[ Post a Response | AAC, Special Education, and Inclusion ]
Posted by Cheryl Some key things you also need to know about students is what motivates them. What motivates them may be typical (food, cars) or atypical (licking the wall, self stimming activities). KNowing what motivates them will take you more than halfway on your therapy journey. I highly recommend going to a PECs (Picture Exchange Communication Sysytem) conference when one comes to your area as soon as you can. You can use powerful motivaters to begin to teach the students to request, even low level students can pick this up to some degree.
on 9/10/2003, 8:56 pm, in reply to "Severe-Profound MR class"
67.25.186.85
I would start by taking some time to go over the teacher's schedule of activities, what does he/she do withthe students during the day, how is their day broken up? Then (if you can and it isn't easy, I had 90 kids in 3 days last year so I know) you can observe the whole class in these activities to see how different students are participating. This is a great start to see what types of activities/adaptations you want to work on. With very low students you are looking at a lot of adaptations as well as instruction. If you have an assitive technology or augmentative communication person in your area you might want to contact them for some ideas. In my experience, circle time and cooking time are two good areas to work with. People have previously noted good literature ideas which I echo, they work well. During cooking, you can use picture recipes ( I belive Mayer Johnson has a good set of them) as visual aides (althought not all students would understand that). Students can use a switch to activate a blender or an electric can opener to participate thereby learning cause and effect in a functional setting. The Power Link by Able.net allows any appliance that has a plug to be adapated with a switch.
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