A Literacy based lesson plan for students with severe disabilities

At the recent UATT conference, we had the change to attend a presentation from an SLP and music therapist from the Hartvigsen School in the Granite District in Utah.  They demonstrated a very well planned and executed lesson to teach students with severe disabilities a wide range of important skills in a brief (30-45 minutes) time period using AT, AAC, music, Core Vocabulary, and much more.  I really was impressed with how much thought went into the lesson, and how they were able to target important skills such as:

• Social reciprocity (greetings, farewells, conversations, etc.)
• Communication (including AAC for nonverbal students)
• Vocabulary
• Literacy
• Following 1 and 2 step directions
• Turn Taking
• Sensory/Tactile experiences
• Cause and Effect
• Civil Rights awareness
• and more!

The entire lesson was based on reading a nonfiction book about Martin Luther King Jr. They had carefully planned selected vocabulary and activities for each page of the story. While they included a lot of music into their lesson, you don't necessarily have to do so.  You also don't have to be a trained Music Therapist to teach a lesson like this.  I think a thoughtful teacher could use their lesson plan as a template to design any lesson to target the same skills with a literature based approach.  You can access a copy of their lesson plan by clicking here.