Hi from San Diego

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone:

I signed myself up for an event called the first annual PECS Expo this

weekend here in San Diego.

When I signed up, I thought I was going to get some training in the " how

tos " but this is more broad than that. It has been very good for

stimulating over-tired brain cells and making me think about Andy. I do

want to try to get to the sentence building portion of PECS. Andy has the

choosing of hte pictures, the idea that he has to give them to me....he's

starting to flip through his notebooks, and is really ready to start making

requests and such.

They have some really interesting pre-made things. A schedule, with choice

option sections. I " m stunned that they do the same thing that I've been

working at for the last 2 years without my knowing it. (you go along the

schedule and " choice " is built into the schedule with a different color and

separate card to go to for making that choice. The ony difference is I go

left to right (for reading purposes in my mind) an dthey go top to bottom.

They say it's easier to follow, but I don't know.....Andy can't reach that

high! Anyway, the thing they put together for schedules is about 4 feet

tall.

Kara...a Ph.D from Vanderbuilt (wendy stone) spoke to us about identifiying

the earliest signs of autism they are looking at age two. I found it super

interesting. She went through the dsm IV criteria and slited some behaviors

observed that led to a dx of autism. In the videos it was even more

interesting to see a response from a) typical kid, kid with dd, and c)

kid with autism. all two year olds. She's developing a tool called

Screeing Tool for Autism in Two year olds or the STAT. It's at the

replication stage.

Another presentation I loved was by Lori Frost. She was talking about

enhancing vocabulary. She had all sorts of reallly fun and interesting

ideas. Andy doesn't build the sentence strips yet, but the ideas are so good.

For instance, when you have an established routine, then you remove a piece

of it t see if they will requiest the missing part. She had all these

relevant ways to teach 'colors' for instance. If the child likes skittles,

but reallly realy likes the yellow ones, then have them request the yellow

skittles. Then, one day, you can not have any! And he has to choose another

color.

And then there was this woman from teh claremont autism center here in CA.

She has some data, but the n umbers are small that shows that using the

PECS system does help improve speech and some other things.

Although the basic idea of building sentence strips isn't that complex,

it's the teaching that goes with it that I think you probably learn in the

training. They're very careful to look at things and not over sterilize

them, over prompt them, and so on. I am very impressed. I can see it being

used in a complementary fashion with all the teaching strategies.

Also, tomorrow he's going to say something about using these methods with

kids who have ds as well. I thikn it would work. Especially if the spoken

word isnt' working and sign language is too hard to continue in the school

environment.

So, that's my " report " today.

Glad you all are chatting away. Nice to see.

Be well, everyone.

Joan

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 3/18/2000 3:33:58 AM !!!First Boot!!!,

jmedlen@... writes:

<<

They have some really interesting pre-made things. A schedule, with choice

option sections. >>

They had this at the School for kids with autism here in Philly

(well, outside PHilly). This school is NOT for us, but they implement the

PECS and are big into the scheduling. And all the kids have their own *work

stations* with their schedules.

<<For instance, when you have an established routine, then you remove a piece

of it t see if they will requiest the missing part. She had all these

relevant ways to teach 'colors' for instance. If the child likes skittles,

but reallly realy likes the yellow ones, then have them request the yellow

skittles. Then, one day, you can not have any! And he has to choose another

color.>>

Cool. We're nowhere near any of this stuff yet with Maddie, but I'm storing

it!!! Thanks for the update Joan!!!!!

Donna