Small Talks VII: Darla Ashton, Hank Poore, Sean Sweeney, Shelley Anderson, & Tami Altschuler

This week, we share another episode of Small Talks, where we share small interviews with previous guests. This week, we share Small Talks with Darla Ashton, Hank Poore, Sean Sweeney, Shelley Anderson, and Tami Altschuler!

Before the interviews, Chris and Rachel talk about the CRAAP test. This test provides a list of questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not a source is reliable and credible enough. CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.

Small Talks this week:

First, Darla Ashton shares about creating visual schedules with resources like Lesson Pix and the Choiceworks App (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/choiceworks/id486210964). Chris notes that we can also consider “amorphous” visual schedules, a type of schedule where the pieces are dynamic and move around as necessary if there need to be changes to he schedule. These can help kids who are learning to be more flexible thinkers.

Second, Hank Poore and Chris discuss the pros and cons of turning off the feature where a word is played aloud when each button is touched. Chris talks about that Bruce Baker advising him to have the word read after each time a button is pressed; this can help keep communication partners engaged by giving them a auditory prompt to keep waiting for the message, but it likely comes down to personal preference.

Third, Sean Sweeney talks about JamBoard and a recent experience he had adapting a role playing game for play in et students to help participate in a shared space, more than google slides. Found a free RPG called Movie Night. Having the students design characters and use JamBoard for everyone’s character. Also uses slides on JamBoard to explain the game in a way that is easier to understand. Kind of like a virtual white board. Julia Dweck has links to a bunch of jam boards at https://linktr.ee/GiftedTawk

Fourth, Shelley Anderson shares her strategy of working with a student’s preferred toy/instrument to elicit more language production. Shelley takes a gathering drum and a wooden frog that makes a croaking sound and teaches language and prepositions to a student who loves the frog (e.g. “The frog is under the drum”).

Finally, Tami Altschuler wishes that there could be more care and communication between school-based and hospital-based SLPs before surgeries occur. If an AAC user is going to stay in the hospital, Tami would love for SLPs to contact her for better transferring care between the hospital and the school setting.

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