Episode 227: Laura Taylor: Using PODD to Teach Communication, Language & Literacy

This week, we present Rachel’s interview with Laura Taylor, a Special Education Teacher and AAC Specialist with a years of experience teaching language and literacy to people with complex communication needs. Laura has done amazing work utilizing the Pragmatic Organization of Dynamic Displays (PODD), a form of AAC that, at least in the early stages, focuses on teaching communication functions along with vocabulary.

Before the interview, Rachel shares about a client of hers with Childhood Apraxia of Speech. This client was strongly averse to AAC - he would even protest against looking at an iPad with AAC on it. Rachel describes how she got him to start using AAC by giving him a “Please don’t take off my sweater” button! Rachel and Chris then discuss the value in teaching students to protest and to direct the actions of others.

Key ideas this week:

🔑 PODD is a low-tech or high-tech AAC solution that allows for direct access or partner-assisted scanning. PODD starts out organized by communication function and moves on to organization by category later. It also focuses more on suffixes/morphology as time goes on.

🔑 One advantage of PODD is its organization by pragmatic function. Having vocabulary organized this way may help demonstrate to the student what they can communicate about more frequently than other organization methods. Many students are used to the pragmatic functions of answering questions or requesting but not much else. Using PODD may give these students a head start with extra exposure to these other communication functions.

🔑 If you are trying to figure out how to get started with teaching literacy and communication, Laura recommends to “just start.” Do what you can manage. Start small and it can build to big things - modeling, communication opportunities, etc. Get strategic with yourself on one thing that will make an impact - then you can get good at that and build off that!

You can find out more about Laura and PODD at Tayloreducationalconsultants.com and can reach Laura via email at Tayloredconsultants@gmail.com