Language & Literacy
As children listen, they learn to speak. Speech helps them learn to read, which helps them read to learn. A perfect snowball, right!? Not always. Many of the students we serve have communication, cognitive and/or physical challenges that impede typical development of speech and language skills…which creates a different kind of snowball. Difficulties with communication will delay the achievement of literacy skills and, ultimately, impact learning in general. We need to immerse children in language at every turn and reading is a great medium. Most kids love a good story and, for those with delayed language development, visually-supported, interactive reading is a great tool for supporting listening and communication skills (in any form), and to promote learning. For those who have access to an iPad, consider these apps to create customized stories for supporting language and literacy with a multi-media flair.
Sometimes a story must have personal meaning for a student to get their attention so we suggest using photos of their friends, family, home, pets, etc. to create stories that will use familiar themes and encourage communication. From the creators of Proloquo2Go, the Pictello app lets you take/import pictures to create ‘talking visual scenes’ and digital stories almost on-the-fly! There is an onscreen tutorial guide built right in and stories can have recorded voices as well as typed text lines. This is also a great tool for helping older students learn to write their own stories or re-tell something about part of their daily activity!
The SnapScene app by Tobii-Dynavox allows you to snap a picture of anything, quickly create ‘hot spots’ to add text and/or recorded voices and bring the scene to life. The GoVisual app by Attainment Company includes these same features, as well as the Transition to Literacy (T2L) feature—a word pops up on display in the scene for 3 seconds of on-screen time—which has been shown to dramatically increase literacy comprehension.
IDEAS FOR USE:
Take pictures of classroom routines and add verbal directives to ‘tell’ the students how to do something (handwashing, line-ups, pack up at the end of the day, etc.)
Photograph field trips (include the students in the pics!) and create a story they can use to ‘tell’ a friend or parent about the adventure
Snap a picture of the student groups and have each child voice their own name over their picture
Take pictures of characters from familiar books and create hot spots over each; record their names, key phrases, or repetitive lines to encourage shared reading activities
Reading TO a child has so many benefits. Reading WITH a child has even more!
