of us are faced with selecting vocabulary for use during a student's book reading
time. If the goal for a student is to read a book out loud using his/her communication
system, the following strategies can be used to ensure that all vocabulary from
the book are represented.
- Post-It Note Approach
- Web based Approach
Post-It Note Approach
1. Identify vocabulary in the story.
a. Write each unique word from the book on a post-it note.
b. Make a hash mark or other notation on the post-it for each additional
occurrence of the word.
When done, you should have the following word frequency
1) Total number of words in the book
Total number of unique words
3) Number of times each word appears in the
c. Use this information to prioritize which vocabulary
should be placed on the student's communication board. Also plan to include some
messages which allow the student to interact and control the activity. For example:
Turn the page, Act it out, Read that again, All done, Let's do something else.
2. Arrange vocabulary
the post-it notes to match the display format your student will be using (e.g.
communication board, IntelliKeys overlay, ChatBox, Macaw). It is much easier to
move them around and change their arrangement when they are in this format before
you begin creating boards and overlays on the computer.
3. Create communication boards &/or IntelliKeys
Planning vocabulary arrangements out on paper prior to
beginning the creation of boards and overlays on the computer can be a significant
4. Print duplicate board.
Place one board in sheet protector.
6. Laminate symbols.
7. Add velcro
Another way to gather word frequency information is
to use a computer database program.
- Set up one field for "Word"
and another for "Frequency".
- Type in each word from the
book as a unique "word" entry. When done, sort alphabetically in descending
- Count the number of times each word appears and enter that
number in the "Frequency" column. Specific instructions for doing this
using ClarisWorks are included here. These can be adapted for use with other database
- Highlight and copy the text you wish to analyze.
- Go to the following website:
Frequency Indexer (Georgetown Linguistics)
- Paste your text in the
box in the box that says "Enter your text here".
- Click on "Do
It!" for a word frequency list which includes the total number of words in
the book as well as the total number of unique words.
is especially handy for doing word frequency counts on e-text.
If the number of words in the book exceeds the number of
spaces available on the communication system, you will need to do some prioritizing.
- Does the story contain a repeated line? If
so, you could put that all on one space.
- Give greater weight
to the words which occur most frequently.
- Compare your word frequency
count to published vocabulary lists. These lists show the frequency of word use
by individual of different age ranges. An excellent resource for this on the web
can be found at: AAC
Messaging and Vocabulary. Give greater weight to words used most frequently
by the same age peers.
At the Barkley
Communication site of the University of Nebraska you will find numerous vocabulary
lists including words most frequently used by preschoolers who are non-disabled,
school aged children, and children who use AAC systems. There are also lists of
conversational phrases, vocabulary for school settings, vocabulary for classroom
activities and initial vocabulary recommendations.
Interactive vocabulary includes words and phrases
which encourage interaction between the augmentative system user and their communication
partners and peers. Examples include:
Act it out!
Read it again
making pages for this BookTalker, the interactive vocabulary listed above was
included in the bottom row of each page. Thus the students had a consistent array
of comments and questions available on every overlay. This consistency allows
the students to learn the vocabulary more quickly and the teachers to have a realistic
expectation of what the students can say for every story. For example after reading
a page, the teacher would know they could call on this student and ask "What should
I do next?" and expect the student could say "Turn the page".
Based Communication Boards
What are some ways that you can represent the
vocabulary of a book for a child. How about using repetitive phrase storybooks
or sequencing the story on a simple voice output system or even creating your
own story. See our handout on Creating
Literature Based Communication Boards.