AAC
- Introduction to AAC and Literacy
- SLHS 427
- PART ONE
- Literacy and AAC: An Overview
- The literacy experiences of children who use AAC are both the same and different from the experiences of typically developing children
- Literacy skills are essential in the lives of all citizens
- They may be even more important to individuals who use AAC
- Literacy skills provide individuals with
- The opportunity to initiate topics
- Develop ideas
- Provide clarification
- Communicate independently
- Interact with a diverse audience
- Express ideas, thoughts, and feelings
- Other Facts
- Despite the evidence that suggests that individuals who have complex communication needs (CCNs) are able to develop strong literacy skills, the typical outcomes for these individuals are far from encouraging.
- Factors that Affect Literacy Learning
- Learning to read and write requires the integration of knowledge and skills across a variety of domains, including
- Orthographic processing
- Phonological processing
- Context processing
- Meaning processing
- Good Readers:
- Are able to recognize letters and letter sequences automatically
- Are able to recognize sound patterns, manipulate sounds easily, and map sounds to letters (and vice versa) rapidly
- Are able to access word meanings quickly and use context and world knowledge to help with unfamiliar words
- Able to integrate these skills with ease to derive meaning from the text or to encode meaning into text
- Poor Readers
- May have weak knowledge of letter patterns
- May struggle to recognize letters and letter sequences
- May have difficulty with auditory discrimination and phonological awareness activities
- More likely to have limited vocabulary knowledge
- Must devote more attention and resources to basic word recognition and decoding/encoding activities
- This leaves fewer resources to construct the meaning of text and monitor their comprehension
- Factors that affect literacy development in children with CCNs can be divided into two basic categories
- INTRINSIC – within the person
- EXTRINSIC – external to the person
- Intrinsic Factors
- Visual impairments:
- Hearing impairments:
- Motor impairments:
- Cognitive impairments:
- Language impairments:
- Speech impairments:
- Lack of experiences:
- A history of limited participation:
- Challenges in literacy learning may be further complicated by health problems.
- Extrinsic Factors
- Literacy development is affected by a wide range of extrinsic factors related to the environment
- Literacy learning does not occur in isolation – rather it is deeply embedded within a series of interrelated contexts including
- Physical context
- Functional context
- Social context
- Language context
- Cultural context
- The physical and functional contexts for literacy learning
- Children with CCN are reported to have less frequent access to reading materials and significantly less access to writing materials than their peers without disabilities
- The social context for literacy learning
- Not only do children who rely on AAC have fewer literacy experiences than their peers without disabilities, but the quality of these experiences also differs.
- The social context for literacy learning
- Individuals with CCN often have limited (or no) access to their AAC during literacy activities – this means
- The social context is also influenced by the language context – including the language available to the individual who relies on AAC and the language used by partners during literacy activities.
- The language context for literacy learning
- Definition:
- Typical Development
- Differences:
- The cultural context for literacy learning
- One possible explanation for the reduced emphasis on literacy experiences and instruction for individuals with CCNs may be found in parental and teacher expectations.
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- Fostering emergent literacy skills
- Process of developing literacy skills begins very early
- Stage of emergent literacy is the development of literacy skills prior to learning conventional literacy skills
- Storybook readings play an important role in a child’s development of language skills.
- Storybook reading
- Displaced talk
- The stage before the development of conventional literacy is called the STAGE OF EMERGENT LITERACY
- During this stage, children acquire the knowledge and skills that form the underpinnings for the later development of later reading and writing skills. Specifically, they:
- Build language skills
- Begin to make connections between spoken and written language
- Learn the basic conventions of print
- Early storybook reading experiences play an important role in a child’s development of language skills (and thus is a very important component of emergent literacy development)
- The nature of storybook reading is different for children with CCN as compared to their typically developing peers.
- Parents of children who use AAC often choose the book to be read and tend to choose different books each time
- Different books = different experience
- Repeated readings
- Develop comprehension skills
- Make inferences or anticipate events or story lines
- Practice retelling (or narrating)
- Participate in “pretend reading”
- Repeated readings:
- Physical contact with book:
- Limits on development:
- Intervention: Emergent Level
- Providing access to appropriate AAC for emergent literacy activities
- AAC users should always have access to their AAC.
Access to AAC can be done in these ways:
- Incorporating manual signs and gestures into reading
- Using objects to communicate choices during stories
- Providing simple switches programmed with repeated storylines
- Providing low-tech communication boards with appropriate and context-related vocab
- Providing SGDs programmed with appropriate vocab
Adapt books to facilitate and support communicative interactions during story time.
- Present the vocabulary on the device for easier interaction with the story
- Traditional grid displays
- Circular layout
- Visual scenes
- Teaching interaction strategies to literate partners
- Providing access to AAC is not enough
- Reading to students and discussing text serves a number of purposes
- Builds world knowledge
- Scaffolds cognitive development
- Introduces more advanced language concepts, sentence structures, and written genres
- Promotes more advanced comprehension and inference skills
- Illustrates the pleasure of reading which increases motivation for reading instruction
- Teaching interaction strategies to literate partners
- Select appropriate books
- Introduce the topic of the book
- Introduce new vocab as required
- Read the text of the book
- Use time delay (“wait expectancy”)
- Ask appropriate questions
- Model use of AAC and speech
- Respond to communicative attempts
- Encourage the learner to tell the story
- Providing independent access to reading materials
- Strategies
- Easy to access to books
- Offering book choices during free time
- Offering opportunity to request favorite books
- Allow easy page turning
- Incorporate text into daily routine
- Introduce books on tape
- Building narrative skills
- Vocabulary and sentence structures
- Narrative skills
- Building narrative skills
- Functional vocabulary versus reading/literacy vocabulary
- Semantic, syntactic skills, and narrative skills
- Increase opportunities
- Building emergent writing skills
- Children with CCN need to engage in early writing activities
- Lack of access
- Motor impairments
- Needed adaptations
- Computer technology!
- Individuals with CCN require numerous opportunities to engage in writing activities scaffolded by literate adults or children
- “Writing” secret messages
- Drawing pictures and writing stories
- Making signs for a pretend store
- Making birthday cards
- Writing letters or emails
- Phonological Awareness
- Introduced to phonological awareness and letter sounds in preschool, childcare programs, education software, and television shows
- Many children are introduced to rhyming and sound blending
- Introducing these skills early in fun activities will especially benefit children with CCN