Literacy & Communication

Nothing makes me happier than combining literacy with communication opportunities. In my K-2 classroom 90% of my students use alternative methods to support their communication or use AAC exclusively as their voice. I’ve learned so much about AAC and ways to incorporate it into my classroom over the past few years. Here’s a simple activity to combine read-a-loud and AAC modeling. This is a huge hit in my classroom and I’m sure your students will love it, too!

Pick a Book

Not just any book – a great read aloud! Anyone of any age can read picture books, and I find for this activity that picture books are best. Find one with core language – and LOTS of it! It’s helpful if the language or phrase you are teaching is written in a pattern style, so you have multiple opportunities to practice the core language. For this activity, I used the book, “It’s My Turn” by David Bedford. My class has been working towards taking turns and this book was the perfect opportunity to practice on the AAC. 

Find the Core Words

Grab a pencil and an AAC for reference. Most of my students use Touch Chat, and many of them use Word Power 60, so that’s the home page I referenced. Start going through the book and underlining all of the core words you can find in the book. If this is the first time you are doing an activity like this, just focus on one word. My class has been doing this for awhile, so we chose the words ‘play’, ‘my turn’, ‘you turn’, ‘up’ and ‘down’. 

Model, Model, Model!

Have your students come to the carpet and bring their AAC’s or core language boards. Preview and talk about the core language buttons you will be learning. Show students where the buttons are and let them practice. When you are done. Have students read along with you. 

Keep modeling as you read. If you don’t have an AAC you can model on, try a core language board. I model using a huge Word Power 60 poster our Saltillo rep gave us for free! 

This activity was a huge hit! Not only were my students practicing communication, they were completely engaged during read aloud! If you are interested in seeing a video of how I model using the AAC while reading this book, check out our YouTube Channel.Happy reading!