It’s PrAACtically February: A Calendar & Planning

January is (was) a fairly crazy and busy month for us. After a late back to school week, the CARD Conference, the Dan Marino Foundation WalkAbout Autism, and ATIA Conference (hope to see you there), we got a bit of a late start on a few things. To stay ahead of ourselves, we want to end January by being ready for February……

For February, we have a calendar for incorporating AAC into everyday activities (it goes with yesterday’s post 28 things to do).   Feel free to print out and share and use anyway you want to promote PrAACtical AAC. A PDF version (free) can be found at our Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Our new Strategy of the Month (on Saturday) will focus on Communication & Language Beyond Requesting.  There are no pre-requisites to learning and being immersed in ALL of the reasons to communicate (communication functions). For some learners, it may be harder to learn some types of communication functions or they may be better at one type versus another, however it will never get easier if there is not specific teaching. And we all need to tell, ask, vent, complain, comment,  protest, deny, negotiate, reason, argue,persuade, and share.

Because it is almost February, we are going to be posting a lot of resources about love. Just yesterday, we had a mom talk to us and say she “just wished her child could say I Love you”.  We hear this a lot and even posted about it last year at mother’s day.  Saying “I Love You” is a great way to start learning about expressing love however, it can be taught much more in-depth than that with books, games, discussions, and vocabulary instruction. The more learners are immersed in things about love, the more they will understand and express. Just an aside, we talked with a different mom  whose 12-year-old son has autism and significant learning issues (& many really fabulous attributes) and she told me they were reading a chapter book about ‘love’ with a mom and boy, and he turned to her and pointed at her indicating ‘mom’ and she said “yes, just like Alex’ mom” (in the book) and he said with his AAC display- “Love You Mom”…. for the first time.

Implementing AAC everyday is easy with ideas and practice.

PrAACtical Information for Using the Calendar

• Aided Language Input= ALI and means modeling language while using AAC; check out these posts on ALI for more information
  • https://praacticalaac.org/strategy/656/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/strategy/why-we-love-aided-language-input/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/strategy/aactual-progress-learning-to-use-aided-language-input/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/video/video-of-the-week-aided-language-input-demo/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/praactical/pivotal-skills-for-aac-intervention-aided-language-input/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/praactical/5-tools-to-make-aided-language-input-easier/ 

• Meaningful language experiences (https://praacticalaac.org/praactical/why-we-love-aac-language-experience-activities/ )  help language learning. Language includes expression, understanding, reading comprehension, & writing
• Writing AAC style can be writing by hand, typing, stamping, stickers, or any other form of active participation a learner can do to complete a ‘writing’ task
• Choice boards can be used to request objects, activities, places, etc. Choice boards can also be used to comment about favorite things, things to talk about, who to talk to etc, Learn about choice boards at:
  • https://praacticalaac.org/strategy/choices-in-choicemaking/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/praactical/theres-lots-of-apps-for-that/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/strategy/communication-connections/
  • https://praacticalaac.org/strategy/making-it-work-the-praactical-side-of-therapy-to-teach-requests/

• Rating Scale examples can be found at: https://praacticalaac.org/praactical/5-ways-to-use-rating-scales-to-enhance-communication-with-aac/  
• Stop Sign visuals can be found in a FREE behavior pack at:  https://praacticalaac.org/praactical/3-communication-behavior-visual-support-power-tools/   (choice boards creator can also be found here, click on teachers pay teachers link)