This school year, I have spent a fair amount of intervention time with students who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). I have also spent a good amount of time with the communication partners (teachers, parents, paraprofessionals) of those students. Throughout this time, I focused my energy on modeling for the students to learn how to use their AAC system, but also for the communication partners to implement modeling. Now that we’re months into the school year, I have noticed the communication partners doing some modeling, but it could be done more frequently and more effectively. My first thought on how to solve this problem was to provide the communication partners with a self-assessment form, which I think is a fairly nonintrusive way for people to make a change.

So, about a week ago, I asked my Facebook friends whether they had a self-assessment form for modeling AAC. One response indicated that a pair of presenters had a form they created. One of the presenters mentioned that I could contact her about the form in a few days after a training. Since I’m not very good at waiting, and I had a deadline nearing for a slideshow in which I wanted to include the form, I decided to create my own. I created something initially that I knew would be revised after asking for feedback. I received good feedback from colleagues and I also saw the form by the one presenter, both of which informed me that I was on the right track. After few or more tweaks, I have a form that I’m now ready to ask communication partners to complete (possibly 1x/month during the consultation period of our 3:1 service delivery model). I would also like to share the AAC modeling self-assessment below (as an image and corresponding PDF download link) in this blog post. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share them. I am open to considering additional changes to the form.

PDF Download Link