Learning to Speak AACtion Plan: Week 7

“Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”  

                           ~ Billy Gibbons

I’m reasonably sure musician Billy Gibbons wasn’t talking about augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and modeling when he said this, but it applies. When you’re modeling for your students or children, you are playing what you want to hear. You are showing them the words that you want them to be able to say and “playing” the concepts you want them to include in their communication. When you are able to model what they want to say,  there is a resonance that sparks their interest and pulls them in and makes them want to learn. Before you can do that, you have to know the language, which is the basis for the Learning to Speak AACtion Plan.

AAC implementation is a process, and you take the many options you have and find what works best for your child or student. You are looking at all of the variables up close and in person. When you look at a picture of a forest, you don’t see each individual tree. You see the whole forest, a group of trees that is combined in nature. But a forest contains more than trees. There are old leaves that fell months ago in autumn and are slowly breaking down to fertilize the soil. There is mud because the pounding rain and inches of snow haven’t been completely absorbed and the air is too warm for freezing but not warm enough to dry it out. There are tiny flowers and perfect berries that you’d never see in a picture, unless your lens was focused on them. And there are thorns…complex, intricately woven branches of thorns that don’t catch your eye in a picture. It is a combination of beauty and barriers, but if you want to get through it…if you need to get through it, you find a way. You look at all of the elements and sometimes, like finding your way through a forest, the only thing you have any control over are your own actions. You follow a path, and when it makes sense, you walk through the brambles and thorns to create your own. As we begin Week 7, we are exactly half way through the 12 week plan. Thank you to everyone who is participating! If you haven’t had a chance, please complete the Week 6 survey and enter the Rafflecopter drawing at the bottom of the post. Here are the words for Week 7:

Here are the daily practice lessons for the week:

Here is the text only Master List with all of the words through Week 7:

If you’ve gotten off course or had some thorn-filled weeks, jump back into it when you can.  You’re making your own path, but you’re not alone. a Rafflecopter giveaway