Do you have students who use AAC? I found the most tremendous online adapted literature resource and I cannot wait to share it with you.
Teaching Literacy to AAC Users
It can feel overwhelming to teach literacy skills to students who don’t read via decoding. But every student deserves access to books. Books help students learn functional vocabulary about their home, school, and community. They also help students make and reinforce connections about topics presented in class. Literature also help students increase their background knowledge.
Additionally, many students who do not use AAC benefit from adapted books. That’s because the adapted books highlight important vocabulary and sentence structure in easily digestible ways. Those students include:
- non-reading students
- students with communication disorders
- autistic students
How to Adapt a Book for an AAC User
Traditional books are often modified to make them more accessible for AAC Users. It takes a lot of time and effort to make an adaptable book. Once I took Brown Bear, Brown Bear, reviewed it for relevant vocabulary words, added Velcro to each page, searched Boardmaker for the appropriate images, printed them out in color, laminated them, cut them out, and then applied Velcro dots and placed them inside each page. Not only was it a lot of work but it left me with a bulky book that was hard to store and cart around from school to school.
A Free Library of Adapted Books
Another educator shared a ready-made library of resources with me and I knew I wanted to share that with you. It’s called the Resource Library from the Paul V Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College. Here are a couple examples of what they offer:
You can see that the Boardmaker-type images are already on each page. Here is the catalog of all of the books they have adapted and that are ready to download as a PDF. You can decide to present the adapted book PDF on your laptop or iPad or you you can easily print it to use with your students. Then you could send home the print out for students to review the book at home with their families.
Free List of Adapted Literature
Rhode Island College put together a comprehensive list of every book they have adapted: PDF Catalog of Printable Adapted Books. There are a variety of books included for ages from preschool to all ages. Additionally, for some of the books they have made multiple different versions for you to use with your students. View and download the books on their website. Those include:
- 4 Types of PowerPoints for students with visual impairments
- PDF guides to the books
- PowerPoint shows about the books
Speech Therapy Goals Targeted with Literature
Literature-based speech therapy is popular right now and it’s no wonder why. Using books reinforces skills skills that students are learning in the classroom. Here are some IEP goals for speech therapy that you can target with books:
- Answering Yes/No Questions
- Answering Wh Questions
- Increasing vocabulary
- Using correct sentence structure
- Following directions
- Increasing phonological awareness skills
- Making inferences and predictions
Anyway, now that you have found 400 Printable Adapted Books, you have adapted literature for the next school year and more! Look up a favorite book and add the PDF to your personal library to extend your lesson. If this is helpful to you, please share this blog post with your SLP friends.