AAC and Literacy in My Homeschool: Fall 2019 Update

This is augmentative alternative communication (AAC) awareness month. Most days I have posted on Instagram as part of The Great AAC Challenge, 2019. It has been fun to reflect on our AAC journey as I share photos and write about each day’s theme. Today’s topic is AAC and Literacy. It is a good opportunity to share what literacy teaching looks like in my homeschool seven months after attending the Comprehensive Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities and Complex Communication Needs course.

I want to be absolutely clear that I am just one step across the threshold on this journey. It reminds me of the days I helped my teenage sons with a course called small engine repair. Like I was with his older brothers, Nathaniel and I are learning partners in this endeavor. He is learning about letters and words and reading and writing. I am more experienced in literacy, but very new in learning about supporting a child with complex communication needs and a complex body in his literacy learning. We are both working hard daily. Often, I crave a brain break as much as Nathaniel.

Our literacy learning is messy. It looks nothing like the “butt in chair, pencil in hand, paperwork obediently completed*” that some homeschool parents expect. Or that I expected many years and many children ago. (Sorry, older children.) In many ways we are still finding our way. Does sorting words work better on the carpet or the table? How many predictable chart writing sentences makes the best book on Friday? Does self selected reading time fit better after walking on the treadmill or after lunch? This blog post is a picture of today. It may not look like this in a month or six months as I learn more and improve my skills. It definitely will not look like this as Nathaniel learns and improves his skills. This is the most intriguing part of homeschooling. Just as I learn how to teach him today, he will develop new skills. What we collaborate on today, he will do independently soon. His learning drives mine. So read further with that understanding… this is just a collection of snapshots into what our learning looks like this fall.

Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge Instruction
I am following conventional literacy instruction strategies except in two areas. This is one of them. We are still reviewing the letter names and sounds, which is often considered more of an emerging literacy skill. I just sense I need to keep at this. Daily I do a mini lesson on one letter of the alphabet. This takes about fifteen minutes max. I use the charts from our Jolly Phonics curriculum to review the capital and lower case letter and sound. We use Nathaniel’s talker to say the letter name and sound. We read one page (the letter of the day) in an alphabet book. This cycle I am using A is for All the Amazing Things You Are. We find the letter in some text. This cycle I am using Bob Books: Alphabet for this. Nathaniel practices writing the letter. This cycle I am using Kick Start Kindergarten Workbook. We will cycle through the alphabet multiple times this year.

Working with Words
Each day Nathaniel and I make ten words from five letters. This uses his understanding of letter sounds and blending. He makes the words using magnet letters. After giving him time to work, I make them using letter cards on a pocket chart. Once a word is made, I place the word written on an index card in the pocket chart. Once we have all ten, we sort the words by first letter. We consider where two additional words will fit in our sorting. I use Systematic Sequential Phonics They Use: For Beginning Readers of All Ages and additional resources for these lessons.

Wall Words:
We typically add five new words to our wall each week. These are a combination of common sight words and words that help us figure out other words in their word family. Daily we review our wall words. Some days I preselect a few words and give Nathaniel clues to find them. We then clap and chant the words and spelling. Some days we watch a short video of Nathaniel’s older siblings chanting and spelling all the words. He loves these days! After our time at the wall, we use two key words to helps us sort other words in their word family. Nathaniel’s enthusiasm lagged on this part today, so two little stuffed mice helped us find the words and sort them.

Guided Reading:
Nathaniel and I have moved from shared reading to daily guided reading lessons to help grow his reading comprehension. Using the same book all week, I use anchor-read-apply charts. Our book this week is The Biggest Pumpkin Ever. Which might explain why two stuffed mice helped us with our word sort. Rich and Nathaniel just finished reading the Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. He offered names of many characters from Pooh for our anchor question today. Last week, our guided reading book was about a spider and it was nice to see him remember that spiders are in our stories. At the beginning of the year, I would often provide multiple low tech picture choices for Nathaniel as possible answers for our guided reading questions and let him select. The need for that is lessening. Nathaniel provided all these answers using his AAC device today.

Predictable Writing Chart:
This is the second literacy intervention from emergent literacy instruction that I continue to use regularly. Nathaniel enjoys it a great deal. I use words from our wall words and try to connect the chart to our guided reading book. On Monday, we write our chart. We often pause to text or FaceTime an older sibling or Nathaniel’s three year old niece to get some additional answers for sentences. On Tuesday, we reread and discuss the words in our chart. For example, tomorrow I might have Nathaniel circle the word SEE in each sentence. On Wednesday, we cut apart and reconstruct one or more of the sentences. On Thursday, we use the app Pictello to create a book. On Friday, we read a printed version of the book. I read softly aloud, but encourage Nathaniel to read it in his head. These homemade books make great additions to Nathaniel’s book basket for individual reading time.

Self Selected Reading
Probably our favorite literacy activity. You can see one of our homemade books from our predictable chart writing in his book basket. Nathaniel currently enjoys beginner graphic novels about super heroes. I read too. And always a paper book, not on a device. I am currently reading and highly recommend The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart. The above * quote if from this book.

Writing:
We spend time writing daily. I model writing using drawings, pictures, alternative pencils, a keyboard, iPad, and some days a pen or pencil. Nathaniel doesn’t love this time. But he is showing growth from our continued work. Today he drew a picture. After drawing for a bit, he left the table to retrieve a small picture of a bug I had drawn last week as part of a craft project. He flew the bug down to his drawing and placed in on top. This tipped me off that his drawing was a spider web and the bug was now caught. I asked for clarification using his talker, but he didn’t want to provide any information. He got busy using his letter stamps. I contributed meaning to his letter choices. B - bug ST - stuck. “Oh, thank you for sharing your story with me about the bug getting stuck in the spider web.” I wrote “Bug stuck in web” on a post-it-note and put it on the back of Nathaniel’s writing. This way Nathaniel’s dad can understand the writing when Nathaniel shares it with him. For now, I am not marking directly on Nathaniel’s written work in anyway.

Some days we use a keyboard and iPad for writing time. Some days I provide a picture. I teach mini lesson about writing in the beginning when I model my own work.

Reading Aloud:
We read the above books today. Picture books were read in their entirety. We read a chapter from the Bible, a few chapters from the Mercy Watson book, and a few pages from Living Long Ago. Living Long Ago was the text for our social studies lesson; Pumpkin Circle was the text for our science lesson.

A Little Extra:
Nathaniel completed a worksheet on spider body parts left over from last week. My main goals for this activity was the fine motor skill of cutting and the science information review. Rather than focus on the highly specific vocabulary of the actual body labels, we described the body parts using core, and then looked and listened for the initial letter sound of each body part name.

We visited a pumpkin patch this afternoon and found this great visual that complimented the information we learned from Pumpkin Circle. I love when literacy is so layered in Nathaniel’s life.

Well, that’s it - a day of literacy instruction for us! I didn’t write much about how I incorporate Nathaniel’s AAC device into each part of this instruction. Maybe a future post. Hopefully the pictures and brief descriptions of what we are doing provide insight into how much literacy instruction is accessible to a child with complex learning needs.

A question I’ve been asked by email and when I presented recently: “Do you really spend two and a half hours on literacy instruction like is recommended?” Yes. Considering the days we have to leave after lunch for therapy or doctor appointments, we average three hours a day five days a week on literacy. Weekends are less. We average forty-five minutes to an hour of literacy exposure on Saturdays and Sundays. Most of that is reading aloud.

Thank you for sharing our Monday literacy moments with us! If you have expertise in this area and see ways I can improve, please don’t hesitate to comment or email!