This blog is a companion to the website, www.aacintervention.com
At this site, my friends and I will be sharing quick posts, minitips, and think outlouds!
Please visit frequently, as this site will change rapidly!
Please share this blog with your friends and neighbors!! Dr. Caroline Ramsey Musselwhite
I remember the first time I read this quote, from her 1999 book, Teaching Writing. I literally gasped out loud, because the students I worked were doing 'real' writing (using the alphabet) rarely if ever. Pati King-DeBaun had completed our book, Emergent Literacy Success, and were really pushing writing. But this quote threw down the gauntlet, showing me that we were simply not writing enough.
For our emergent writers who are scribbling with the alphabet, and getting informative feedback either live or through a video that they can watch over and over . . . here's how I would re-write this quote. If you can give informative feedback to everything they're writing . . . they're not writing enough.
Hey, I think I feel a new Visual Quote coming on!!
This quote reminds ALL that – as facilitators – if we want to give a verbal prompt to a student who uses AAC, we MUST whisper the prompt. Otherwise, the potential communication partner hears the prompt and there is no need to share the message. Why? Because we have just stolen their turn!
Bio Poems:We had been describing characters,
and were trying to come up with concise summaries for students who use AAC, and
decided to write our own personal summaries.Three word bio poems include:
• Noun that describes your essence (might be made from verb
+ er, such as hiker, reader, etc.)
Creating Poems: Students
use various resources to create or co-create their poems.For example, one student used her AAC
device to choose words, while another first chose letters then had a partner
suggest possible words.
Samples from our Literacy Group include:
-sporty stylish martial-artist
-sparkly bright-eyes friend
-silly red-headed knitter
-sweet brown-eyed gazer-reader
-nice blond-hair dreamer
Using Poems for a Guessing
1)Put each poem into a hat
2)Read off the first mystery poem, one word at a
time.Students guess who it could
be.For example, after ‘nice’ the
group decided that that could be any of the students
3)Read the second word of the mystery poem, and have
students guess who it still could be.For example, nice blond-hair might only apply to two people in the group
4)Now read the 3rd word and guess who
5)The poem author then claims authorship
Publishing Bio Poems
Many fun apps can be used to publish these bio poems.See sample apps at the following
Students with significant disabilities often get handed single-message devices or switches with inauthentic messages. Students MUST be allowed to make a real choice before making it their voice! See the related Tip of the Month, below:
1) Saving money: Assistive technology is often delayed or not used due to funding issues. Kelly's quote reminds us that often we HAVE the tools we need on our computer, iPad etc. Here are a few examples:
a) MS Word can be used to speak text, create multiple choice boxes, offer fill-in-the blanks, etc.
b) Many school districts do large buys of software such as Inspiration or Classroom Suite - teachers may only need to ask to have this software 'appear' on their classroom computers
c) Apps such as Keynote may come free with the iPad, and PicCollage is a free app widely used by many school districts.
2) Comfort Zone: Most people have 'fallback' software or apps that they are comfortable using. Samples include MS Word, Keynote, Sticky and PicCollage. If we show parents, educators, and therapists creative ways to use these tools to provide access or scaffolding for students with disabilities, they are far more likely to follow through.
So, please think about
already existing software and apps, to save time and money!
This interactive story is fun for multiple purposes:
1) Encouraging Requesting - BEST app ever for this purpose
- Many pictures have multiple actions. For example, on the last page, patting the cat's full tummy, results in:
- meowing and stretching
2) Playing Guess Who Characters
a) First, do a picture walk
b) Next, have each student choose a character from the pictures
- Note, I put the 5 main characters on notes in Sticky app (see below)
c) Read the story, with each student listening for information about their character
d) Have each student write 3 clues about their character, with the first clue more subtle, and the last clue more obvious
e) Remaining students make guesses after each clue
- Note, I made text notes for each set of clues, again using Sticky
The Names Book:Using Names to Teach Reading, Writing, and Math in the Primary Grades, by Dorothy Hall & Patricia Cunningham (2004)
Names are powerful for all of us.I am always thrilled to see how many students who are
considered to have significant intellectual impairment are able to recognize
the names of so many of their classmates.This is likely due to two factors:
1)Names are important
to all of us
2)We actually teach
names, even if incidentally, using name cards during Circle Time/ Morning
Meeting, for schedules, etc.
If students are able to learn to recognize their names as
sight words, how much more could we do using their names for instruction?Hall and Cunningham have done this,
using names to support emergent and early conventional writing (e.g.,
Predictable Chart Writing), phonemic awareness and phonics, and math
skills.This book is clearly written
and presents ideas in a way that will support teachers, aides, therapists, and