Just wanted to share that my team from this summer and I had some work published in the Closing the Gap Newspaper turned magazine in the current issue, which is October/November 2008.  We are thrilled to be able to share some of the insight from our work focusing on users of AAC and writing.

A Writer, a Pencil, a Reason and a Teacher (Actually no pencil required)

By Samuel Sennott, Christina Cahill, Shelly Major, Nicole Nordal, Charity Smith-Engelin, Cassie Rubenstein and Joslyn Silverman

Preview:
After six intense weeks of Nova Southeastern University’s TLC Summer Writing Camp for users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), one of our team members said about the students, “They love writing now! Look at them, they just can’t wait to do it.” The six-week camp was designed with the goal of helping users of AAC, ages 8 to 12, become better writers. The primary intent of the camp was to develop and implement systems, curriculum and materials that would help the students grow in the writing process, both now and into their next school year. A secondary goal was to look for potential research questions to be studied related to users of AAC and the writing process.

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Connecting video to reading and writing is powerful. Last summer, I saw that power so clearly in the camp program I led. The camp was your basic extended year program revamped into a fun literacy based camp. One of the classrooms had mainly children with autism spectrum disorders. When we completed the pre-assessments, the students nearly threw the books back into our faces. There was at least a few tears during the developmental spelling test administered. Based on this initial assessment, I knew it was key to focus on the appreciation/enjoyment of literacy, so I turned to the self selected reading block. I brought in Apple laptops to each student and fired up the now classic Otis Goes to the Beach story. We showed it as a whole group to kick off the lesson. As you read, Otis comes to life with real videos of him getting ready for his walk, crying because he is so excited, swimming, and chewing. The children were transfixed. Every day, one particular student asked me why Otis is crying. Then he would say, “because he’s happy?” Within a few weeks, the students were reading PowerPoint based books on a daily basis and greatly enjoying it. One student who did not want to have anything to do with writing, started using PowerPoint to author because we could import pictures relevant to him. The rationale behind transitional texts is to draw the reader to attend to the text. I believe that connecting video can do this as well.

Yet, videos are not just for getting attention. They can be powerful for building background knowledge in both the reading and writing process. See a previous post that was regarding a guided reading lesson for Leo the Late Bloomer. Using YouTube can bring concepts to life. What a great way to do the activation of knowledge section of your guided reading lesson. Also the extensive Discovery Education/United Streaming site is rich with content.

Videos can motivate writing. The students in the AAC writers camp I am leading this summer are going wild for journaling about the videos they connect to. I believe that for my students, this is a perfect lead in to the SRSD strategy POW and TREE. Writing a persuasive essay about the video including a topic sentence, reasons, and an ending is potentially a way to tip the motivational scale during this process.

Check out the set of videos we are using this summer to motivate and fuel our journaling process:

http://otot.wikispaces.com/Writing+Setups

In summary, video can be powerful to draw attention, build background knowledge, and build motivation in reading and writing. There is so much more to be studied, researched, implemented, and written about regarding this topic. I look forward to engaging in the process.

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