We love words! We love books! Reading too! They help everyone develop language, literacy, and communication skills. March is National Reading Month and you’re invited to participate in activities to introduce your AAC learners to fascinating characters, experience thrilling adventures, and learn about new perspectives as they are transported into the world of books.
The 2025 Calendar and AAC Literacy Planner include a total of 24 books and corresponding lesson plans. Download the 2025 digital version (and previous years as well) on our website or ask your PRC-Saltillo Consultant for a paper copy while supplies last.
The 2025 Literacy Planner recommends shared reading, a research-based interactive strategy when you read with your AAC learner, not just to them. It can be used with any book you like! For emergent learners, shared reading provides the opportunity to learn about reading. Skills like knowing how to hold a book, how to turn pages from right to left, and that you read from left to right. This social activity invites your AAC learner to use words in the AAC system to talk about what they are reading.
For AAC learners in the early stages of learning to communicate and enjoy books, you can use the research-based CAR strategy.
The Literacy Planner includes a second strategy as well—how to put the CROWD in the CAR by asking different types of questions to encourage language development and comprehension. (Hint: it’s found on page 3.)
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET
Title: Extra! Extra! Hear All About It! PRC-Saltillo Offers Free Literacy Resources!
Session Leaders: Cortney Maholtz, MA-CCC/SLP and Beth Waite-Lafever, MA-CCC/SLP-ATP
The 2025 Calendar and AAC Literacy Planner are bursting with fabulous extension activities for your literacy interventions. You’ll find lesson plans, activities, and video read-alouds for over 150 children’s stories. Learn how these resources were developed and how others have implemented them with their AAC readers in classrooms and therapy sessions across the country. Bring your experiences with these materials and join the discussion to learn more. This session is perfect for anyone supporting the literacy development of emergent learners using AAC.
Register today to get energized for your reading-with-AAC era!
Libraries and their digital resources available through apps like Libby and Hoopla are amazing! We are also big fans of Monarch Reader™. Previously Tar Heel Reader, Monarch Reader by Building Wings™ is an online library of free, age-respectful books on a variety of topics that have been developed intentionally for older, emergent readers. You will find over 100 books on this platform that we have written specifically to connect students with content of our AAC Literacy Planners.
You can use Monarch Reader to display and read books on your AAC device. Someone with an Accent® device with Empower® software can read one of these digital books with their device. Communicators who use a NovaChat® device or the TouchChat® app can do a split screen with their vocabulary on one side and their book on the other. With technology, readers can turn pages with eye tracking or a switch. This allows the AAC reader to independently turn pages and explore books.
Date: Wednesday, March 5, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET
Title: Boost AAC Literacy and Independence with Monarch Reader™ and PRC-Saltillo
Session Leaders: Beth Waite-Lafever, Cortney Maholtz, and Allison Dennis, Curriculum Development Manager, Building Wings
Register today and spread your reading wings!
Date: Tuesday, March 18, 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET
Title: AAC Literacy Fusion: Comprehensive Literacy & Science of Reading Awesome Sauce
Session Leader: Beth Waite-Lafever
Teaching individuals using AAC how to read and write is a unique challenge! In this session, we will:
Learn more about this ASHA Course.
Date: Wednesday, February 26, 3:00 p.m. ET
Title: Voices of AAC: AAC User’s Journey to Become Published Authors
Session Leaders: Chris Klein, Lexi Haas, Susan Haas, Kirk Behnke
This live webinar features the remarkable journeys of two AAC users who achieved their dream of publishing their own books! Our two guest speakers will share their personal stories, highlighting the challenges they faced, the strategies they employed, and the support systems that helped them succeed. We will discuss their individual books, My Big Toe: A Story of Perseverance by Chris Klein, and The Year of the Buttered Cat by Lexi and Susan Haas and provide time for questions and answers.
Register today for this ASHA Course. Take notes—perhaps you will be the next AAC author!
Getting Ready to Read is a one-of-a-kind literacy and communication instructional program designed to teach word recognition, decoding, spelling and icon sequencing using an AAC device. This instructional program is the result of more than a decade of collaboration between the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Dr. Karen Erickson and Dr. Gretchen Hanser, Bruce Baker of Semantic Compaction, and PRC-Saltillo. Lesson plans and support materials are available for several AAC vocabularies. Check out this free literacy resource on the AAC Language Lab!
Curious about more ways to pair AAC and literacy? Contact your PRC-Saltillo Consultant to chat about ideas to teach, model, and creatively experience the wonder of words and communication!