Well, friends, here we are…it’s the final week of the Learning to Speak AACtion Plan! For those of you who have been following along every week, you have a strong core vocabulary foundation to model for the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) users in your lives.
When I started this in January, my goal was to give anyone out there who is supporting AAC users a way to learn the language system that is systematic and based on learning strategies that work. I realize that “life happens” and if you haven’t had a chance to follow the plan every single day as scheduled, it’s here when you’re ready.
Initially, I committed to create the 12 week plan as a trial time period to see if this type of resource was useful and should be continued. It is useful, but I’ve decided that 12 weeks is enough to build a strong foundation of vocabulary to model. Additionally, with the way this resource has been created, you can go back over the next 12 weeks and target the levels above the ones you’ve targeted during the initial 12 weeks. If you started at Step 1, this plan can keep you busy learning vocabulary all year!
Here are the Week 12 words:
Here are the weekly Practice Lessons:
And here is the complete Master List with all 12 weeks of words:
Remember a couple of weeks ago, I said that the daffodils surprise me when they bloom? Well, last summer I bought these cute little mini orchids to put in the windows of our office. I am notoriously bad with plants. It has to be a really hearty plant to survive my brown thumb of death. I had always heard that orchids are kind of picky about sunlight and soil dryness. When the flowers fell off last year, I sighed and thought it may be the end for them. The directions said to keep them in a window and give them an ice cube each week, so I did. Today, when I went to give them their weekly ice cube, the first one had bloomed! Contrary to the surprise of the daffodils, I have been watching these orchids closely. I have taken dead leaves out, turned them periodically to make sure they were getting even sunlight, and rescheduled their ice cube placement when I wasn’t going to be able to do it on a Sunday. I poured some serious care into their success.
Last week, I went to see a student and her aide pulled out pages of data to show me. Clipped to the back of the packet was a copy of the Learning to Speak AACtion Plan master list. I may have hugged her. She said they started little five minute AACtion Plan meetings in the morning before the kids come in so that they can all do it together. Another speech-language pathologist invited parents to stay after dropping their children off to sit with her and do the practice lessons. Thank you to all of you who pour serious care into the success of your students.
If you haven’t completed the Week 11 survey, please do! The winner of the Rafflecopter drawing for the $400 Apple gift card will be done on April 2nd, just in time to celebrate autism acceptance and in time for the release of the new 9.7″ iPad Pro, which has additional speakers that allow you to use any case you want and have sufficient amplification.
Also, the Speak for Yourself AAC app will be 50% off ($99.99 USD) on April 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, in case you haven’t heard!
Happy Easter to anyone who celebrates!
Here is the Rafflecopter link:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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