Caught Modeling Core

students verbally say, would encourage longer utterances from their students. Throughout the initiative, we always combated these hesitations with positivity and encouragement, as well as trainings, when needed. Colleen and I held staff trainings, sometimes alongside our AAC consultant, for our teachers and staff on ways to include Core Vocabulary into their classrooms. One training in particular that was beneficial was when Colleen and I brought in random toys from an overflowing speech therapy closet, empty plastic shoe boxes, and printed Core Vocabulary icons. You might be thinking okay, so they organized their materials? Wrong! We had our teachers pair up, grab a couple toys and then we gave them Core Vocabulary words to use. The teachers had to figure out different ways to use the toys they had, combined with their specific Core Vocabulary words to address multiple communica- tive functions. This brought on a fun, collaborative approach to teaching Core Vocabulary, rather than lecturing. The staff were involved and hands on, which is known as “hands on” or “experi- ential learning”, which research shows to be beneficial. Experien- tial learning is the process of learning through experience, and is more specifically defined as “learning through reflection on doing” according to psychologist David Kolb. Our teachers and staff agreed with this when they explained that these trainings were helpful. Our main goal for these trainings was to explain and demonstrate the fact that Core Vocabulary should be a part of EVERYTHING – not an additional task for teachers to imple- ment, thus focusing on embedding Core Vocabulary into their already planned academic activities. Even with the hesitations, when all was said and done, our teachers and staff did show improvement with modeling Core Vocabulary for the students. A post-survey was given (which in- cluded the same questions as the pre-survey) and it showed an increase across all areas that we looked into (e.g., familiarity with Core Vocabulary, settings in which Core Vocabulary is used, ac- tivities in which Core Vocabulary is used). Our winners were very pleased with their prizes and we were very pleased to see the modeling continue once the competition was complete. Our ultimate goal was to understand how we could be more effec- tive and intentional when implementing Core Vocabulary in our environment, while simultaneously inspiring the staff to want to be better communication partners for their students and in hopes, model Core Vocabulary in more settings and throughout more academic activities. The by-product of this initiative was the sheer amount of modeling in which our students were ex- posed. “Caught Modeling Core” ultimately increased the com- municative use of Core Vocabulary with both our non-verbal and verbal students, brought classrooms together and on the same page regarding the importance of communicating with our students, increased understanding and comfort level of us- ing Core Vocabulary, and increased the number of activities in which Core Vocabulary was used throughout the school day. As with any sort of new program being put into place, there

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