By Jessica Steiner, M.Ed, M.S., CF-SLP
Hi fellow AAC lovers! My name is Jessica Steiner and I am so excited to start blogging for AAC Language Lab.
A little bit about me, I am a CF working in a public separate day school for children with severe and profound disabilities, Pre-K through High School. I absolutely love my students and using AAC in the classroom! It is safe to say that I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I accepted the job save from what I learned in grad school.
My first day I had teachers bringing me their kids’ devices asking me to program, show them where words were and so much more. I was drowning until the AAC Specialist told me about AAC Language Lab! The activities and resource guides saved me. I was able to use the classroom lesson plans during whole group lessons by just typing in the core word of the week to the search engine and exploring the story options. Most of my students are beginning and intermediate users so I stuck with those plans and what a difference it made! My teachers are able to use the stories all week and review the activities I do in the classrooms.
One aspect of my school that I have valued is our reverse inclusion program in the Pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms. I am able to pair my typically developing peers with my AAC users to model pre-reading skills in the classroom using the short stories found in the classroom lesson plans. My users and their peer buddies are able to practice pre-reading and reading skills using these stories and the vocabulary guides. My peers use these guides to help their buddies find words on their devices that are found in the stories and their environment. Using the writing implementation ideas, also found under the classroom lesson plans, I am able to have my peers practice pre-writing and writing skills while having my users practice using the words in phrases and sentences.
If you have any questions for me or would like me to share specific ideas, please comment below. I am thrilled to be able to share some more implementation ideas with you using the AAC Language Lab materials!
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