Providing AACcess to Literacy: Tips to Support Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Users During Reading - Noelle Veome

Literacy, or the ability to read and write, is an important skill needed for everyday life. Literacy skills are crucial for academic success, vocational success, connecting with peers, and furthering cognitive skills. For augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) users, providing a literacy-rich environment allows the opportunity to expand communication skills. Below are some key factors to consider when working on reading skills with AAC users.

Targeting Emergent Literacy Skills

This is an area that is often overlooked due to the fact that some emergent literacy skills require verbal output from the student in a typical teaching setting. However, these skills are crucial in laying the foundation for reading. There are multiple ways to target these skills for AAC users: 

Book Handling Skills: Allow the student to familiarize themselves with the physical print structure of books (which way to hold the book, turning the pages, etc.). After they become familiar with this, help them become familiar with the text (identifying that the title is the largest print on the cover, there is text on the pages, etc.). 

--> Example: Instructors can “sabotage” the situation by giving the student the book upside down and backwards to see if they will orient the book correctly. As students advance, instructors could ask students to point to the title, point to the text on a specific page, etc. 

Phonological Awareness: In order to develop strong reading skills, phoneme-grapheme correspondence must be established. AAC users may have a harder time developing this skill set due to the auditory nature of this learning. 

--> Example: Present the student with a few letter cards. Have the student point or look at the letter that corresponds to the sound the instructor auditorily produces. 

Decoding Skills: Once phoneme-grapheme correspondence has been established at the letter level, the next step would be to continue to develop these skills at the word level. 

--> Example: Present the student with a few word cards. Have the student point or look at the word that corresponds to the auditory production of the word that the instructor produces.  

Developing Reading Skills 

Shared reading experiences provide the student with the opportunity to grow their reading skills, as well as their conversational language skills. Historically, reading partners of AAC users tend to monopolize the conversation during the reading experience. Giving the student space to interact and respond to the text is essential to growing reading and conversational skills. Instructors should also make sure that the student’s device is present during the interaction in order to give them the appropriate tools to communicate. 

Choosing a text that is repetitive in nature allows more opportunities for the client to engage, as they can predict the language structure of what is coming. This also provides multiple opportunities for the instructor to model engagement in a repetitive manner. 

--> Examples of books that are repetitive in nature: Brown Bear Brown Bear by Eric Carle, Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed by Eileen Christelow, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown 

--> Example: In the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, model the word “see” on the AAC device, every time the word “see” is used in the book. After a few times, the instructor should encourage the student to choose the word “see” on the AAC device every time they hear it in the story. 

Adapting the reading material to fit the reader’s specific needs promotes higher engagement, which in turn fosters an environment for learning. Providing some high-frequency AAC symbols throughout the book alongside the text allows readers to engage with the text even if they do not have the skillset to identify every word on the page. An example of a symbolated book page from There is a Bird on Your Head! by Mo Willems is shown below. Symbols should mainly consist of words that the student is familiar with, and a few new target words to find. The instructor should encourage the student to find these words on their device as they come up in the story. 

This is a symbolated storybook page from There is a Bird on Your Head! By Mo Willems. Only keywords are chosen to be symbols, which reduces visual clutter on the page and emphasizes the main ideas. Encourage the student to find these words on their AAC device during reading.

Some books require extremely specific vocabulary in order to engage with the text. Developing low-tech core boards that are specific to the book would be useful during discussions and related activities with the book. An example of a core board for the book I Really Like Slop! By Mo Willems is shown below. 

This is an example of a low-tech core board for the book I Really Like Slop! By Mo Willems. This board gives the student easy access to main character names (Gerald, Piggie), novel words (slop), and common words that might be used to describe the text (eat, like, don’t like).

Finally, find books that reflect the unique interests of the student. This will increase motivation and enjoyment levels, which in turn will result in greater AAC usage and learning outcomes. Happy reading!

Resources 

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.). Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). American Speech-Language Hearing Association. https://www.asha.org/Practice-Portal/Professional-Issues/Augmentative-and-Alternative Communication/#collapse_1

Enhancing AAC interventions with literacy skills: Strategies for SLPS and educators. Able Net, Quick Talker Freestyle. (n.d.). https:// quicktalkerfreestyle.com/blog/enhancing-aac-interventions-with-literacy-skills/ 

Erickson, K. (n.d.). Reading comprehension in AAC. The ASHA Leader. https://leader.pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/leader.FTR1.08122003.6 Lambert, Susan (Host). (2021). 

Science of Reading: The Podcast. https://www.buzzsprout.com/612361/episodes/7707625-s3-03-deconstructing-the-rope-phonological-awareness-with-louisa-moats 

Leroux, E. L., Biggs, E. E., & Shin, D. E. (2024, January 11). Views of Parents on Supporting Language and Literacy for Their Children With Complex Communication Needs. ASHA Wire. https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2023_LSHSS-23-00009?url_ver=Z39.88 2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed Light, 

J., & Kent-Walsh, J. (n.d.). Fostering Emergent Literacy for Children who Require AAC. ASHA Wire. https://leader.pubs.asha.org/ doi/10.1044/leader.FTR1.08102003.4 

Threlkeld, M.S. CCC-SLP, K. (2022, September 13). Literacy intervention strategies for individuals who use AAC. Forbes AAC. https:// www.forbesaac.com/post/literacy-intervention-strategies-for-individuals-who-aac 

Samperi, A. (n.d.). Amanda Samperi: Adapted books -- what are symbolated stories and how do we use them? - AAC in the Cloud 2017 conference. AAC in the Cloud. https://presenters.aacconference.com/videos/UXpZMg== 

Spracher, M. M. (n.d.). Reading and writing (literacy). American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. https://www.asha.org/public/speech/ development/literacy/ 

Zangari, C. (2013, September 20). Literacy lessons for beginning AAC learners. PrAACtical AAC. https://praacticalaac.org/strategy/literacy lessons-for-beginning-aac-learners/  

 

Supporting Phonological Awareness Across Languages - Henry Tomiser

A teacher guides their class in clapping out each syllable of the word “banana.” One child correctly identifies that “hat” rhymes with “bat.” Another splits up the word “tree” into three different sounds. All of these are examples of an important literacy-related skill: phonological awareness.

Phonological awareness refers to an individual’s awareness of the sound patterns of language as well as their ability to manipulate said patterns. It is an umbrella term that includes manipulation and recognition of a variety of language patterns such as rhyming, alliteration (when the same sound occurs at the beginning of each word – for example, “she sells seashells by the seashore”), and segmenting (of sentences into words, words into syllables, and syllables into individual sounds) (Reading Rockets, n.d.). A child with strong phonological awareness skills is adept at recognizing these patterns and “messing with them” at will – for example, they would be able to change the ending sounds of “toy” to make the words “tea” or “too” while recognizing that all three words have the same beginning sound of “t”. 

Phonemic awareness is a more specific subcategory of phonological awareness. It refers to an individual’s ability to recognize and manipulate individual phonemes (Reading Rockets, n.d.). Phonemes are the individual sounds that make up spoken language, and the number of phonemes does not necessarily match up to the number of letters in a word. For example, the letters “kn” in “knock” correspond to one phoneme: the /n/ sound. When we speak, we put phonemes together to create meaning. When phonemes change, the meaning of the word also changes. For example, if we replace the /f/ phoneme in “free” with a /t/ phoneme, we get “tree.” Thus, a child with strong phonemic awareness would be skilled at switching around individual speech sounds, or phonemes, to create different words. 

Phonological awareness skills grow over the course of children’s development. They begin emerging before the age of 4. At age 4, 80-90% of children are imitating rhyme and alliteration; phonological awareness continues to develop at least until the age of 9, when children are now skilled in deleting one consonant from a consonant pair (for example, “tree” becomes “tee”) (see this article from Reading Rockets (Moats, L., & Tolman, n.d.) for a table describing phonological awareness milestones). 

Why is phonological awareness important? In short, phonological awareness is important because it is a predictor (and likely a causal factor) of reading ability. For instance, a study of 570 children found that phonological awareness in kindergarten, above and beyond letter identification abilities, predicted subsequent word reading ability in 2nd grade (Hogan, 2005). In addition to phonological awareness in general, phonemic awareness in particular may play an important role in reading ability. A meta-analytic review found that phonemic awareness uniquely predicted reading ability even when accounting for other skills (i.e., rime awareness and verbal short-term memory), suggesting that phonemic skills in particular are a promising intervention target in early childhood (Melvy-Lervåg et al., 2012). 

How can parents and educators support children’s phonological awareness skills? Reading Rockets recommends targeting phonological awareness skills using fun and engaging activities that are appropriate for a child’s developmental level, suggesting activities such as guiding children in segmenting the sounds in their own names as well as guessing words that have been heavily segmented into their individual phonemes or have had phonemes deleted; skills should be targeted from easiest to most complex, and a tiered system may be necessary for children who need extra support (Chard & Dickson, n.d.). 

Thus far, we have discussed phonological awareness only in monolingual English-speaking children. An important question remains: How is phonological awareness different for bilingual children? Some evidence points to bilingual children having an advantage over their monolingual peers in terms of phonological awareness. In one integrative review of eight papers, five papers found that bilingual children (representing many different language combinations) had a phonological awareness advantage, while two papers found that monolingual children had the advantage (de Medeiros et al., 2020). Another study found that, although the Cantonese and Mandarin-speaking children studied had similar phonological processing in 1st grade, the Cantonese-speaking children in 2nd grade (who were now effectively becoming bilingual, in contrast to their monolingual Mandarin-speaking peers) showed an advantage in some aspects of phonological processing that disappeared by 4th grade; the researchers hypothesized that possible causes of this advantage could be the Cantonese-speaking children’s status as being bilinguals or their unique exposure to the comparatively rich phonological system of Cantonese (Chen et al., 2004). In contrast, Bialystok et al. (2003) found no consistent evidence of a phonological awareness advantage for bilinguals. 

At any rate, phonological awareness in the early years appears to be a resilient skill, regardless of variations in children’s language exposure. Scott et al. (2013) found that when children adopted from China before the age of 24 months completed a phonological awareness assessment, they scored within the average range when compared to the assessment’s normative sample. These children experienced a drastic linguistic change: they went from hearing only their native language to hearing almost only English. Yet, as a whole, their phonological skills were intact. 

How can teachers and parents promote phonological awareness across languages? First, stakeholders must understand the differences between the child’s languages, as different languages emphasize different aspects of phonological awareness. For example, tonal awareness (awareness of how variations in pitch change the meaning of individual words) and syllable awareness are very useful in Cantonese, a tonal language in which meaning maps onto syllables very closely, while phonemic awareness is more useful for English speakers and more difficult for Cantonese speakers (Chen et al., 2004). Stakeholders should also learn about phonological aspects that children’s languages have in common. For example, words in both Spanish and Japanese commonly have the pattern consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (for example, “luna” in Spanish and 猫 (“neko”) in Japanese). Thus, stakeholders can tailor their activities to target common phonological aspects (getting the biggest “bang for your buck”) as well as unique phonological aspects (to fill in any gaps). 

Which language should you target phonological awareness in? The answer, whenever possible, is all languages! A literature review by Soto et al. (2019) identified two studies that found that when English-Spanish bilinguals received bilingual phonological awareness intervention, they made gains (albeit disparately sized gains) in both languages. The authors also make the following recommendations for phonological awareness intervention for Spanish-English bilinguals, which could reasonably be extended to other bilinguals: 

• Make instruction explicit. 
• Allow children multiple opportunities to respond. 
• Draw attention to the salient aspects of each language. 
• Do not directly translate materials from one language to another. (As discussed above, each language emphasizes unique aspects of phonological awareness!) 

We have seen that phonological awareness is an important skill that is related to later reading ability, and it is a skill that can be targeted across languages. Most importantly, perhaps, working on phonological awareness can be incredibly fun! How will you incorporate phonological awareness into activities with the children in your life?

References 

Bialystok, E., Majumder, S., & Martin, M. M. (2003). Developing phonological awareness: Is there a bilingual advantage? Applied Psycholinguistics, 24(1), 27-44. https://doi.org/10.1017/S014271640300002X 

Chard, D. J., & Dickson, S. V. (n.d.). Phonological awareness: Instructional and assessment guidelines. Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/phonological-and-phonemic-awareness/articles/phonological-awareness-instructional-and  

Chen, X., Anderson, R. C., Li, W., Hao, M., Wu, X., & Shu, H. (2004). Phonological awareness of bilingual and monolingual Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(1), 142–151. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.96.1.142  

de Medeiros, A. C. D., dos Santos, M. F. P., da Costa Varela, F. V., de Lima Rocha, T. A., Messias, B. L. C., & Azoni, C. A. S. (2020). Bilingualism in the development of phonological awareness skills: An integrative literature review. Revista CEFAC, 22(4), e0320. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-0216/20202240320  

Hogan, T. P., Catts, H. W., & Little, T. D. (2005). The relationship between phonological awareness and reading: Implications for the assessment of phonological awareness. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 285-293. https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2005/029)  

Melvy-Lervåg, M., Halaas Lyster, S. -A., & Hulme, C. (2012). Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 322-352. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026744  

Moats, L., & Tolman, C. (n.d.). The development of phonological skills. Reading Rockets. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/developmental-milestones/articles/development-phonological-skills  

Reading Rockets. (n.d.). Phonological and phonemic awareness: introduction. https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-101-learning-modules/course-modules/phonological-and-phonemic-awareness  

Scott, K. A., Pollock, K., Roberts, J. A., & Krakow, R. (2013). Phonological processing skills of children adopted internationally. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22(4), 673–683. https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2013/12-0133)  

Soto, X., Olszewski, A., & Goldstein, H. (2019). A systematic review of phonological awareness interventions for Latino children in early and primary grades. Journal of Early Intervention, 41(4), 340-365. https://doi.org/10.1177/1053815119856067 

 

Tips for Educators: Building Literacy Skills in Multilingual Classrooms - Autumn Deppe and Marly Palanca

What is Literacy?  

Literacy plays an integral part in all children's linguistic development and academic success. Educators need to cultivate linguistically rich environments for their students, and to do this, it is important to support all the languages the child may speak.  

Let's start by defining a few main concepts important to reading: phonics, phonological awareness, and comprehension. Literacy begins by learning about the relationship between letters and the sounds they make; this is called phonics. Once children have a good understanding of phonics, they can begin to recognize and manipulate sounds. Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes concepts such as segmenting sounds, blending sounds, and rhyming. For children who speak multiple languages, phonological awareness skills in one language will naturally transfer to another language. This is because some aspects of both languages, like phonics, sentence structure, or vocabulary, may align.  

Once children develop phonics and phonological awareness skills, they can increase their overall vocabulary. In turn, word recognition becomes more automatic, which creates a greater space in the brain for processing what we are reading, in other words, reading comprehension.   

Strengthening literacy skills is integral to supporting a child’s ability to learn. If a child lacks the phonological awareness skills required for literacy, they will face difficulty learning the curriculum required for their success in the classroom.   

Supporting Multilingual Learners in the Classroom:  

It is important to support both languages in the classroom because each language a child speaks is a tool for communication. Multilingual children need each language to adequately function across different areas of their lives.   

Classroom interactions can support the development of literacy skills by exposing them to new words and concepts. Increased exposure to words in multiple languages can expand and strengthen overall vocabulary and word recognition skills. The transfer of phonological awareness skills across languages can be directly supported through the use of linguistically diverse materials in the classroom.   

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Media  

To best support the literacy skills of multilingual learners in your classroom, it is first important to embrace linguistic diversity within your classroom. Recognize that although children may speak English at school, this is not always the language they speak at home. Incorporate books that represent different cultures and languages. Learn what languages the children in your classroom speak and provide books for them to read in that language. Not only does this support multilingual students and their literacy acquisition, but it also creates a space for all children to learn about language and culture.   

Interactive read-aloud activities can support the overall development of language abilities through increasing interaction with print and encouraging shared attention during reading. Read-aloud activities can also be used to encourage reading comprehension strategies by identifying setting, main points, characters, and their attributes using vocabulary from multiple languages.  

Provided below is a resource that can be used to access books in multiple languages: http://en.childrenslibrary.org  

Multilingualism and Classroom Routines  

Another easy-to-implement way to foster literacy with multilingual learners is to incorporate their language into your classroom routines. For example, this could include greeting them in the morning, giving the daily announcements, or singing songs in the languages your students speak.   

Inclusive Classroom Calendar  

To be more inclusive, educators can incorporate a calendar that includes important dates recognized across cultures. This calendar can even include dates, the month, and days of the week in the languages that your students speak. Celebrate dates and holidays that are important to your students. On these dates, you can recognize the holidays by bringing in books about the holiday, creating arts and crafts on the theme, and even creating your lesson plans around the holiday theme being celebrated.  

Provided below is a resource that can be used to further explore implementing cultural holidays in the classroom:  

https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/culturally-responsive-instruction-holiday-and-religious-celebrations  

Multilingual Labels   

To further build on literacy skills in your multilingual classroom, it is helpful to label common items around your classroom in different languages. Children are constantly moving around the classroom, and having labels on common objects around the room can provide language input and also give children an opportunity to read and see the letters of words in other languages. Both are important for phonics and phonological awareness development.   

Implications  

Supporting the literacy skills of multilingual learners means first recognizing that a child’s development of key literacy concepts (e.g., phonics, phonological awareness) in one language can transfer to the other languages they speak. This is why it is important to support both languages. Although on the outside we may see that a child speaks more than one language, in their brain, the languages are not separate but intertwined.   

A few easy ways to support a multilingual learner’s literacy within the classroom include having culturally and linguistically diverse books, intertwining multilingualism and classroom routines, creating inclusive calendars, and labeling items within the classroom in many languages.   

Each language a child speaks is a tool for communication and literacy learning. Classroom strategies incorporating multiple languages can help support the development of all languages for the diverse needs they fulfill. In this way, educators can make sure children have the language skills they need to thrive in every environment! Supporting all languages within your classroom will, in turn, help students cultivate strong literacy skills and help them to thrive academically.   

  

References:  

5 tips for building community in a multilingual literacy Classroom. (2024, February 27). Heinemann. https://blog.heinemann.com/5-tips-for-building-community-in-a-multilingual-literacy-classroom#:~:text=Encourage%20students%20with%20different%20native,each%20other%27s%20diverse%20linguistic%20abilities 

Reading with Multilingual Learners. (n.d.). WIDA. https://wida.wisc.edu/teach/reading