%20Activities%20for%20Therapy%20and%20Classroom.jpg)
For many Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs), there is never enough time to create language-rich activities that are interesting for students and/or fit the classroom theme or area of study. As SLPs, we often need to create materials that will be inclusive, especially for students with complex communication needs. However, our time is limited and opportunities for planning and development seem few and far between. We often rely on our tried-and-true resources, but now might be time to take our symbol-based materials to the next level.
If you are looking for ready-made, interactive, and symbol-based materials that support learning for students with special needs, then look no further! You may be familiar with using Boardmaker (a Tobii Dynavox product) to create communication boards, therapy materials, books, games, etc. from scratch, but did you know that Boardmaker has created a unique collection of FREE ready-made content that you can use for all students in the classroom, in therapy, and at home with families.
Boardmaker Activities-to-Go is a thematic, editable, and leveled learning program that supports students with special needs. It is available in print or use with interactive classroom learning boards or on iPad. The program targets life skills, vocabulary learning, science, and social studies. It includes a mix of topics that serves to enhance participation and build academic knowledge and vocabulary from kindergarten through grade 12. Boardmaker Activities-to-Go also includes the Core First Communication Book, a low-tech companion to TD Snap Core First AAC software.
Because the program includes a communication board, it can be a way to start exploring AAC for your students who struggle with communication. The content is provided in three levels (emergent to conventional), allowing you to support all students, regardless of their skills and abilities.
What is included in Activities to Go?
Boardmaker Activities-to-Go provides everything you need to support interactive, rigorous, and meaningful instruction for students with special needs. so that all students can engage in rigorous and meaningful instruction, regardless of their ability to demonstrate what they know. Books and vocabulary routines are the instructional anchor of each unit. Each unit (10 units per year) will include:
How does Boardmaker Activities-to-Go work?
Boardmaker Activities-to-Go provides a comprehensive Teacher Guide that provides implementation support for big ideas and evidence-based strategies for supporting language, literacy, and comprehension growth. The guide also offers suggestions for enhancing instruction via an extended reading list.
SLPs, Educators, or parents will read and re-read the anchoring books multiple times across a week. Students are given many opportunities to explore a range of activities (including matching, sorting, writing, webs, hidden pictures, games, recipes, and crafts) that provide the kind of repetition with variety that leads to increased comprehension and retention of knowledge. Boardmaker Activities-to-Go is the first pre-made curricular offering that aligns with College and Career Readiness Standards from K-12.
Stephanie Renaud, an educator in an Oklahoma, has reported that using Boardmaker Activities to Go has changed the way her classroom interacts with symbols and supports her learners in communication and literacy development.
“It might be free, but it’s one very valuable tool in my classroom. I love how easy it is to make these perfect for my students. I have a lot of students with significant visual impairment, and all I have to do is print them on poster size and they are easy to see! My kids love games, and we’ve been able to use these games and activities in lots of ways in our classroom. What’s fantastic is that this is way more fun than just standard instruction and they don’t even realize they are working on learning! Laughing with my students is the most fun, and these activities give us that chance all the time!”
Jennifer Latino, Rachel Curry and Melinda Catalana, a team of SLPs at HollyDELL School in Sewell, NJ, shared their experiences in providing services for students with complex communication needs, which led them to seek a flexible learning supplement that would allow them to simultaneously target language, build topic background knowledge, and help their students access grade level academic content. This team of SLPs felt that there was a discrepancy between speech therapy sessions and skill generalization into the classroom environment.
There existed an equal disconnect between the classroom curriculum and instructional support from related service providers.
“Breaking down barriers that precluded our students from using speech generating devices was the first step. Breaking through the barriers to level the playing field for our students to more accurately demonstrate their readiness to learn grade appropriate content was a different challenge. Communication and curricular support converged in ways that seemed impossible. The outcome of our pilot program demonstrated that with the right supports in place, individualized and meaningful learning turned the impossible into “I’M POSSIBLE”.”
In the process of learning more about the pertinent factors prohibiting their students from standard access to curriculum, Jennifer’s team discovered Boardmaker Activities to Go, and quickly learned that it helped reinforce instructional content areas while allowing their students to further utilize the previously established communication tools. They believe that students of all levels deserve exposure to curriculum in a variety of ways. In addition, having an option to support instructional content while working toward communication goals helps to achieve greater success. As a school-based team managing ever changing classroom protocols due to student illness and COVID restrictions, they did not have consistent access to curricular materials, nor did they have planning time available in their daily schedules.
Having a tool with ready-made activities that allows clinicians to easily utilize and provide meaningful support to the curriculum is extremely valuable to any practice. These supplemental activities followed a repetitive structure, which benefited the students. This predictable order fostered their ability to focus on the content of the material and not the task of “how to” complete the activity.
“Providing our students with access across environments has been our key aspiration. We relied on a variety of resources in conjunction with our curriculum supplement to adapt the provided materials to be scan-accessible, and cortical visual impairment (CVI) friendly. By doing so, we could ensure that our students would have the ability to demonstrate their true content knowledge. Though some templates required adaptations, they still served as an easily modifiable, applicable tool, and a viable substitute for an otherwise unrelated therapy activity. We knew the benefit far outweighed this slight encumbrance.”
Over the course of a 30-day summer program, the HollyDELL team intensively targeted two groups of elementary-aged students between the ages of 6 and 13. Collaborating with the classroom teachers to pull applicable ready-made activities to seamlessly tie to any featured curricular unit was essential.
“Boardmaker Activities to Go has been an incredibly powerful tool as a means to connect our students to their academic standards while still meeting their cognitive and communicative needs. And incredibly, it’s free!”
Stephanie Renaud in Oklahoma, and the team at HollyDELL in New Jersey, all share similar sentiments when praising the impact that Activities-To-Go has made on their school programs. The included activities, books, games, etc. helps SLPs, educators, and parents support students at early learning levels as they activate and build world knowledge and develop increased comprehension abilities. When this program is delivered, it provides access so that students with the most significant disabilities have essential experiences engaging with books and exploring activities that make new concepts and vocabulary stick. The instructional approach used by Boardmaker Activities-to-Go sets the stage for all students to understand and more fully participate in academic instruction. This program provides parents, teachers, and clinicians with a predictable framework for delivering high quality, accessible instruction that is easy to implement, engaging for students, and grounded in evidence-based learning practices.
Click here to download your FREE Boardmaker Activities-to-Go thematic units today! To learn more, please explore the following resources:
Quick Guide - Download Free Activities-to-Go PDFs on GoBoardmaker.com.pdf | Powered by Box
Introducing Activities-to-Go - tobiidynavox-2 (wistia.com)
Boardmaker Activities-to-Go is only one part of the library of supports available to help you support students with special needs. Tobii Dynavox offers a comprehensive set of supports, including free AAC software for professionals, therapy materials, assessment tools, training, etc. To learn more about us, please visit our Learning Hub at learn.tobiidynavox.com or our website at tobiidynavox.com.
