate with us.” Stop by and read her excellent post here . While Becca focuses on their use with young children, the approach can be used with people of any age. – Tempting people to communicate is all about... [Read More...]
March 14, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Stand Tall, Mary Lou Melon by Patty Lovell is a fun book that we like reading online* with kids who use AAC. Many schools have anti-bullying campaigns and read this book and others as part of their efforts to help children recognize and respond appropriately to unkind words and deeds. There are a lot of great resources for reading this book on sites like this one intended for use in general education classrooms. We decided it was time to HijAACk Mary Lou and share some ideas for using this wonderful story to build AAC and language skills. – 1. Beginning communicators could certainly contribute to the ‘read aloud’ portion of the activity with repeated lines, like “So she did.” Recording that into a single message device, an SGD, or an AAC app gives our student a terrific way to be actively engaged. 2. Students who can discriminate between two options can... [Read More...]
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 22, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
No feeling person could read Louise Kinross‘s post, My Child’s Dream: To Have Friends, without being moved. One of the most basic fervent wishes that all parents have is for their sons and daughters to make and keep friends. Disabled or not, parents fear loneliness for their kids, and rightfully so. Loneliness is a sharp and lasting pain. And, in many cases, completely unnecessary. Kinross’s post, brought to my attention by Ellen Seidman of (Love that Max), inspired me to generate this list of things that we SLP’s can and should be doing to support kids and families. is 1. Make friendship skills a priority: Are there friendship goals in the IEP? There could be. If you’re thinking about working on a social skill, take a step back and see if it makes sense to focus more specifically on communication skills in the context of making and keeping friends. Educationally relevant?... [Read More...]
February 17, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
We’re always looking for engaging ways to give our preschool children practice with their core word vocabulary. Stop and Go by ShortStack is an app that will get your little friends using core language without even realizing how much practice they are getting. — We love the simple structure of the app, which shows vehicles stopped at a traffic light. We see and hear the name of the vehicle and then press the green light for the vehicle to go. It has an English or a Spanish option and lots of interactive elements to try and then talk about. — Magic Moments with Stop and Go 1. Core Word Practice: As expected, there are tons of opportunities for the child to move the vehicles in this app. Using the strategy of controlled access, we can elicit ‘stop’ and ‘go’ multiple times in this game. 2. More Core Word Practice –... [Read More...]