Teaching vocabulary has multiple purposes when working with students who use AAC to communicate. These purposes include vocabulary for receptive and expressive communication, including for reading and writing as well as person-to-person communication.  Picture books are important tools for teaching vocabulary for all purposes.  This is how I teach vocabulary from picture books we read aloud during shared reading:Select words from the book you will be reading. Words should be level 2/3 ..read more

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When you see a child having what you view as an “attention seeking behavior” you have two choices. You could decide you can “fix” that behavior and step away and ignore them. Or you could think, “they’ve got my attention, now what do they need?” If you chose the second one you will likely find they are seeking a connection for some reason - perhaps t ..read more

How to spot pseudoscientific practices of Facilitated Communication, Rapid Prompting Method and Spelling2Communicate in highly edited documercials:1) The vocabulary used by the proponents of these systems and in the propaganda often differs from that used in the AAC field in that they like use “type”, “typer”, “spell”, “speller”, “board”, “letter board ..read more

Seven Years Later Seven years ago I wrote about and created a new prompt hierarchy, designed for use with those who have apraxia.  Soon after Shelane Neilsen collaborated with me to create a visually more appealing Adapted Prompt Hierarchy. Quickly translations began appearing, at first with or Shelane's my consultation and, eventually, without it.  Eventually new versions appeared, usually copying my premise, and often times my exact language, sometimes w ..read more

One of the frequent things we see in the field of AAC is a struggle to determine how many buttons per page to start with on a new AAC system.  Though there is a myth that one should start small and have a very limited system at first this is no longer best practice, best practice is to consider the users ability to  "Perceive and Access" the buttons on the system.Perceive ..read more

FrankenSystem is the name for an AAC system which has been highly edited or customized by a stakeholder (caregiver, teacher, ABA practitioner, therapist, etc) without regard for a set of internal rules, visual cues and standards that exist underlying robust AAC systems. ​Such systems tend to lack consistency between buttons, pages and sections. The visual cues (color coding, fon ..read more

Something that happens to me all the time when I talk about what my students can do is people assume I only accept the “high functioning” kids. They ask questions about how what I am teaching is "advanced" and their students would not be able to do it. It infuriates me!Well folks my students couldn't do it before either! My students didn’t have these skills. I taught them. Now they do. That is how teaching works.  I take any student who shows up. The only child I act ..read more

There is a new dangerous, propaganda movie about a cousin to the debunked and dangerous Facilitated Communication method going around. It’s called “Spellers” and is based on Spelling2Communicate which is essentially the same thing as Rapid Prompting Method. Facilitated Communication is holding the hand, arm or another part of the body of a non-speaking person and “helping” them communicate by pointing to letters. In Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) and Spelling2Com ..read more

As AAC implementers there is a lot we have to know and think about and rolled into that is the hope we must have. We must believe that our students/clients/children will grow beyond where they are right now. This is what is meant by presume potential - have hope - not a static hope, but an active hope that adjusts and grows and changes. We believe that full, active, intrinsically rewarding communication is coming. Today I taught an AAC skills class. The students and their learning co ..read more