Spring is here! Now that the end of the school year is in sight it is time to take advantage of the nice weather and the field trips that students will be taking. Doing something unexpected is always a good communication motivator therefore one of my favorite spring time activities is to move therapy outdoors. Each spring my students (all of which use speech generating devices) and I go on a “Speech Expedition”. It inspires my students to communicate and the sunshine provides a much need boost to everyone’s spirits. Depending on how it is set up the “expedition” can range from one therapy session to two week of therapy. The expedition can be as simple as a walk around the school campus, integration of curriculum (ex. while learning about plants), or you can also take advantage of pre-planed field trips your students might be attending.

Smart Therapy

Utilizing AMDi’s Smart/Series of Devices with overlay recognition and flash cards to save recording makes the “Speech Expedition” fun and exciting. By decreasing the lag in communication time often wasted while searching for the correct messages for a specific overlay and the ability to save sound files my students never waste a moment waiting for changes. The Smart/128 also allows for the use of visual scenes which makes retelling of our exploration that more exciting.
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Here is an example of how to arrange your own “Speech Expedition” 

Therapy Timeline:

Session 1: Talk about your plans to go on a Speech Expedition. Decide together what vocabulary is needed during the trip.   I instruct my students that they are going on an expedition and they need to bring back as much information from   the trip as possible     ex: How it felt, what it smelled like, where there clouds etc.   I also instruct them that they are to find “treasures” of their trip therefore they need to choose vocabulary that   would help them gather, reach, or indicate what they might want to put in their treasure box.     ex: flowers, feathers, rocks etc. All of the information gathered on the trip is then used to create overlay on the Smart/Series of devices. Session 2: Practice using the overlays created for your Speech Expedition in mock situations in therapy or in the classroom. Session 3: Go on your Speech Expedition. Along the way encourage students to comment, create reasons for them to communicate (ex. walk too fast or to slow or don’t go where they want to go), and to pick up items of interest and place them in their treasure box. Also using the Smart/Series Devices…Record birds, the wind, or any other interesting noises discovered along the way. Session 4: Create a new overlay involving trip events and have your students recap their adventure:  We often take a “scrap booking” approach to the creation of our overlays and place the actual items that we have gathered on the overlays. This provides the student not only tactile feed back as they retell their adventure, but is also a fun motivating way of alternating communication layouts. In addition photos taken during the exploration can be turn into visual scene communication displays for extra added contextual relevance.

This technique for creating overlays for the Smart Series can be used in a variety of settings and situations to add a spark to therapy sessions. After the completion of the activities I often take the overlays and bind them (in a binder with plastic page protectors) to create a scrapbook. The flash drive used to create the activities is also stored in the scrapbook so the student can relive and retell their stories any time they’d like.