APPENDIX F: VOCABULARY BUILDER
Eco Manual
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Appendix F: Vocabulary Builder
One of the problems AAC professionals face is how to teach vocabulary in small, manageable
pieces. For example, faced with needing to fulfill State curriculum requirements, a teacher may
want to work for several weeks on the
Dolch Preprimer Word List. One option is to create a
number of pages in a communication device that simply code these words.
Another method is to use a PRC Vantage with 84 keys and make a “cheat sheet” with all the
Unity icons that represent the Dolch list. The perceived problem with this is that the client has to
find the sequences among all the other potential sequences in the device. This seems, to the AAC
professional, difficult and distracting.
One possible solution is to physically remove ALL the non-Dolch words from the Unity 84
vocabulary and leave only the target items. The advantage now is that (a) there are fewer
sequences to search through, (b) the vocabulary is already in the device, and (c) if the Dolch
words appear in any other curriculum list, the client will use exactly the same sequence – no
issue with words appearing in different locations in different
and multiple pages.
Vocabulary Building is a process where a text file list is matched against the vocabulary stored
in a device, and items not on the list are masked from the total available vocabulary. Only icons
that are used to code the listed items are visible. The effect of this is to simplify the search task
and at the same time reinforce the motor pattern for accessing the target words.
The vocabulary building concept allows you to teach (or learn) Minspeak (or other) vocabulary
in small batches from specific vocabulary lists.
Your device had a
BUILDING key in the PAGES Activity.The BUILDING key takes you to a
Page with several pre-stored vocabulary lists. These special overlays teach vocabulary a small bit
at a time by hiding the majority of keys from view.
Select the
PAGES key from your overlay.
Select the
BUILDING key from the PAGES page.
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