You just looked at this year's curriculum. Your supposed to "expose" your students to grade level curriculum. Wait... what!? Seriously... the Civil War!? Oh my gosh! You can't even find a craft or song for that topic that would keep any of your students engaged. Here's how to make almost any topic relevant to your students and do more than just "expose!"
STEP 0. Model with AAC and your verbal speech!
1. Focus on core words. If vocabulary seems beyond your students’ current levels, focus on core words and describing words. For example, if teaching about Blizzards (not a frequently occurring vocabulary word in our everyday lives) describe with words such as: cold, windy, white, snow, winter.
2. Focus on basic concepts. Describe objects and pictures from books, videos, art activities, worksheets, websites, games etc.. by the color, shape, size, beginning letter, or even quantity by counting the number of items you see.
3. Answer yes/no questions about pictures and objects from a lesson.
- Yes and no is a little challenging, so start with basic labels for objects. "Is is an apple?"
- Next work on colors, groups, shapes, sizes?
- Is the apple red? Is it a food? Is the apple round? Is the apple small?
4. Ask do you, "Like/don’t like?"
- There’s almost always something in a lesson your students can have an opinion on.
- "How do you feel about that book, video, etc…?"
- Use a sentence starter visual prompt and incorporate like/don’t like visuals with verbal (and AAC) modeling.
- You say, “Cool! I [like/ don’t like] that video. “
5. Matching picture or object activities- Matching is a great beginning and pre-learning skill.
- You can match pictures of pretty much anything from Physics and Motion (a ball rolling) to Geography (a map). Use matching file folders, work on tracing vertical and horizontal lines to match pictures on a worksheet, do digital matching activities on learning platforms like "Seesaw and Boom Learning", adapted books, and more!
6. Talk about and model prepositions of place ("in," "on," "under") in relation to pictures in the books and videos. You can even use the actual objects that you are using during your lesson.
- Put the object above your head, under the table, etc. Ask, "Where's the [object]?" or model "The [object] is under." (For more info on objects during lessons check out the blog post "How to use any single object...")
I hope this helps! I would love to hear your comments!
Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for engaging resources that you can use (and that I use) for curricular topics! The Structured Autism Classroom on TPT link is on the top of this website's homepage.
Here's some basic supports to get you started, but you can also check out the matching folders and adapted books that you can use on my TPT store!
Click the picture (linked to product) for the Describing Resource. For all other resources go to the link to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store on the Homepage.