YouTube Video: This is a video of Sara and a student on a nature walk. You will notice this student asks for a “blue” leaf, and instead of correcting him, Sara presumes competence and actively searches for a blue leaf. When they didn’t find one, he labeled the leaf the correct color. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WrEtCFh9bHA
This is a visual we had available for students when we went on our class nature walk to reinforce our core words of Look/See.
unit’s core words in as many activities as possible. This planning happened at team meetings and lived in shared docs online so everyone was able to contribute even if they weren’t on-site full time. Not only were our activities rich in the chosen core words, we would find areas of the classroom where we could have the symbol in print, in books, on motor equipment, in the sensory table or on the way to the bus. A silver lining of COVID was in- tentionally planning an activity in each of our units for families to make AAC accessible at home. Some units it was a video of a song we were doing at circle time, other units it was practicing “go” with a visual on the door to talk about where they were YouTube Video: This is a video of a paraprofessional and a student engaged in a child-selected sensory activity. The paraprofessional models on his device without expectation that he responds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rSL0PX5SY
This is a visual support we had for students to follow along during one of our movement activities at circle time during our Look/See unit.
Not only was this new for our students, we wanted staff and par- ents to feel confident navigating to be able to model through- out classroom activities and with their child at home. It made the most sense to start with core words. After abandoning work stations (never looking back) and embracing play based, child led learning activities, we started with each two-week unit fo- cusing on one to two core words. We went through each activ- ity of the day and brainstormed ways we could incorporate that
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