I have been reading about them for years, but I was hesitant to try it with my kids. I wasn't sure where to start or what I should put on one, since the range of abilities in my room goes from emerging-picture-discrimination to intermediate-verbal-speech. At the PECS conference I went to a few weeks ago (read about that here), the trainer briefly touched on them and assured us that, like PECS, they could be used with anyone.
The idea of a topic board is exactly that: a board that provides language needed to discuss a topic. It gives cues to people using visuals or words that are related to the topic at hand. In advanced classes or with older students, a topic board might have project or discussion ideas. With my kids, I would use topic boards for a specific game (think, "my turn, your turn, draw a card, this is fun!"), activity (think snack- "I want, more, cookies, juice, I'm full") or project (think, "I need, glue, paper, all done"). Topic boards, as opposed to picture communication binders or PECS books, are used with a group of students, so only one is needed. Students should always have their own modalities of communication available to them as well-never take away their voices!
I did a quick google search and found some excellent ideas. I knew I wanted to use it with a familiar activity so that my kids wouldn't be overwhelmed with two new things at the same time. Eventually, I found this idea on Pinterest and thought it was a simple enough place to start. I used one of Gabrielle Dixon's easy art projects from the Easy Art Year Long Bundle (available here!!) to base my topic board pictures on, since my kids are used to the directions and process of these projects.
I remade the steps of the gingerbread man so that I could add in more opportunities for language (I simply added more parts to them and added the steps of writing your name, putting on a piece of tape, and hanging them on our class-made gingerbread house). I gave each student their own set of directions, which they had to reference before making requests. Here are what my last four ended up looking like:
Then I had to decide which pictures to put on my topic board. I needed enough to fill the needs of my basic communicators, but not too many to overwhelm distractible eyes!
This is the layout I finally decided on.
I used an old Velcro book that I inherited from a former teacher, but you could just as easily make one out of a binder or a piece of cardboard with Velcro strips attached. I liked having two sides so that I could fold it in half to block some of the pictures for my learners who need a smaller field to choose from.
The color coding is optional, but I wanted my students to key into different parts of a sentence. There are a few things I would change about the color codes if I did it again. I organized it by category:
-sentence starters or requests-yellow
-descriptors-white
-objects (nouns)-green
-body parts-white
-comments-lavender
-yes/no-green/red
Most of my students have seen the sentence starters and other visuals before; in fact, you could even use these over and over with different activities. I like to keep these available to my students right on the topic board so they do not have to sift through their own binders/ipads/vocab/books to find them :) They are common enough for every use. You would just need to change the objects to reflect those in the activity.
This lesson was perfect! It was so easy to differentiate as I went along. For my beginning communicators, I worked with one picture at a time and placed it right in front of them to hand to me. For students a little further along, I used two pictures at a time and they had to choose the one they wanted. For my intermediate and advanced communicators, I used sentence strips. I used the ones from my students' pecs binders, but again, these would be really easy to make with a strip of cardboard and some Velcro. I followed the same guidelines as PECS and did not demand verbal language, but I was happy to see that two of my students were verbalizing their requests as they touched and "read" each picture, and one student was signing his requests using ASL and a model! I used the comments pictures mostly as a tool to model language to my students, holding them up as I made comments to them about their projects. Here is what one of the sentence strips a student handed me looked like.
I had five students at the table for this activity, and they each had to wait their turn for me to come to them (having a rolling chair really helps!!) I was thrilled that they were quiet and patient as they watched the other students. I think being able to see WHY they were waiting really helped them understand what was going on. I couldn't believe our group was at the table for over 30 minutes, and not a peep was heard! Everyone completed their projects and did a fabulous job.
This took a little time to create, but I think that in time it will be a shorter process as I get more practice making them. To store this, I printed a picture of what the topic board looked like and put it inside a quart-size ziploc bag. I labeled it with the activity name and put all the pictures inside it for easy reference in the future. I will definitely be using topic boards again for more activities!
