Teaching school curriculum with Proloquo

Proloquo’s Crescendo Evolution™ vocabulary supports school-aged students by providing easy access to the essential words from the curriculum. These words are organized by school subjects so that teachers can easily find the words they need. The graphic symbols provide an important visual cue to the meaning of these essential academic concepts, which is helpful to all students.

Proloquo supports teachers

Proloquo is the first AAC app designed to support teaching students of all ages. Words that are common across all levels of education (from preschool to university) are found in the School folder. Early years teachers appreciate the visual supports of the graphic symbols as they teach everything from letters and shapes to body parts and weather. The symbols on the Feelings page help all students learn to identify and express their emotions. The unique Related Words feature supports writing, as students consider synonyms and explore new vocabulary. Were they, or their character, happy and excited, or were they delighted and exhilarated?

Proloquo’s fringe vocabulary is consistent with how we teach school curriculum, such as sorting foods into common food groups like Proteins and Vegetables. As students progress through the curriculum, they have visuals to help them understand concepts like calories and nutrition.

Teaching academic subjects

Science

Science is all about learning to question, discover, test a hypothesis, and form a conclusion. These general science terms are right on the first page of the Science folder.

Subfolders provide visuals to help students understand common concepts, from sink and float, attract vs repel, to velocity and friction. The Chemistry and Physics subfolders provide advanced vocabulary to learn everything from electrical circuits to mass and density.

Biology words are more general as most children learn words like water and sky before starting school. In Nature, teachers will find the words and visuals they need to teach Weather and Climate, Geology, Plants, Space, Habitats, Food Chains, and Life Cycles. The Animals folder separates animals into scientific classifications so educators can use the Mammals or Fish folder as their visual support to teach the concept of these categories. The Bodies folder offers anatomy terms, from eye and leg, to muscle and bone, to organ systems.

Engineering terms are found in the Construction subfolder of Buildings, where the graphic symbols help all students understand terms like suspend, scaffold, or tension.

Literacy and Language Arts

The Literacy folder supports teaching the earliest concepts, such as reading storybooks and the names of letters. But it goes further, allowing students to explore terms like vowel, consonant, or synonym. The Punctuation subfolder ensures students can not only select a character on Proloquo’s keyboard but also name it as a question mark. The Texts subfolder offers visuals to help students with that confusing concept of fiction vs non-fiction while discussing plot and setting. The Grammar subfolder supports students to learn subject vs object in a sentence, to quote or capitalize, and to name the parts of speech.

Math

The Math folder opens with general words about quantity, such as whole and part, few and extra. Early years teachers will appreciate the basic numeracy terms on the 2nd page, such as pattern and number line. The Numbers subfolder supports students to compose numbers from 0 to infinity. The Data subfolder offers visuals to help students use graphs and tally marks, as well as more sophisticated terms like plot and coordinate. Operations are represented in the Arithmetic subfolder while shapes, lines, and planes can be taught in Geometry. Terms for measurement (both metric and imperial!) and Algebra are found in those subfolders.

Life Skills

Teachers will find words about classroom management, and how we treat each other in the classroom, in the Society folder, with words like volunteer and respect.

In Food, the Cooking subfolder provides visuals for kitchen tasks while folders for food groups and nutrition help teach students how to stay healthy.

The Care folder has words about basic hygiene, while Clothing, Bodies, and Health provide the words and visuals to teach students how we care for ourselves.

Words to prepare students for employment are available in Work, with everything from common jobs (such as community helpers) to words like schedule, break, and boss.

Folders for Places, Toys, Games, and Buy & Sell help students explore their communities, the use of money, and recreation.

Teachers of physical education will find the words they need in the Move folder inside the dark pink tab, with terms like throw, jump, spin and climb. The Sports and Recreation folder has subfolders for everything from common team sports, equipment and gear, to recreation activities like camping and fishing.

Social Studies, History, Civics, and Geography

The Society folder opens with words about how people live together. The second page expands to common words about how society evolves, such as reform and revolution. The History folder takes this further, helping students learn about major historical events. An Economy subfolder in Buy & Sell offers words like supply and demand.

Civics vocabulary is found in Government, with words like president and citizen. The second page offers words about the judicial system and war and peace, while the Politics subfolder has words about voting and elections. A Military subfolder is as helpful to children with parents in the armed forces as it is for discussing battles and truces.

The Geography folder organizes words about countries, regions, and borders. Important Landmarks have their own folder while the names of countries and states are organized in alphabetical text-only lists.

The People folder includes words about how we live as families or households, how we relate in social roles like neighbors vs strangers, and how we form our identity around nationality, ethnicity, or faith communities.

The Beliefs folder opens to words that are common to all faith traditions, such as faith and prayer. Students can explore the world’s diverse Religions in a subfolder.

The Arts

Words about the visual arts, music, and performance are organized in the Arts folder.

Words for every topic and occasion

Other robust AAC systems provide access to between 2 and 4 thousand words. That significantly limits the topics that can be discussed without resorting to spelling or manually adding tons of words.

Proloquo, out-of-the-box includes 4.500 symbol-supported words, and through its Related Words exposes another 12 thousand text-only words. Even students that cannot yet read can access those Related Words by sounding them out, giving every student access to thousands of essential curriculum words. Poor or slow spellers can use all 16.5 thousand words to fully participate in school .

Beyond the academic topics, teachers can leverage Proloquo to talk about anything going on in students’ lives from hobbies to health to holidays and beyond.

References

Biemiller, A. (2009). Words worth teaching: closing the vocabulary gap. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill SRA.

Marzano, R., (2020). Teaching basic, advanced, and academic vocabulary: a comprehensive framework for elementary instruction. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Resources.