Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenarios Planning
My target audience is students with severe autism, primarily students with nonverbal skills. My secondary audience is educators who work with nonverbal students to collaborate and share ideas that work.
Materials
The materials that are needed for this project are; an iPod Touch, a Dyna Vox, poloquo2 software, a PECS Book, a kitchen to prepare food or access to food and snacks, and a video camera for documentation.
Objective
The learning objective is to have the student ask for a meal or snack using a communication device 75% of the time correctly without a maladaptive behavior.
Procedure:
Students or teacher must first get the communication device and set it up at the table where the student is going to eat. The communication device should be on and ready to go. This is important because most communication devices take it while to boot up. If a student is left waiting for their meal is most likely they will have a maladaptive behavior. To prepare a student for success it is sometimes better to have the communication device ready, especially if they are waiting for a meal.
Students should already be familiar with PECS ( Picture Exchange Communication System) and begin to choose the appropriate words or phrases to ask for a meal.
Most of the Dyna Vox and Ipods have Proloqo2 software which uses similar pictures to the PECS pictures for words and phases. The student will first choose “ I want” and select it. The student will then look for “ dinner or food” and then the “ please”. Once all the words are chosen the student will then tap the sentence strip at the top of his device. The device will then say the sentence for them. Once a student has completed all the steps correctly without a maladaptive behavior they can have their meal.
The student will then look for the “I want” a “drink” “please” on their communication device. Once the student has found all the correct words and tapped the sentence strip without a maladaptive behavior the student can then have a drink. Students will sometimes need help picking the correct words or help with their communication device. Documenting this procedure on video will hopefully help other teachers, parents, and peers understand the students and maybe come up with new ideas to help our students.
Web Tool
I am choosing Flickr for my web 2.0 tool to share video and pictures of our work.
Using their communication device will help students that are nonverbal with autism be more socially interactive. I hope that other people, parents, and teachers that view the video can also see how students with severe autism can be more social and come up with more ideas as well.
Connections to Prior Knowledge
Students must already know PECS pictures as well as basic grammar such as sentence formation in able to use a communication device. Students must also have at least a 20-70-word vocabulary to be able to begin basic sentence structure. Students can then use this knowledge in real-life scenarios to ask for food, meals, and snacks at the residence or in the community.
Create or Produce
Since the students cannot write and have basic communication skills that it would be best to video their progress. It would be our goal to create small videos of their progress and post it on the web to share our success, and to encourage others, and hopefully get new ideas as well.
Reflection
The students are nonverbal and therefore cannot comment on what they learned and cannot write about how they felt. However, I think that throughout this process they will be times that they do not succeed and that at the end of this process it would be great learning moment for my students to see themselves when they do a good job and when they behave badly.
The video is an example of option 2, creating a short documentary of the above RILS. However it also includes my own persuasive personal message that nonverbal students with autism can be literate, communicate, and function in society.
I have not had any luck embedding video on this blog. Here is my attempt using there uploader.
I am also including the link to the video below, you will also notice my attempt of the embed code below that. Enjoy the video
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