Learning to Speak AACtion Plan: Week 5

We are officially through the first month of the Learning to Speak AACtion Plan! The majority of our past week was spent in Orlando, FL at the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) conference. The number of people that approached our booth and said something about this AACtion Plan was unbelievable…Thank you all for being part of it and for taking your valuable time to read my posts! I actually lost my voice this conference and in a conference filled with speech-language pathologists was prescribed “vocal rest” by almost everyone who visited our booth.

We also heard a lot of success stories and had some wonderful discussions about improvements needed in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in terms of actual device functionality as well as implementation support. If you are a parent reading this, know that there are many professionals, some of whom are also parents of children using AAC, that are working to improve the field. One of the important things that I think has come from the iPad and consumer tablet market is that AAC is accessible to parents. It is no longer an elusive idea that requires months of bureaucracy, evaluations, and red tape before it is placed in children’s hands. Every day in those early years is so valuable.  That is a blog post for another day.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the Week 5 words:

Here are the Practice Lessons for convenience:

Here’s the text only Master List with the Week 5 words included:

You’ll notice for week 5, we are going to add some first person pronouns (I, you, we) and at the more challenging levels the possessive pronoun “your” (“mine” and “my” were introduced in earlier weeks) and the reflexive pronouns (myself and yourself). Here is the thing about teaching pronouns…it’s confusing.

While this AACtion Plan is about learning the location of words in your child’s language system, many of you are immediately carrying that over into modeling, which is excellent! If you are turn keying these lessons quickly into focused modeling with these words, I have a couple of suggestions. First, my advice is to model in the first person (using the pronoun referring to yourself), but where it would also make sense if the child imitated your model.

Here’s an example:

You and the child both have a cup of water. As the child’s drinking, you model, “You drink water.” The child says, “You drink water.” You pick up your water and drink it. Unless your child has been using pronouns and has a clear understanding of how they work, resist the urge to model “I drink water” within that same interaction. If pronouns are new to learners, they may think you’re correcting them.

To model “I,” do something you know the child enjoys and model “I play cars (or whatever toy)” and hoard them. If the child says, “I play cars,” give them some cars. If they just start playing with you, I wouldn’t demand that they ask (because social play interactions are awesome and allow for modeling way beyond pronoun use), but when they join in model, “We play cars (together).”

A fun way to use pronouns is to model by commenting on what they’re doing (you eat, you jump, you play) and then let them boss you around. Learning that you can control someone else’s behavior through communication is priceless, especially for children who have so much that is out of their control.

A word of caution…avoid getting into the “I want” trap. Don’t require a child to say “I want” with every request because none of us do that. If a waitress says, “What can I get you to drink?” and you say, “Iced tea, please,” she doesn’t say, “Tell me in a sentence.” (If she did, it’s unlikely that you’d comply…or patronize that restaurant again). Model beyond requesting because when you model, you’re not only modeling the words, you are showing your AAC user that language is useful, valuable, multi-functional, and worth their effort.

If you haven’t already completed the Week 4 survey, please do! I am looking at these and have been saving the results to analyze and share. Even if you haven’t had a great week or you don’t have something positive to say, your opinion is valuable! And of course, here is the Rafflecopter link:
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