AAC Intervention: 5 Activities with PrAACtical Potential

Across the world, therapists, teachers, and parents are getting ready for AAC lessons or therapy sessions.

• Robust AAC systems? Check!
• Goals that matter? Check!
• Effective intervention strategies? Check!

Let’s put them all together with some engaging activities that won’t break the bank in terms of materials. Here are some suggestions for tried-and-true activities.

1. Language Experience Surveys: Looking for a fun activity that gives your AAC learner an opportunity to prAACtical his/her skills with a variety of communication partners? Language experience surveys are a great tool for that not just because they are a great way to build generalization in a way that kids really love, but also because it helps the communication partners have supported conversations with AAC users. This helps them get comfortable in interacting with our AAC learners which, in turn, increases the chances that they will want to interact with these students in the future. This is a Win-Win-Win activity that you can read more about here. 
2. YouTube Videos: Almost everyone enjoys watching funny cat videos or other YouTube video clips, and that gives us some prAACtical opportunities to use them as we work on a variety of skills. I love using video clips to target Tier 2 vocabulary words, conjunctions, and asking (not answering) questions. I got a lot of inspiration from Jenna Rayburn’s packet which links to student-friendly YouTube clips and is easy to adapt to address a variety of language goals for AAC learners.
3. Treasure Hunt: This is a great activity from CALL Scotland for targeting both core vocabulary and an important communicative function for many AAC learners: giving directions (not following them). Many AAC learners will need assistance throughout their lives and we can help them build the skills to direct their caregivers. This is an important skill for self-advocacy, safety, and personal autonomy. This type of activity can be really powerful. In fact, we’ve embedded these in our preschool AAC program, TELL ME, which focuses on core vocabulary.
4. Roving Reporter from CALL Scotland: This is another great activity for targeting generalization to other communication partners, but I also love it for talking about things that already happened. It’s important for us to teach morphology and past tense verbs are early on the list for many of our AAC learners.
5. Talking Avatars: AAC learners need help and practice combining short utterances into longer sentences and beyond. We can work on narratives across several sessions or lessons and build them piece by piece. Then we can take that narrative and use it as the text for a speaking avatar. This gives the student an amazing ‘final product’ that is fun and engaging. Check out our previous post on this here.

Looking for more activity suggestions? CALL Scotland has much more! See this post for a link.

Do you have favorite activities that you’re willing to share? Please let us know so we can all learn together.