Sharon Redmon

The complex task of writing for our students with significant disabilities and complex communication needs can be daunting. Too often, our students with CNN do not have the opportunities to write, much less have opportunities to be active participants in modeling writing activities. Erickson, Koppenhaver, & Cunningham, 2017. In this session, vocabulary and schema-building activities continue to play a part while we explore practical strategies to actively engage our learners with complex communication needs in written expression activities. During this session, we will learn about the developmental writing stages and how our students with CCN can be engaged throughout those …

Comprehensive Literacy approach in action. We have all read or heard of the ground breaking book, Comprehensive Literacy for All, by David Koppenhaver and Karen A. Erickson, which is now my Go-To for teaching literacy to students with complex bodies and complex communication needs. Putting it into practice can be challenging; however, there are a few tools that can make it less daunting. In this fast-paced webinar, participants will begin by building their own schema on interactive and engaging ways to teach reading and writing to their students with complex needs. We will begin by developing our student’s vocabulary through …

We learn language by having language modeled. Aided Language Stimulation (ALS) is an Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in the field of AAC, and it is often one of the first strategies suggested when beginning AAC with individuals with Complex Communication Needs. In this webinar, we will learn why modeling symbolic communication is so vital to AAC users and why it is so hard to implement. We will also learn simple techniques to teach communication partners how to implement ALS into their everyday routines and curricula in the home, community, and school environments. It may sound like an easy thing to do; …