85: AAC in the Classroom & More with Heather Cacioppo

Team collaboration and communication are so important between SLPs and special education teachers. We work with them quite a bit!

In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, I am chatting with Heather Cacioppo all about this.

Heather is a middle school self-contained life skills special education teacher with a Master’s degree in Teacher Leadership. She has been a special education teacher in Illinois for 8 years. She has found her passion working with students on functional and daily living skills, including work experiences for her middle schoolers.

In the future, Heather wants to be an Instructional Coach for Special Education school programs. She also has worked alongside Don Johnston in the creation of Readtopia through a pilot program.

With her many years of experience in the classroom, Heather has so much valuable advice for us.

In This Episode You’ll Discover:

Ways to encourage special education students to communicate
How to make learning fun and increase engagement
Communicating and working together with SPED teachers
AAC implementation
Age-appropriate literacy activities for middle school students

I hope you get a lot of value out of this conversation with Heather! I love that she shared creative ways to increase student engagement and get students to implement skills naturally.

I also appreciate her clearing up some common misconceptions about special education students when it comes to communication and reading!

Don’t forget: If you are tired of spending your free time looking for resources to use when teaching your older speech students, check out SLP Elevate! This is a monthly membership that will provide you with fun, unique, and age-appropriate resources for your speech sessions!

Joke of the Week:

Q: Why didn't Cinderella make the basketball team?

A: She ran away from the ball.

Resources Mentioned:

Visit the Full SPED Ahead website

Shop Full SPED Ahead on TpT

Follow Heather on Instagram

Follow Heather on Facebook

Follow Heather on Pinterest

Where We Can Connect:

Follow to the Podcast

Follow Hallie on Instagram

Follow Hallie on Facebook

Follow Hallie on Pinterest

Follow & Review on Apple Podcasts

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