AAOh?

I use (along with the preschool teachers) visuals to support students' communication. It is essential to repair communication breakdowns with, meet wants and needs of and build a positive relationship with our students. My favorite way to incorporate visuals is through agent+action+object.

Student using AAO visuals to request a puzzle piece.

Agent+action+object (AAO) is a transactional support within the SCERTS® Model. It's based on natural language acquisition which is helpful for our pre-verbal students. Like traditional language development, much emphasis is put on "agents" being that "Mama" and "Dada" our often baby's first words. This framework is also helpful for our students on the spectrum being that they tend to have object-focused brains. We teach that people/agents are essential to meets wants and needs and engage in meaningful social interactions.

Bearing this information in mind, I first introduce "agents." I do this through the use of visuals on clear containers; read more about that here. We then begin to build sentences through play (hello bubbles) and storybooks. While some augmentative technology can pigeon hole students to only request; AAO provides opportunities for various pragmatic functions: comment, direct, question, answer questions, and request.

Using AAO for comprehension questions for the book The Napping House.

I have some tutorial videos (AAO1, AAO2, AAO3) if you're interested in incorporating AAO into your class or therapy room.