APH Intervention Continuum
APH offers a line of sequent products to help learners -- who have no formal means of communication -- become more independent and better communicators.
From random touch to purposeful movement, from emergent concepts to thinking about things in memory, and from object classification to social symbol use -- three products that provide uninterrupted strategies and activities to teach learners who are nonverbal and have visual and multiple impairments.
The APH Intervention Continuum provides a smooth transition from the early sensorimotor stage of learning to preoperational learning and eventually to symbol communication.
APH worked with many knowledgeable and respected professionals to create the products that comprise this much needed intervention continuum. For best learning, APH recommends and encourages teachers, specialists, and parents to use the three products sequentially.
1. Sensory Learning Kit
2. SAM: Symbols and Meaning
3. Tactile Connections: Symbols for Communication
To schedule training on the APH Intervention Continuum, call Janie Blome, Field Services, 502-899-2387.
Sensory Learning Kit (SLK)
This program builds sensorimotor level cognitive skills with learners who need carefully-selected materials and carefully-designed activities in order to take in and respond to sensory input. The SLK addresses three levels of sensorimotor learning:
-- Quiet Alert: Attention
-- Active Alert: Exploration
-- Partial Participation: Function
Teachers of students who have visual impairments help parents and teachers provide learning media with sensory characteristics that are highly attractive to the learner. Teachers and parents encourage reactions and interactions with these materials in highly structured activities called routines designed to control pacing, sensory clutter, unfamiliarity, and other variables that produce stress and interfere with learning. The routines teach learners cognitive skills of object exploration, object permanence, imitation, causality, means-ends, and basic spatial relationships.
The SLK includes five assessment tools:
-- Sensory Learning Summary
-- Arousal State Profile
-- Sensory Response Record
-- Appetite/Aversion List
-- Levels and Strategies Guide
For more details, see Sensory Learning Kit brochure.
SAM: Symbols and Meaning
Children become preoperational learners when they add the strategy of remembering and organizing previous experiences and use symbols that represent components of those experiences.
This program builds late sensorimotor and early preoperational level cognitive skills. It is designed for learners who need help expanding their learning to people and common objects in typical activities taking place in natural environments. A series of games is used to ensure that a strong sensory information base is established for concepts about people, objects, actions, and places. Symbols—objects and words—are paired with concrete referents in each of the above categories so that each symbol is rooted in meaningful experiences. Once meaning is established by pairing symbols and concrete referents, additional games give learners the opportunity to use object and word symbols in communication contexts. SAM includes videos of each game.
SAM provides four assessments:
-- Symbol and Referent Analysis: Common Words
-- Symbol and Referent Analysis: Academic Vocabulary
-- Environmental Gap Inventory: Missing Concepts in Common Environments
-- Curriculum-based Gap Inventory: Early Academic Skills and Basic Concepts
For more details, see SAM: Symbols and Meaning brochure.
Tactile Connections: Symbols for Communication
While first words typically appear at the end of the sensorimotor stage, in the preoperational stage, symbol use becomes more extensive and more complex. Symbols, like words and pictures, become the tools of problem solving, pretend play, and social connection.
This program builds skills for the use of tactile symbols (parts of objects and arbitrary objects organized in categories) in augmentative communication environments where a sighted peer might use pictures. Symbolic skills are expanded from concrete to more abstract and from single-word to multi-word communications.
For more details, see Tactile Connections brochure.
To Order
-- Sensory Learning Kit: 1-08611-00 -- $463.00
-- SAM: Symbols and Meaning: 1-08854-00 -- $379.00
-- Tactile Connections Kit: 1-08837-00 -- $149.50
http://shop.aph.org
American Printing House for the Blind, Inc.
1839 Frankfort Avenue
P.O. Box 6085
Louisville, Kentucky 40206-0085
502-895-2405
800-223-1839
Fax: 502-899-2284
www.aph.org
http://shop.aph.org
Service Since 1858
8-14