How to Use Core Vocabulary in Your Classroom

Who here has non verbal or limited verbal students in their classroom and is overrun with communication boards and completely overwhelmed on where to go next? Well, core vocabulary might just be your answer!

I'm excited to have Krystie from AdaptEd here today to share a guest post on Core Vocabulary. If my students hadn't already come in with their own different communication devices, I would have loved to use core vocabulary for all of them! Seriously, the way Krystie lays it out, you'll be very tempted to give it a try! :)

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How to use your iPad as a Switch Device (and other Accessibility Features)

At the beginning of this year I went to an iPad training and was absolutely MIND BLOWN. Did you know you can use your iPad with a switch? Don't have a switch? Do you know you can use your iPad as a switch?! 

I'll show you where you can find these options, try them out and let me know how it works!

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4 Ways to Teach Students how to Tell Jokes using Symbol Support (free download)

What do you do for April Fool's day in your special education classroom? This can be a tricky holiday to celebrate. In my classroom, we tell jokes! And not only on April Fool's Day. Jokes are a great way to give student confidence speaking, motivation to communication, and an appropriate way to gain attention.

I have an envelope filled with these 22 symbol supported jokes that my students can use in a variety of ways depending on their abilities.

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Communication Apps for Special Education

I've tested these iPad apps out and I think you'll love these communication apps for your special education classroom!

So you are looking for iPad apps to use in your special education classroom. You can find endless list upon list pretty much anywhere you look online...which seems nice at first, but then it can get overwhelming and hard to figure out what is actually a good app or not! Right? Ain't nobody got time for that!! 

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Daily Questions for Errorless Question Answering

So many students with special needs are concerned with answering questions correctly. Do you have any of those in your classroom too? These daily questions are designed for students to practice answering questions errorlessly. I finally finished creating my daily questions for the year pack over Christmas break and absolutely LOVE how it turned out. It has already made my morning run smoother, and I love the added communication piece this brings to our morning meeting. 

Each day we have a new question on the board. I store these in a file folder and switch out the question each morning. Students answer the question based on the two choices during morning independent work. Many of my students use devices, so they are expected to prepare their answer on their device. Students can use the sample sentence under the question each day to help them write (and say) their answer. 

For my students who do not use devices (or who are super fast), I also give them a weekly worksheet for our daily questions that they keep in their morning binder. There are several worksheets based on student levels. One involves drawing a picture answering the question, another writing the answer, writing the answer using a complete sentence, and answering the question plus adding details.  

This semester I got a new students in my class because his behaviors were causing issues in the higher level class, and since my class is more individualized, we wanted to see how he would do with that. I have given this student the higher level journal and so far this part is going well!

During our morning meeting, each student shares their answer and we move their picture under their answer choice, creating a graph of sorts. It is a great way to learn about everyone and also helps teach students that there isn't always a “right” answer, and that it is okay for your answer to be different than someone else’s.

Types of Questions:

82 What do you like? Given 2 picture choices. These are all opinion questions and students should learn that it is okay if their answer is different than their classmate’s answers. We graph our answers so we can compare and see our similarities and differences. (There are also a few options toward the end with 3 choices!)

20 personal info Yes/No questions. I included these at the beginning of the Yes/No questions because I wanted their to be opportunities for students to learn that is okay to answer no sometimes! This questions will always have a clear answer and staff can work with students to make sure they are answering correctly.

78 Do you like ____? Yes/No questions. For many students, answering Yes/No questions can be difficult. Many students are conditioned to always say “yes” (or “no”). It is important for these opinion question, that staff responds positively to all choices as not to make a student think they answered incorrectly.

What makes me even happier than using it in my classroom, is hearing how much others are loving this product as well! I love making things that not only help me, but help other teachers as well! Here's a couple of the comments from people who have purchased this packet on TpT.

• Pam H: "This pack is perfect for my classroom. My students are all nonverbal or very limited in verbal skills. This pack will help us work on communicating with one another. I'm also going to use some of the questions with my students receiving discrete trial instruction. Thanks for a fabulous product! Totally worth the money!!"
• Kandi G: "Love it! I've been looking for something exactly like this"
• Erika W: "Love using this with my special needs students. It works for my students with communication devices, but also for my verbal students. It helps with their sentence structure and speaking in front of a group. "
• Brittany M: "I absolutely love this for my FMD/MSD class. I have a wide age range and there is so much that I can do with this for all different levels. Thank you!"

Watch a video preview of this product below.

You can get the Daily Question pack in my TpT store which includes 180 questions with visuals plus four differentiated journal pages!! Want more? Grab the second pack of MORE Daily Questions too!

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Free Communication App for iPad/iPhone - Grid Player

I was so excited to find this FREE communication app! It is completely free; however you have to pay if you want to edit anything, but for most things you wouldn't have to edit anything so, ta-da, completely free! It is sometimes interesting because the app is British, so some of the words are a little different, but still pretty awesome for being free! Each morning as a class we take some time exploring this app and making sentences with it - I'm excited for all of the possibilities that Grid Player offers. There are four different types of communication devices in this one app. 

Text Talker phrasebook is the highest level, including various phrases for a variety of different situations. This would be great for students who are pretty high academically and can read, but cannot talk or express themselves. Here's the main screen on Text Talker Phrasebook. You can see most of the categories here are conversational.

 

Below is a screenshot of the greetings page.

Next is Talking Photographs. I love the real life pictures in this one, especially great for students who don't identify with symbols as easily. This is just the front page of categories.

I clicked on food and drink to get here, you can see there are even more categories to choose from.

Then I choose snacks, and here are a few of the pictures/words under snacks. You can see a bit of the British influence on some of these! There are two more pages of snack items that you can get to when clicking the "more" button.

Next we get into the Symbol Talkers, which I think of as the most common type of communication devices. First, here is Symbol Talker B. Symbol Talker B has more choices than Symbol Talker A, which I will show you last. Below is the first page of Symbol Talker B. You can see there are a lot of great categories to choose from!

Here is an example of the feelings page.

Next is Symbol Talker A, very similar to Symbol Talker B, with just less options. This is the one that I currently use with most of my students.

This is a screenshot of the question page.

And there you have it! Four communication devices in one great FREE app!! Woot Woot! :) Check it out, what do you have to lose? I know Grid Player is available on iPads, not sure about Andriod.

A couple other things about this app. Do you see that little red bubble thing on the bottom right side of each screen shot? You can drag that across in other to close out of one device and go into another. Once you choose a device to go to, it will automatically open up that one each time. Pretty sneaky, right? And once you are in the app, you can turn on guided access if you are concerned a student will try to leave the app.

Also, when you are on the home screen with the different communication devices, you have the option to change the voice from a boy to a girl in the top right corner- love this feature!

Hope you all enjoyed my mini review! I'd love to hear if you use Grid Player in your class, or any other communication apps that you use! My students are supposed to be getting Proloque2Go soon, but we are waiting on the funding to come in, until then, free is always good!

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