This course focuses on what a family member, teacher, or therapist can do to help an individual who uses AAC communicate more effectively. You'll learn simple tips for selecting words to teach, as well as how to teach them and ways to expand language use and sentence length. This is an introductory course for those who are new to implementing AAC systems. By using these easy-to-implement strategies, you'll help encourage language development and communication with the beginning AAC communicator.
Basic requesting is a good place to start when introducing someone to communicating with AAC. However, requesting is only one of many reasons people communicate. This 1 hour class reviews how people use language to communicate and what you can do to help individuals get beyond basic requests. Practical examples and materials are used throughout the course.
The successful implementation of an AAC device depends as much on the skills of the communication partners as it does on the person using AAC. This class provides an overview of Aided Language Input, a strategy in which communication partners use AAC to teach AAC. Participants will have the opportunity to put this strategy into practice with a hands-on activity.