Archive » Implementing AAC in Classrooms

15 June 2011 ~ 0 Comments

The correlation between football and AAC

I (along with millions of other people) watched the Super Bowl this year.  While I am gradually acquiring a taste for football, I mostly watch the Superbowl for the commercials, yummy snacks and good company.  When I got ready to write this week’s blog posting I began to think of football and AAC were a [...]

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08 June 2011 ~ 0 Comments

What’s to Eat?

Do you regularly do a motivation assessment with your students? How often do you find that food is a big motivator? Are you feeling stuck in a rut? Want to come up with some ideas that would use food but not just in the sense of requesting and eating it?
I observed a session in a [...]

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01 June 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Never where it should be

Have you ever heard this said about a student’s communication device?  It is never where it should be! 
When I ask why the member of the classroom staff thinks this is the case, I usually hear that the student doesn’t want to carry it.  That may be true…  Or it is possible that the student hasn’t [...]

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26 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

The Time is Now!

I thought that I would share some of the most frequently asked questions (and their answers) that I have received over the past 15 years while providing consultative AAC services in the classroom.   Here they are:
Question:  When should we start using symbols to support language, literacy and the curriculum?
Answer:  The time is now!
Using picture symbols [...]

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24 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Social Networking from a Classroom Perspective

With the explosion of multimedia and computers, classroom sharing can be easier than ever.  One method we used in a classroom to share our Flip videos via Facebook and Vimeo.  We set up the classroom with an account and then made sure that we set all the privacy settings so that only friends, who in [...]

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17 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Show Me How

I was in a group of classroom teachers recently and one of them asked, “How much time should our student have his AAC device during the school day?”  
The simple answer is all of the time.  
But this is a question I have heard before, and I assumed that she wouldn’t be asking if it was a [...]

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12 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Who is Really Teaching the Class?

I pay the schoolmaster, but ’tis the schoolboys that educate my son. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 
As I was recently reflecting on the inclusion Evan experiences in his general education classroom, I realized that his teacher is capitalizing on teachable moments for more than just Evan. While he creates lessons and opportunities for Evan to use [...]

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10 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Ready to Communicate?

I saw a teen and her mother out for a walk today.  The mother was pushing her daughter’s wheelchair when she saw an acquaintance and began to talk.  Her daughter, in her wheelchair, remained facing away from the conversation effectively eliminating her from the opportunity to enter the interaction without calling out or reaching behind [...]

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05 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

See one. Do one. Teach one.

“See one.   Do one.  Teach one,” is axiom used to describe a learning approach in some medical schools.  While I do not hold that the word “one” should be taken literally in this adage (as in observe once, practice once), I believe the spirit of this saying has good application in the classroom when it [...]

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03 May 2011 ~ 0 Comments

New (School) Year’s Resolutions

Here we are again – the end of another school year.  I can’t believe it!  I like to use this time as an opportunity to reflect on the past year and spend time thinking about resolutions and goals for the next year.  I’m not one to create ridiculous resolutions.  I’ve been down that road before.  [...]

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