We have been really enjoying our journey implementing the Four-Block Model in several classrooms. As with anything new, we have discovered a few things we had to problem solve our way through. Our school has gone through a huge AAC overhaul over the last 2 years with a large number of students receiving high-tech devices in a very short amount of time.  Teachers and paraprofessionals continue to adjust to the change and some are finding it difficult to model on devices.

At the same time we are overhauling AAC we are also working on how we teach literacy. After a wonderful presentation at ATIA, we began doing shared reading lessons in several classrooms where we have early emergent readers. We are following a modified CAR strategy during these lessons. The teacher reads a page and models commenting about what is happening on the page. Next, they ask for or invite participation from students (this could be just pausing or asking “what do you think?”). Once a student participates, they respond by repeating what the student said and adding information. Often this requires some creativity to relate what the student has said back to the text (try working the word “bathroom” in the book “Brown Bear”).  You can download the CAR visual we use here.

(more…)

One of our fantastic girls who is waiting for her own eye gaze device to be approved by insurance was recently working with her SLP.  We’re crunched for time as she is already 19 and we’re trying to make sure she can use as many features of the device as possible before she graduates.  She’s been working on reading, writing with Unity and the keyboard, and navigating out of the communication software to launch other applications and then back into her communication software.

This week she had asked to play a game so her SLP helped her navigate to the LooktoLearn software.  She chose “Paper, Scissors, Stone” and appeared to be having fun.  After a couple of minutes, her SLP navigated back to the NuVoice software in case the student had something to say.  And she did!  She said “play fun, stop talk!”  It was fantastic!  She’s only been using the device for a month during trial sessions and to hear her say this sentence was amazing!  She obviously got to go back to her game!

**Side Note – With our eye gaze users, we never leave the students alone with games.  A communication partner is always next to the student and frequently opens the communication software to talk about the game or ask the student what they want to do next.  We try very hard to make sure our students have dedicated communication devices, but some of our students who use eye gaze rarely get to control things by themselves.  It makes it hard to say “no” when they ask to play. **

I wanted to share some fun items I’ve purchased to use with some of my older students with complex communication needs.  It’s sometimes challenging to come up with activity ideas for my older students using AAC but I recently decided to of the “joke” route and it’s been a blast.  Some of my younger students, especially the boys, have also been getting a kick out of these items!  Here are some of my favorites.  If you click the pictures, they link to where you can purchase them on Amazon.com.

Snakes in a Can!  These are a favorite because you can use them to surprise students and then students can use them to surprise others!  My students love “tricking” other staff and students into opening the cans.  They seem to be very motivating to communicate!  Also, for many of my students with complex bodies (physical impairments) they can participate in funny activities by giving the directions and watching the results!  A couple of words can lead to a huge payoff in laughs!

The NO button!  The button has ten different phrases/ voices to say “no.”  I’ve paired it with “No David” for younger students or taken turns with students asking questions and then saying “no.”  For example, you can ask a student a question such as “do you like boogers?” and they hit the “no” button.  Then the student can ask you a question so you can hit the “no” button!

Whoopee Cushions!  Enough said?  Fun to have students tell you what to do to set it up.  “Put on chair, get it, move it, different chair.”

Sound Machines.  I love these because there are so many varieties!  Here are two of my favorites.  It’s a fun opportunity for students to practice asking for one that is “different” and commenting on the different
sounds.  Some comments/ adjectives we’ve practiced include “too loud, annoying, bad, like that, funny, silly, disgusting, weird, etc.”  Some directions I’ve heard students give or that I’ve modeled include: “do it again, pick a different one, you try, I pick.

 The Magic 8 Ball is a good one to use when working on asking questions.  Who knows what answer you’ll get! It might be helpful to have question starter visuals.  Great to use with a group; let one student ask, another shake, and a third person read the answer!

Some other fun ideas:  The rubber chicken, gum/ pens that shock the person who touches them, voice changing machines, and prank kits.

Share your ideas!

Here’s a quick post to share some of my favorite resources about Shared Reading!  Check them out!

Shared Reading

https://www.med.unc.edu/ahs/clds/files/conference-hand-outs/asha-2015-shared-reading

http://aacliteracy.psu.edu/index.php/page/show/id/8/

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=959405#anchor

What’s age appropriate?  This seems to be a huge discussion in our field.  Especially since many of our older students seem to enjoy tv shows and toys that are clearly geared towards younger students.

One phrase that I’ve heard a lot lately is “age respectful.”  This means presenting our students with materials and activities that are appropriate to their age (i.e. an adapted Harry Potter book instead of Brown Bear) while still allowing them to choose items and activities they enjoy.

Yesterday my mom bought SpongeBob stickers for her brother because she thought he would get a kick out of them.  He did!  And he’s in his 50s with no cognitive impairments!  But if I brought in a pack of SpongeBob stickers to school knowing some of my older students might think they were funny, I’d be called out for not being “age appropriate.”

I’m all about presenting our students with items that their typically developing peers have access to.  But shouldn’t we also have materials that we know they love and want to choose?  Shouldn’t we respect their choices?  I could watch Frozen tonight and though you might judge me, you wouldn’t tell me I’m not being age appropriate!

We need to start reminding ourselves that we all enjoy things that are not always age appropriate.  My mom loves Hello Kitty – seriously anytime she passes something with Hello Kitty she is compelled to buy it!  I love Disney/Pixar movies!  My brother still gets a kick out of watching Land Before Time.  My dad watches Saturday morning cartoons.  Nobody tells us we’re too old for these things.  Why do we tell our students they are?

One of my older students has recently been trailing an Accent 1400 with NuEye.  He has never had a communication system beyond a Big Mack before and he has had so much to say!  While we wait to hear back from insurance, he only has limited access to a device.  But, he certainly makes the most out of his time with the device!  His IEP came up recently and for the first time, he was able to provide feedback for his teacher.  We went through a few questions with him and his answers were great!

When asked his favorite subject, he replied “music.”

When asked what he wanted to work on, he said “xbox.”

And then my favorite question, “What about school do you dislike the most?”  His answer: “matching bad.”

Does it get any better than that?!  His teacher and I promised him no more matching!

I thought in this post I would outline the first meeting we had!  I asked one teacher and her classroom SLP and OT if they would hear my plan.

First I did a brief overview of the four block model.  Then we had to figure out how we could work the four blocks into the schedule she already had!  We also wanted to make this a co-teach model as much as possible.  And we have found that it has been extremely beneficial to have the whole team working on literacy together! Here’s what worked for us:

Morning Meeting/ Circle Time – WRITING – every student would “sign in” for the day and have the opportunity to write their name using a pencil or alternative pencil.

Shared Writing + Journal Writing – 3x per week for 30-60 minutes.  The teacher, AT Specialist (myself), SLP, and OT are all able to co-teach during this block!  It’s by far our favorite!  And I think its a favorite for staff too!

Working with Words – 2x per week for 30 minutes.  The teacher, AT Specialist (myself) and SLP co-teach this block!  Kelsey, the teacher, has come up with some fantastic lessons!  I’m hoping to have her guest post soon!  So far we have been working mostly on phonemic and phonological awareness.  Some of the students work on sight words individually.  We’re easing our way into this block so we have not started on sight word/ word wall instruction yet.

Self Selected Reading – daily for 10-15 minutes 1-2x per day.  Students are engaged by their staff during this block.

Shared/ Guided Reading – 1-2x per week.  The teacher has been teaching this block and some weeks has OT/SLP co-teach with her.  The SLP also often does shared reading with the students.

**Start at the pace that works best for you!  I’ve heard of classrooms that wanted to start with just one of the blocks and others that want to jump right in.  Ideally, we would do all of the blocks every day.  But we just couldn’t make it work with the current schedule.**

The last thing we did before breaking up the meeting was determine what each student would use as a pencil.  It’s essential to have the “WRITE” tool!  We purchased the Writing with Alternative Pencils CD to help us!  We also ended up making some of our own alternative pencils.  Stay tuned for posts about alternative pencils!

I love to hear from parents about how their children are using AAC at home.  This past weekend I went to see a client at her house and her mom couldn’t wait to share what she said the night before!

This little AAC user has had a 60 cell communication board containing 50 core words and 10 fringe words for almost a year now.  Up until this point, she has mostly communicated with prompting or maybe one word spontaneously if highly motivated.  Her parents have been concerned because all she wants to do is ask for “Barney!”

But over the weekend, her mother was using the iPad to listen to music.  Upset because she wanted to play on the iPad, she grabbed her communication board, brought it over to mom, and said “mom stop music.” Up until this point we had seen occasional two word phrases but usually after sessions with a lot of aided language stimulation.  This completely spontaneous three word phrase really got us all excited!

We’re starting to talk about moving to something high tech and I couldn’t be more excited!