Acc device activities

If you’ve ever woken up in the middle of the night sweating over one of your AAC clients who doesn’t have a back-up communication tool, then this post is for you. Jeanne Tuthill is back…

Like some of you, we are often met with skepticism when we encourage teams to work on literacy skills with individuals who are still learning the very basics of communication. Recently, we had the …

I seriously love a good DIY classroom project, especially if it saves me money and meets the individual needs of my students. Assistive tech (or AT) is a very general term and can include a variety of equipment, software, etc. that improves the functional and academic abilities of students with disabilities. AT can cost a lot of money in special education classrooms, and let's be real... we don't have a lot of money! It can also be particularly hard to purchase AT for students with multiple…

It’s such a pleasure to have Angi Pearce back on these pages to share her experiences and passion for teaching students with AAC needs. Angi is a teacher at Kowhai Special School in Hastings,…

I work with three classrooms of minimally/non-verbal students. My ultimate goal for all of these students is SNUG: spontaneous novel utterance generation. Novel utterance generation of and combinations of words will enable my students endless communication possibilities. To facilitate SNUG, the following teaching tools are important for all: Model. All language learners needs hundreds and even

I love hitting the dollar store and having a mini shopping spree with AAC activities in mind. In my last post I talked about how I figured out how to make AAC stickers with my cricut. With this in …

Looking for some easy meaningful ways to BIGMack in your classroom? Here are 5 quick and easy ideas that will you incorporate BIGMacks with your students!

Switch skills are a basic in classrooms for learners with multiple or significant disabilities. Switches give children (and adults) with limited motor skills the ability to control nearly anything. Unfortunately many teachers, paraprofessionals and others working with our students do not receive much training in teaching switch use. Some assume that the ability to hit a switch for cause and effect activities (make the toy walk or make the computer game change) is the ultimate goal, but that…

We live in a digital world... technology is all around us! Our kiddos with disabilities should have the same opportunity to learn to use technology as students who are "typically developing." As special education teachers, it can be difficult to find ways that our kiddos can access technology. I've always loved switch activated cause and effect toys and games, but switch toys are expensive and my kids get bored of them after a few weeks of playing with them. When it comes to technology, I…

We are partnering with the Illinois Assistive Technology Program (IATP) to help people in need of assistive technology devices.