Reading and Writing Board

[Guest guest]

Hey guys. someone asked me off list what the R and W board was so I thought I'd

foreward my response

in case anyone else was curious. Take care, Jennica..

The Reading and Writing board is something that was developed by Nina Lovaas.

In the new Lovaas book there is a chapter about it. Basically we use written

words along with the stimuli we are teaching.

The board itself is a wipe off board I bought from office max (18x22in). Around

all the edges I have velcro.

The top of the board becomes the SD strip. The sides of the board are where the

choices go, and the bottom of the board is the response strip where my son pulls

the answer from the choice strips and places it.

Right now we are working on picture to word matching (and reversing it also) So,

let's say the target is trashcan. We put a picture of a trashcan on the SD

strip. In the field of choices (both sides of the board) we have the word

trashcan along with a few distracter words. We vary the sd, sometims we'll say

" match " or " find this one " or " what is this? " etc. He looks at the picture,

scans the field and pulls the correct word down and places it on the response

strip.

What I've found is that when we've tried to teach targets auditorily (show a

picture of a trashcan and say " what's this? " and he has to say " trashcan " it may

take a few weeks for him to get it, using errorless learning and transfer trials

etc. When he is taught new targets on the board with the written stimulus, we

are finding he is acquiring targets at a much quicker rate and it is even

leaking over into his reading reportoire along with other bonuses like clearing

up articualtion.

At first I was concerned about this board because I didn't want him to learn

site reading. But, it was explained to me that him looking at the picture and

finding the word is actually reading comprehension.

We are now working on teaching him phonics. We put on the SD strip " what sound? "

then put a lower case letter. He verbally responds the sound the letter makes.

We are now putting two letters on the board (consonant vowel) so know he sounds

out for example " b " and " a " . To teach verbs, we vary the verb being targeted

every trial. To teach categories we put at least 3 different animals on the SD

strip and say " what are these " or " These are " and pulls down the written

word " animals " again we vary the pictures every trial or so.

Hope this helps give a little insight. When the girls come work with him, the

sessions are 2 1/2 hours long. They work on the reading and writing board

several times througout the session sandwiched inbetween manding opportunities

and also run rec/exp body parts, gross and fine motor im., etc inbetween targets

so we are still able to follow a mixed vb format while utilizing the board. I

guess the biggest difference is we are using textual as opposed to sign or only

verbal or pointing responses..

take care,

Jennica