Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury
This past week I had the opportunity to listen in to AAC Learning webinar by Lauren Enders. It was chalk full of ideas, tips, and resources, and I am sure I will slowly reflect on them over time. The tips and ideas made me miss Joey and my work with him so much. I cannot wait to be back in person!
The first tip Enders gave was to ask yourself – “Would this be fun for me?”
Wait time is one of the most vital supports we can give a child (or an adult). I’ve written about it numerous times on this blog. While it doesn’t involve any extra supports, gadgets, or tools, it is still recognizably hard to do. We, as teachers and parents, aren’t good at waiting.
We aren’t good at providing enough in-person waiting time. Now that we are doing most of our work on-line, wait time is even more complicated. Not only do we need to wait to provide our students with the same processing time they need to respond in our in-person work, now we also have to account for a computer delay, the time it may take a child to unmute or speak into the computer, or to process the additional virtual and auditory information coming from the computer screen while shutting out the in-person visual/auditory information coming from real life.
As a parent, I often feel that I am drowning in the resources that are out there right now during our period of quarantine. As we get deeper into our quarantine situation, more and more resources are popping up to support our children. It’s a wonderful problem to have – but can be difficult to navigate!
Here are a few resources I’ve come across that support AAC users during this time:
I rely heavily on the Pioneer Valley Book Builder subscription to create books for the children I work with. You can put a child’s name into the program and print out a book at the child’s guided reading level with their name within the text. This is a great resource, especially during this time of quarantine. As I was exploring the site the other day I came upon their Digital Reader, which is currently free. It allows you to access books digitally at your child’s specific reading level (they also have a free assessment if you are not sure where to start). There are even videos for some of the books that will guide the students through introducing the book, word work connected with the book, as well as writing connections with the book.
As I watched my own kindergarten daughter participate in this virtual guided reading lesson from guided reading guru Jan Richardson, I couldn’t help but think of Joey – can these resources work for him as well?
So often, people who use AAC to communicate find themselves caught in the ability to only communicate with those who understand how AAC devices work in situations where AAC devices are available. It can be a small world in which to communicate. And yet, those of us who are able-bodied are only currently able-bodied. It is not something any of us want to think about, but any of us are capable of one day relying on AAC supports in order to reach the world around us.
Somewhere in my quarantined on-line searches I stumbled upon this resource page from the Patient-Provider Communication Forum. The resources were developed by speech-language pathologists, nursing leaders, engineers, and with help from the U.S. Society of Augmentative and Alternative Communications. It provides pages of low-tech pictures that can be provided to people with COVID-19 who are unable to communicate.
