Boardmaker Symbols Addendum 2008

My new 2008 Boardmaker Symbol addendum arrived yesterday in the mail from Mayer-Johnson. The disc contains 1,300 more symbols for your Boardmaker, Boardmaker Plus, or Boardmaker with SDP software. Many of the new symbols are related to math and science or transition to adulthood/post-high school placement. The cost is $29 dollars (US) and it installed like a breeze on my Windows XP laptop, in spite of having almost no memory available. If you need to buy all of the addendums the new 2000-2008 addendum bundle is $125.00.

| View | Upload your own

Even with all of the addendums and downloading the free monthly symbols there are some symbols I wish I had, that I think are not unique to my classroom. I submitted these suggestions for new or revised symbols to Mayer-Johnson today.

I have submitted symbols before. Sometimes you get an e-mail a few weeks to a few months later with all or some of the symbols you request as an attachment (a few times I never heard back after requesting symbols).

I am guessing that Mayer-Johnson appreciates it if you make sure the symbol doesn't already exist before you request it, which it only takes a second to do in symbol finder. As a side note before you search for generic names versus brand names before you give up looking, i.e. a Hoyer is called a Patient Lift. (Remember you can add new names to symbols, so next time you search it comes up as Hoyer.)

Don't forget that you can share any boards you make on the very active Yahoo Boardmaker Group or the (very inactive) Mayer-Johnson Sharing Page.

High Tech Pudding

Today we made green and gold pudding in celebration of St. Patrick's Day (we like to get the party started early in our room). Here are some of my students making the pudding; differentiated instruction combines with assistive technology meaning everyone participates and learns independence.

For technology we used our Enabling Devices pouring cup with a "jelly bean" switch, some standard electric beaters with our Ablenet powerlink and an Ablenet "big red" switch. The students did 99% of the work them selves, with more able students handling the beaters, opening boxes, etc. and switch users doing the pouring (via the switch pouring cup) and powering the beaters via switch for their friend. The end result was four cups of gold pudding (vanilla), four cups of green pudding (pistachio), a bit of a mess and a good time.





































It was very yummy!

Top 10 Tips for Partner Assisted Scanning Handout

A link to a fantastic hand out on partner assisted scanning was shared on the QIAT listserv today. The hand out offers ten tips for partner assisted scanning and explains each. I plan to go over this handout at my daily staff meeting tomorrow morning. Below are the ten tips, click here to download the PDF of the hand out.

1. Motivation, Motivation, Motivation!!
2. Offer Choices for Multiple Cycles
3. Offer Choices in a Consistent Order: Support a Visual, Auditory and/or Tactual Map
4. Always Include a Way Out ("give me more choices")
5. Decrease the Amount of Questions & Language
6. Consider How Choices Are Offered: Visual, Auditory, Tactual and/or Sign
7. Accept Multiple Communication Modes
8. Attribute Meaning to All Communication Attempts
9. Use Facilitation Strategies as Needed
10. Consider the Implications of Life As A Multiple Choice Test

I would only add a reminder to allow enough wait time for the student to process and respond.

from Promoting Communication on the Fly for Students with Significant Disabilities,
Including Deaf-Blindness: Top 10 Tips for Partner Assisted Scanning
(Hanser, 2007)

Linda Burkhart also has two excellent handouts on partner assisted scanning, one that is an introduction and one that is from a presentation at ISAAC.

I've been blogged

Wikis to Watch

ITC Fusion is a wiki that focuses on teaching life skills while teaching the state mandated curriculum. It has some nice Boardmaker boards and other resources.

ATEN Region 3 Village is a wiki about creating thematic visuals and accessible literacy activities.

Ohio Alternative Assessment has great information for all of working to do alt assessment or teach to state or local standards.

I am also beginning to work on an intensive special needs wiki, but it will most likely be a summer project. It is located at Intensive SPED Resources if you want to check my progress.

My Voice is My Power: Part Three

I did a favor for a fellow a teacher who works in another school district today. She teaches a PDD class grades 1-4 and has a 4th grader who is ready to move on next year. The student in question doesn't really belong in a PDD room, but that is another story. She didn't start using AAC until this year when I let her teacher borrow a 32 message 6 level device from my personal collection, as the school district had no interest in providing her with a device.

Basically I met with the mom of the student and taught her about AAC, displayed three different dynamic display devices and taught her what to say to get an evaluation and a rental in order for her daughter to have a dynamic display device in the relativity near future. Basically I just told her that her daughter (and all children) are entitled to have assistive technology be considered as part of their IEPs. Nothing earth-shattering there, just the law.

I explained that the district must supply the technology if it is educational necessary, but that she could negotiate for them to just pay for the evaluation and the rental of a device to collect data and then have state insurance pay for the device so that her daughter owned it, which has the bonus of making her look like a hero.

In the end this mom said to me, "I know she has things to say. I know she wants to tell us things. I know there are things like what you are showing me out there for her. I just don't know who to ask."

It brings tears to my eyes. This mom knows her daughter, knows she can communicate. We, all of us who are part of the system, have failed. The system that prepares educators, special educators, speech therapists and occupational therapists has failed. The system that placed this child in a PDD room failed. The system that created a situation that forced a classroom teacher to have to go to an out of district teacher-friend for a "favor" of educating a mom on her daughter's rights definitely failed. Those in the medical fields failed, why haven't they given this mom the information, sent the daughter for AAC eval? The device creators and vendors failed, why aren't they finding ways to connect with these desperate parents outside of school districts? Somehow, we, the stakeholders, the moms and dads, and people with disabilities who have found a way through these hurdles themselves and teachers and speech therapists, and device makers, and OTs and PTs, and AT specialists, all of us, we need to do a better job finding a way to give all students their voices and their power.

101 Ways to Use a Sequential Message AAC Device to Access the Curriculum

Compiled by Toni Waylor-Bowen, Ph.D. & Jessie Moreau, M.Ed., NBCT; March 2007

ELA/Reading Comprehension
• Recite a repeated line in a story/play/poem/speech
• Read from a story, chapter book, newspaper, magazine
• Name the characters in a story
• Sequence events in a story/chapter
• Give important details in a story/chapter / recall facts
• Ask questions (who, what, where, etc) of others about a story/chapter
• Give “stage directions” to others in a play
• Follow the steps in multi-step directions/task analysis (e.g., recipe, simple machine)
• State the logical order of information in a non-fiction text
• Give timeline information about a person in a biography
• Retell familiar events/stories to include beginning, middle, and end
• Name vocabulary words and define terms

ELA/Listening/Speaking/Viewing
• Answer questions during calendar/schedule time
• Uses oral language for different purposes: to inform, to request, to entertain
• Recite the Pledge of Allegiance
• Tell others about an event that happened (at home/community/another class)
• Ask questions of others about their evening/weekend/special event
• Ask survey questions of others
• Repeat auditory sequences (letters, words, numbers, rhythmic patterns)
• Present an outline of a group report or class project to others
• Identify people to participate in a group project/play a game/determine “Who’s next?”
• Interview a guest or teacher new to the school
• Sing the chorus of a song or music/video
• Recite Nursery Rhymes
• Recite a poem
• Call items for Bingo games related to curricular themes (especially fun with a randomizer)

ELA/Writing
• Sequence items to go into a story
• List adjectives/adverbs to go into a story (especially fun with a randomizer)
• Provide vocabulary to be included in a story
• Give details about different parts of a class story

Mathematics/Numbers and Operations
• Count forward
• Count backward
• Count days of the week/month/year
• Count sets of items
• Count using 1-1 correspondence
• Recite prime numbers with visual models for identification
• Skip count
• Recite addition/subtraction/multiplication facts
• State money amounts (by dollars, quarters, dimes, etc.)
• Identify parts of a whole (fractions)
• Identify numerals in expanded notation (9 thousand, 3 hundred, fifty, five)
• Identify and order percents
• Identify and order decimals
• Identify numbers on a number line

Mathematics/Measurement
• State the order of objects based on a dimension (e.g., big/bigger/biggest, long/longer/longest)
• State time (hour/half-hour/quarter-hour)
• Count the increments while measuring (for length, capacity, time, temperature, etc)
• Counts items used in the formula to determine area, capacity
• Give steps in formula for finding volume, surface area, etc.
• Name measurement-related vocabulary words and define terms

Mathematics/Geometry
• Count the number of shapes/solid figures identified in the class, school, community
• Name the various types of geometric shapes when shown the same
• Count the number of sides, edges, vertices, in plane and solid figures
• State the properties of different shapes/solid figures (i.e., a triangle has three sides; a cube has 12
edges)
• Count points on a grid
• Name geometry-related vocabulary words and define terms
• Choose geometric figures then identify them with visual/tactual manipulatives

Mathematics/Data Analysis and Probability
• Count/name the items that are part of the survey
• Count the number of responses/tally marks for each item on a table/chart/graph
• Skip count number of responses when using different scales
• Estimate number of items in a set
• Predict the probability of a given event (i.e., numbers on dice, colors of M&M’s) for experimental
probability activities (randomizer device works best)

Mathematics/Algebra
• State items in a pattern
• Skip count
• State addition/subtraction/multiplication/division rules
• Tell other strategies for solving problems (mnemonic devices)
• Count using ratios/fractions (i.e., 1/3, 2/3, 1; ¼, ½. ¾, 1)
• State formulas for solving problems
• Announce simple equations for students to solve
• Describe simple story problems for students to solve
Science
• State science-related vocabulary words and define terms (“A mineral is made from non-living
substance found in nature.”; “A rock is made from minerals.”)
• Describe items being used in the science task (i.e., minerals, rocks, animals, habitats)
• Describe common features between items (i.e., both the tiger and polar bear use camouflage, both
the bat and possum are nocturnal)
• List reasons/outcomes (i.e., pollution is caused by littering, pouring items in streams or rivers…)
• List items (i.e., major organ systems, names of the planets, items that can be recycled…)
• Sequence items (i.e., life cycles, planets in order from the sun, steps in the water cycle)
• Explain steps in an experiment
• Describe changes in items before, during, and after an experiment
• State parts of a whole (i.e., parts of a cell)
• State parts of a group (i.e., animals that are vertebrates, types of habitats)
• Call items for Bingo games related to science standards (especially fun with a randomizer)
• Describe physical attributes of items (i.e., shape, color, size, hardness, texture)
• Describe characteristics (i.e., habitats, cloud formations, hurricanes, physical/chemical changes)
Social Studies
• List items (individual freedoms on Bill of Rights, original 13 colonies, )
• Sequence items (steps in the producer/consumer cycle)
• State items in first/then and if/then format (“First England wanted to tax, then America wanted independence”)
• Give a timeline of events (history of music, transportation, important persons, events in a decade)
• List key individuals (presidents, world leaders, Civil Rights personalities, famous Georgians)
• List reasons for an event
• Recite lines in a play/music video/skit about subject/time period
• List items/places in governmental jurisdiction (city, state, country)
• List states in regions of the United States
• List countries on different continents in the world
• List cultures (Indian tribes living in Georgia)
• State/list items related to a culture (common words in different languages)
• State social studies-related vocabulary and define terms
• List/describe geographic regions
• List major products of a state, region, country
• Call items for Bingo games related to Social Studies standards (especially fun with a randomizer)
• Sing a song or chorus from a song of a country being studied
• List cultural achievements in the fields of art, music, literature, theater, movies/TV

The following devices allow for sequential messaging:
LITTLE Step by Step Communicator (AbleNet)
BIG Step-by-Step Communicator (AbleNet)
Step-by-Step Communicator with Levels (AbleNet)
Sequencer (Adaptivation)
Partner One/Stepper (AMDi)
* Big Talk Triple Play (Enabling Devices)
Step Talking Sequencer Switch Plate (Enabling
Devices)
* Randomizer (Adaptivation)
Press Your Luck w/ Built-in Sequencer (Enabling
Devices)
* These devices offer randomizing options.
(Device list adopted from GPAT's list of Assistive Technology D