I have spent the last few hours analyzing Joey’s data over the last year and looking at trends and patterns. I have the opportunity to present Joey’s journey and the data of his progress at both the DADD Annual Conference in January 2020, and at the Council for Exceptional Children’s Annual Conference in February, 2020.
Previously, Joey’s data was fairly remarkable. The last time I had the opportunity to present on Joey’s work he was 4 and a half. He had recently made impressive progress on the number of words he generated in a ten minute time sampling, and the graph this created was remarkable. When I went in and added the 2019 data into the graph, I had a moment of disappointment. I no longer have that beautiful uphill climb I’d seen in 2018.
Instead, it is more of a mountain range – with peaks and valleys, and currently, what seems to be a decline.
What’s going on? [Read more…]
“Turkey ready pool love” Joey said as we read 
I was thrilled when my Journal of Early Intervention arrived this week with a study on the impact of sustained adult modeling of Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) with students with complex communication needs (CCN). I’m always excited to see AAC studies show up in special education journals. As the number of children are given access to AAC increases more studies are looking at how children develop language skills with AAC, and what are the best methods for teaching students with AAC. The more we know, the better we’ll be able to teach, so I quickly flipped open the study and read to see if it could help me in my work with Joey. 
