PODD basics for home

Описание: Hi I’m Katie, I’m the Speech Pathologist at Clifford Park. Just making a quick video to help you use your PODD at home. So I’m going to just talk a little about why we have a PODD, who we use the PODD with and how we use the PODD to model communication. I’m going to talk about why we use the PODD – we use the PODD to help students to communicate whether that be they use this to communicate their message or that it just helps them sometimes to get their message across or it might just help them understand the activity or understand the message that’s being said to them because the symbols can help with understanding. So we might use it with students who are nonverbal or don’t have many words, they can use this to get their message across, we might use it with a student who is really difficult to understand just as an extra tool to help us understand when we really can’t. Also for students who have low language skills, they can still speak sometimes and understand little bits here and there just to help them develop their language. So I hope that helps with why we use it and who we use it with. I’ll quickly cover why the book is so big, I know that’s a big thing for people that makes it overwhelming. If this tool is being used for someone to communicate their message we don’t want to be limiting them in what they can say. We can say anything that we want to say because how many words we say isn’t restricted by anything. We give students a lot of vocabulary, a lot of words in this PODD so they can learn to say all different sorts of messages, they’re not restricted by only being able to say a couple of things if we only give them those symbols That’s why it’s important that there are so many pages. I know it can be overwhelming and I hope with some ideas I can give you today and some information I give you today that you’ll be able to have a go using it with your children at home. The most important thing is that students don’t just magically know how to use it, we have to show them over and over and over again how we use this to communicate a message so they can use it as well. That’s called modelling – modelling is when we say our message using the PODD so they can see how to use it and help them learn to use it themselves.
So we’ll go into exactly how we use the PODD now so you point to symbols in the PODD, I might say more to say which means I go to somewhere else in the PODD or I could say “more”. While you’re pointing you’re still saying your message. You can point to one symbol or you can point to multiple words in your sentence, it will always just be the key words for now that you’re pointing to and you’re saying out loud the whole message. So I might say look, look at what I’m doing, now I’m finished. So I was still saying my whole message, just pointing to the key words that were on the PODD. So now I’ll talk about how you get through the PODD to other sections, so you follow the numbers in the corner, that’s got a little 2 in the corner so I go to page 2. The categories are down the bottom with the numbers you go to, I think it’s (has a number four there) I think it’s cool. I think the PODD is very cool, it’s very cool to help students develop their language. To start with I would recommend using the first page in your PODD throughout your day such as more, help, finished, stop, they’re words say across all different activities and situations, when you’re more comfortable you could move to page 2 where there’s some other messages. I’ll show you how to move through the PODD because it is a big book and I would recommend just trying a few things out that fit into your day well, something like going to food, activities, rooms in a house. It is definitely overwhelming but it takes practice to get used to it. So I’ll show you how to get to the activities page, I want to do an activity, go to page 11, I want to listen to some music, let’s listen to some music, go to page 28, we got the music on, we could do some dancing, or some singing, get out some instruments. That’s how you get through the PODD. It’s important that you’re using it say your message that you would say verbally. It’s not an activity book it’s a communication book – to get messages across. So things you would be saying, you point in the PODD. If your student is new to this it’s fine to help them get to pages but when they become familiar it’s important they are saying their message because we don’t know which part of the PODD we want to go for. Normally it’s us who’ll turn the page for them so they can concentrate on their message. More to say – something’s wrong – I’m tired. That might be what they want to say. They’re pointing to the symbols and us as the communication partner will turn the page for them. The most important thing is that it’s being modelled at home.