January 6, 2014
by Carole Zangari -
There’s an old joke about a tourist wandering around New York City in search of the famed musical venue that has been home to countless performances of classical music. After walking in circles, he finally stops a resident to ask for directions, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice,” was the reply. And so it is with AAC. No matter what their age or disabling condition, there is one thing that every AAC learner needs: Practice. A lot of it. It takes a lot of daily practice for people learning to use AAC in order for them to: Become fluent with their AAC systems Build their vocabularies Develop their syntactic skills Respond more quickly Communicate less effortfully As we’ve said before, we tend to like things that we’re good at and things that are relatively easy for us. It time and a lot practice for some of... [Read More...]
Filed under: Strategy of the Month
Tagged With: Activity Objective Matrix, documentation, download, form, planning
November 23, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
When we’re writing AAC evaluation reports, compiling funding documents, and summarizing the present level of performance in IEPs, we frequently comment on speech intelligibility. In some cases, we’ve administered a standardized assessment instrument and are sharing those results. Often, though, the comments are more descriptive in nature. It is not uncommon to read documentation in which someone with articulation difficulties is described as having speech intelligibility that is mildly, moderately, or severely impaired. Those categories are pretty broad, open to interpretation, and can be quite vague. What do we really mean when saying that someone does or doesn’t have intelligible speech? To narrow down the meaning, we specify the two variables that have the greatest influence on how comprehensible the communicator’s speech output actually is: the context and the communication partner. Specifying whether the context is known and the partner is a familiar one, helps us better interpret the descriptors... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: documentation, report writing, speech intelligibility