My family and I have been a part of the homeschool enrichment day program at our parish since it began six years ago.  This year my daughter Grace is in the k-2nd grade classroom.  She is seven years old and after working with her and the pK-toddler classroom for the last couple of years we were ready for a change and were hoping that she might be able to participate with students closer to her own age.  Even though Grace has some differences to her peers – we wanted to encourage her classmates’ curiosity and understanding.  In addition to showing them her AAC device and explaining how and why she uses her “talker” – we also are encouraging them to model this type of communication and experience a little bit what it is like to “talk like Grace.”  To this end we now start our Friday mornings in class with a large coreboard in the front of the room and each of the students have their own paper copy.  First they figure out what kinds of phrases they can make with their boards and then share them with the class.  Then I give them phrases to try to find.  The students really seem to enjoy it and it gives them a better understanding of my daughter while also giving her the chance to see modeling from her friends!   We are very blessed to have this community of faith and friendship for our family!

Here is a video example of how we use this in our classroom:

https://youtu.be/ZNwjhRht784

 

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