Core Words for the Month of July: Go, Stop, Play, & Feel

There are lots of great core vocabulary resources for the classroom, including core word calendars.  My goal here is to place these vital words in a context that is useful for adult learners of AAC. Adults with ID participate in many settings; in group homes, at supported work spaces, and in the community. We can still focus on core and how it can be modeled in these contexts. The goal is to target four words a month.  You can model each word, intensively, week by week. Find all the places in your environment where the word can be used. Here are some examples that might be useful.

Examples of sentences using core words:

Go

• Go eat lunch
• Go outside
• Go to work
• Go for a walk
• Go to sleep
• Go to the movies
• Go on Paratransit

Stop

• Stop that
• The music stopped
• Stop by the store
• The video stopped
• It stopped working
• The rain stopped

Play

• Play some music
• Play a DVD
• Play a video game
• Play on the iPad (Hopefully not the one dedicated to communication!)
• Play basketball
• The Phillies are playing tonight

Feel

• I feel hot
• How do you feel?
• This feels cold
• I feel frustrated
• I feel sick
• I feel okay

Go to town with this and hunt for opportunities to use and model these words in all different environments.  Create opportunities at home to bring the words to life. Go on a scavenger hunt. Have conversations and offer choices.  Don’t worry about modeling every word you speak. You can emphasize the key words on the device.

What if your consumer doesn’t like anyone touching their AAC?  Take a screenshot of the home page and make a low tech core board.  You can model and still have a match to the layout on their device.

What if your consumer doesn’t have a device yet?  Print out a core board from AACCommunity.net and model on!  You can print out the calendar and hang it in a prominent place.  It may give you some ideas, or act as a reminder to model AAC.

Click on the image below to download the calendar. And have fun with this.  The goal isn’t perfection, but rather to give your consumer access to high frequency words.  They form the Core of Language. And we all deserve the chance to learn.