AAC Fundamentals Training

There are few foundational skills necessary to support an individual's use of AAC. These skills help us create moments where AAC can be used, and help us to support AAC use and growth in those moments. There are four parts to this AAC Fundamentals Training:

There is a handout that you can print or view at anytime to have while watching the video or to keep to reference.

Creating Opportunities for Communication:

Creating opportunities for communication refers to how we set-up the environment and/or interact with an item of interest to encourage an individual to use AAC. Here are examples of how we can do this to support requesting an item, asking for help, directing another's behaviors, and commenting.

Requesting an Item

Asking for Help

Commenting

Directing Another

AAC Modeling:

AAC modeling is the communication partner’s act of using AAC (touching words/phrases on an AAC system), while also talking to the individual.

Prompting:

Prompting is the act of trying to make someone do something. A prompting hierarchy is a systematic way of providing prompts to help an individual learn new skills or practice a skill they already know.

Language Expansion:

Language expansion is our response to an individual’s use of AAC to make that utterance longer and/or more linguistically complex.