AAC Language Lab

Target Vocabulary:

1. who
2. what
3. when
4. where
5. why
6. how

Target Language Skill: Production of simple interrogatives using "wh" question words

Suggested Objectives:

1. The person will ask "Who?" or "Who that?" to a communication partner when there is an unknown person present.
2. The person will ask "What?" or "What in?" when inquiring about an unknown object that is not visible.
3. The person will ask "When?" or "When go?" to a communication partner when inquiring about an event in the schedule
4. The person will ask "Where?", "Where (person's name)?" or "Where go?" to inquire about the whereabouts of a person or event.
5. The person will ask "Why?" in response to a fact.
6. The person will ask "How?" or "How make?" during a cooking or art activity.

Teaching Activities:

A. Speaking

1. This lesson presumes that the person is spontaneously saying one and two word combinations and may be inquiring about events or people via vocalizations or gestures or using his/her AAC system. Remember that language target is to produce simple one to two word questions. Perfect syntax will be worked on in a later lesson. These lessons are designed to teach the concepts behind the single question words through expressive language.
2. Have person use the question word "who?" or "who here?" during morning meeting to inquire about who is at school.
3. Have person ask "who?" or "who that?" to a communication partner when a new person enters the environment.
4. Have person ask "what" or "what in?" while playing an object guessing game with a mystery box. Fill a mystery box/bag with object(s). Let person feel what is inside the box, but not see it. Then have person ask, "what?" or "what in?" before object is revealed. The goal of this activity is to ask a question, not to focus on the noun or object that is inside of the box. After 10 objects, the person should have asked the question "what?" or "what in?" 10 times.
5. While doing a cooking project, have the person ask "what?" or "what in?" while reviewing the ingredients for the recipe. If a recipe has five ingredients, the person should have produced the target question five times. Remember, repeated practice helps build the concept and motor plan for the word. Once again, the language target for this lesson is to ask a question, not to come up with the ingredients for the recipe.
6. Have person ask "when?" or "when go?" while working on time concepts or while reviewing a schedule. For example, a person might be shown a picture of someone going to sleep. The person's job is to ask "when?" or "when go?" to obtain that information. Other situations include, breakfast, lunch, dinner, church, the beach, skiing, fireworks etc. In addition, have the person ask the target question when reviewing daily/weekly schedule. For example, the person could ask "when P.E.?" or "when go store?".
7. Have person ask "where?" or "where (person's name)?" to inquire about someone that is absent. Have person ask "where work?" while reviewing various occupations. For example, show a picture of a doctor and have person ask "where work?" to obtain the answer "hospital". Have person ask "where go?" when they are assigned to complete an errand for someone.
8. At the beginning of every art or cooking project, have person ask "how?" or "how make?" before the teacher reviews the steps to the project. Remember, if you did this one time a day, every day, by the end of the week the person will have asked this question five times!

B. Reading

1. Have the person pick a book that interests them. Let him/her know that the purpose of reading the book is to locate and say the question words "who", "what", "where", "when", "why" and "how" in the story. While reading the story together, every time one of these questions is spotted prompt the person to say that question on his/her AAC system. Review the location of these questions on the AAC system before you begin reading the story.
2. During book reading, identify the main character. Let the person know that during this reading time it is his/her job to ask simple questions. For example, if you are reading a book about Clifford, the person might ask "where go?", "who that?", "where he?", "what do?", "how he feel?" or "why do that?" Be prepared to model and ask simple questions. Formulating questions can be difficult, so provide increased scaffolding in the beginning and reduce as quickly as possible.
3. Be on the lookout for certain types of books. A book that focuses on prepositions provides great opportunities to work on asking the question "where?" A book that focuses on seasons will provide times to ask the question "when?" A cookbook is great for asking "how" questions and a book with many characters lends itself to asking "who" questions. Remember one book can be read for a variety of purposes.

C. Writing

Using the writing process, have the person construct and complete a story map. Your story map will have six blank boxes. The person must choose which target question word will go in each box by saying the target question words in any order they want. Next the person will brainstorm ideas for each box. For example in the "who" box, the person might decide they want a grasshopper as the main character. In the "where" box, the person might want the story to take place at the beach. Do this for each box. Once the story map is complete. Help the person formulate simple sentences based on the ideas generated during the story map exercise.

D. Generalization

Throughout the day, be on the lookout for times and places you can model these questions. Remember, these are core words and we use them often.

© 2009 Prentke Romich Company
keb 08/12/09