AT and AAC: Practical Tips and Strategies : recipes in therapy

Your Special Chef

Angela Desideri — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:55:00 GMT

Teaching meal preparation and cooking is such an important life skill which can help lead to increased independence. For many individuals, this process can be challenging and may require lots of supports such as directions broken down into smaller steps, visual supports to assist with the directions, and adult supervision during the process.

Recently, I discovered a fabulous website called, “Your Special Chef." This is a great resource for SLPs, teachers, and parents to help teach meal preparation and cooking. This website includes a collection of recipes along with step-by-step visual directions. It provides recipes in the categories of main dishes, breakfast, snacks, desserts, sides, and drinks. Each recipe is rated on a level of difficulty ranging from easiest to hardest. A very useful and one of my favorite features is that every recipe comes complete with photographs for each step and is easy to use and follow. All of the visual supports are provided for us, how wonderful! All we have to do is print them.

After browsing all of the recipes on this website, I decided I would make the chocolate strawberries. We just finished our fruit-themed lessons so I thought this would be a nice surprise. Since all of the visuals and step-by-step directions are already provided were, all I had to do was gather the ingredients.

The chocolate-covered strawberries were a hit! Everyone loved making and eating them and it was definitely an activity that elicited a lot of comments. I can’t wait to try the pretzel sticks next and compare and contrast them with the chocolate covered strawberries.

Happy Cooking!

Get to Know Your Students

Angela Desideri — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:30:00 GMT

Recently, I discovered a new app called Music Color. Music Color is a universal app that's available on the iTunes app store and supports 20 languages.

How It Works

Select a color from 12 possible options: blue, yellow, red, pink, brown, white, green, gray, orange, black, purple and light blue.

Once you select a color, a page with six items in the color you selected opens, and classical music is played. When you press the item on the page, it displays a large, vibrant picture that changes each time the same picture is pressed.

The question mark opens a page that requires you to receptively identify the colors in a field of four.

Interacting in the App

I begin by modeling all of the colors and items. Then I give all of my students screenshots of the main page that contains the 12 colors. Be sure to refer to my previous blog Screenshots: An Easy Way to Create Visual Supports to learn how to take screenshots. The students take turns requesting their preferred colors and items that they want to see. We then take turns commenting about the pictures. I comment and describe using core words, and my students follow along. The pictures are so exciting that you will be amazed at the spontaneous language they elicit.

Observing Your Students' Favorite Items in the App

I observed my students interacting within the app and discovered some of their favorite things. One of my nonverbal students kept choosing the color orange, and when on the orange page, she kept pressing the basketball picture over and over. We gave her a basketball, and she immediately began bouncing it. Had it not been for this app, I never would have discovered her love of playing basketball. This is just one example among many that demonstrates how my nonverbal students use this app to communicate their favorite activities.

Expanding Beyond the App

I bring in objects that are the same colors as in the app. Some of the objects I used were marshmallows, different color squishy balls, different color putty, Play-Doh.
I made a board with 12 blank icons and then had my students glue colored squares on their boards. They loved their finished products and enjoyed telling me their favorite colors!
I created sensory boards with different colored items that we used to elicit descriptive language.
Stephanie Bruno-Dowling recently wrote about making Rainbow Punch in her blog "Drink Recipes for St. Patrick's Day!" We made rainbow punch, and it was such a fun activity to generalize the colors that were learned.

I encourage you to observe your students using this app and report your findings to me in the Comments section. Please describe the colors/items you observe are of particular interest to them.

Assistive Technology: Resources, Lessons and Pizza!

Angela Desideri — Wed, 18 May 2011 13:00:00 GMT

As a speech-language pathologist, it's important to continue to expand educational lessons that our students find motivating. Last month, in honor of Autism Awareness Month, Mighty Book Jr began offering a free membership to all Autism Speaks members until December 31. I have been using this site to create many lessons centered around the various book themes. One of the themes my students have really enjoyed is my "Pizza" theme lesson. I do this along with the "The Pizza Book" (located in the Special Education Books section).

We cover the following concepts:

Vocabulary Identification
Answering "wh" questions
Descriptive Language
Social Language Skills

*For my students who are AAC users, these items and phrases are all programmed into their devices and/or provided in their PECS books.

Week 1: Introduction and Story I begin the lesson by introducing and reviewing all of the vocabulary related to the topic. Next, I show the story and focus on answering "wh" questions and retelling the simple events in the story.

Week 2: Pizza and Toppings I bring in various ingredients used to make pizza, including pizza sauce, toppings, different types of cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, and different colored peppers. We work on describing the items according to category, color, function, size, and number, and then compare and contrast them.

After we describe the items, we have a taste test where the students get to work on concepts such as stating preferences (" I like," "I don't like"); requesting (using "more," "I want" and "I need"); commenting ("I see"); and stating possession ("I have").

Week 3: Create your own Pizza I have my students break into groups and rotate through the different pizza stations.

Station 1: They make their own pretend pizza (using a Melissa and Doug® pizza play set).
Station 2: They play a pizza game (Pizza Pile Up game)
Station 3: They make a virtual pizza on an iPod® using a pizza maker application (either Pizza Maker Free or Pizza Maker app). When they are finished in each rotation we stop and share. They have to tell the rest of the class what they were just doing or show them what they just made.

Week 4: Pizza Party This is the fun part - we make our own pizzas! You can modify it and make pizza bagels or you can get a pizza delivered and have a class pizza party! The possibilities are endless.

This is a great way to work on a variety of language concepts and skills while in a classroom or a small group setting. What a fun and creative way to get your students talking about pizza!