The AAC market cards were created in response to a desire from the families that their children be able to participate in a typical activity for Ghanaian children: buying food for the family at the market. The AAC market cards have the name and picture of the item the students are to buy for their families. The cards also have the cost; that is how much of the item the family wants the student to buy. How to use the cards has been disseminated through annual professional development retreats so they are now used by students with autism, intellectual disabilities, and cerebral palsy throughout Ghana. The video tutorials are dubbed into several African languages including Swahili, Amharic, Kikuyu, and West African French.
Category: Intellectual Disability
An individual is considered to have an intellectual disability when they are developmentally delayed in cognition, social skills and activities of daily living to an extent that they differ significantly from peers in the community. This causes these individuals to have more difficulty in learning and they may require more support in acquiring social skills and learning to take care of themselves.
Narrative Stories- French Version
Bonjour. Je m’appelle Catherine Crowley. Je suis maître de conférences à Teachers College Columbia University. Ceci est un tutoriel vidéo sur la façon de créer des histoires narratives pour traiter de comportements socialement inadmissibles. Il s’agit essentiellement d’une série d’images et de textes écrits qui aident l’enfant à comprendre: 1) Quel est le comportement qui doit être éliminé (identifier le comportement précis qui doit être traité, 2) Pourquoi ce comportement doit-il être éliminé (Comment ce comportement agit sur la famille et/ou la communauté de l’élève), 3) Ce que l’enfant peut faire à la place (y compris comment mieux communiquer ses besoins) et 4) Les avantages du changement de ce comportement, en faisant différemment. Read More
Vocational Training in Ghana- AAC Strategies
Mary Osei, Headmistress of the Oboom School for Special Needs in Cape Coast, Ghana, and her teaching staff developed effective vocational workshop training for their students with intellectual disabilities and autism. With the support of the teachers, the students create bags made from Ghanaian fabric which they then sell. This video describes the steps needed to create the bags from buying the needed materials; creating patterns; cutting, ironing, and sewing; stamping the bags to identify where the bags were made; and tagging the bags so the student who created the bag and the teacher who gave support are identified. When the bags are sold, the money goes back to pay for school expenses and a percentage of the sales goes directly to the students who created the bags.
International Resources: Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Approaches Pamphlet
internaAAC Pamphlet Ghana.pdf
This pamphlet was created for a professional development retreat in Ghana, West Africa, by Dr. Cate Crowley, Lindsay Milgram, El’licia Price and the TC SLP Ghana team. It offers several augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategies that have been adapted for people with communication disabilities in Ghana, and have been implemented successfully there and in other countries in Africa to facilitate their participation at home, in school and in the community. Read More
