PrAACtical Resources: Book-related Communication Boards
Looking for book-specific vocabulary that you can highlight, teach, and/or elicit when reading? The Assistive Technology Team at Baltimore City Public Schools has a site with materials that you may find helpful. They’ve created topical communication boards for over 800 books, both fiction and non-fiction, that can be accessed by anyone with the Boardmaker program. Their resources include activity-based communication boards with 9, 20, and 56 locations for the books, and a set of comprehension questions.
You can access their Adapted Books site here.
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Books, downloads, reading, resources
This post was written by Carole Zangari
7 Comments
I’m having trouble accessing this link, any suggestions?
I find myself a little mixed up on core words vs. topic boards. I think the research is supporting moving away from topic boards toward using core in all activities. But, maybe I’m being rigid and there’s still a time and place for topic boards? How are others managing these two approaches?
Lisa, there certainly is a place for more specific vocabulary that relates to particular topics, activities, and contexts. I’ve written a few posts on Activity-based Communication Boards (ABCDs) that might be of interest (e.g., http://praacticalaac.org/praactical/from-activity-based-aac-to-robust-language-part-2/). In practice, I think most of us are moving toward core-based AAC, supplementing those boards, books, screens, and overlays with the additional vocabulary as needed. That allows the learner to build a motor plan for the high frequency words, and be able to use them quickly, easily, and without conscious thought once they are fluent with their AAC system, and also have access to the more specific words they need. That seems to work better than using an ABCD for some activities/experiences and their regular AAC device/book for the rest of the day. Hope that helps a little bit.
I there! Link does not open.
Thanks
Nancy, I just checked it from two browsers and it seemed to work from both. Maybe the site was down for a bit. Here is the direct URL that you can try: http://www.baltimorecityschools.org/Page/1446. Hope that works out for you.
I was not able to access the Baltimore adapted library site via the link and/or search bar.
Do you happen to have an updated link or a similar resource?
I would love to be able to access this site.
Kind Regards,
Andrea, thanks for your message. I reached out to them for an updated link and will update it once I hear back from them.