How I Make Visual Aids {& Giveaway!}



Hello!

I am always looking for ways to make it easier for my kids to understand things more easily. A method I use for literally all of my students is visual aids. Pictures provide help to all students to aid them in understanding what they hear or read, but they are especially helpful to students with difficulties understanding language. Words can be pretty abstract, so pictures help give a concrete representation to those words. Visuals can also provide structure to help my kids produce more complex sentences. I love creating these supports for my students and seeing their success with them. I routinely use visuals to make therapy materials, visual schedules, and materials for TPT. It can be time consuming to find the specific visuals my students need. That was why I was excited to try Smarty Symbols.




Smarty Symbols is an online library of tons of picture icons! They currently have over 19,000 images. The pictures range from common objects, adjectives, and verbs to specific academic vocabulary. They even have symbols to help with more abstract concepts such as prepositions and grammar. One of the things I love about Smarty Symbols it that since it is online, they are constantly adding to and improving their pictures. I do not have to purchase a new CD every time I need more updated pictures. Also, if you can't find the specific word you are looking for - just ask! When I needed a picture of a fried egg and it was not a part of the library, I sent in a request and it was added to their website in just a few days. They even have an activity library where you can look and download what other people have created! It is a great space for SLPs to share their resources.

Here are just some of the many ways that I have used Smarty Symbols since I signed up for a subscription last year:

• Picture schedules
• Behavior picture supports
• Social stories
•Sentence strips
•Vocabulary and articualation cards
• Games
•Communication boards
•Adapted books








You can checkout more about Smarty Symbols at their website here.  The great people over at Smarty Symbols have also allowed me to give away a 1 year personal subscription to one of you! Be sure to enter below! I will announce the lucky winner on Monday.

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16 comments

  1. These are awesome easy ideas! Thanks.

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  2. This would be awesome! I would use it for so many things-- visual schedules, therapy activities, social stories, communication boards.... Thanks for sharing! :)

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  3. Thank you for sharing your ideas for visual aids. I use them to decrease imitation and support independent productions.

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  4. I would love to use smarty symbols to create communication boards for some kiddos!

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  5. Thanks for this awesome opportunity! I would use Smarty Symbols for social stories, visual schedules, token boards, etc.

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  6. I would love to try out smarty symbols!!!

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  7. I would love to try Smarty Symbols. I just keep reading so many good things about the company. Thank you for this opportunity.

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  8. I like the Smarty Symbols illustrations so much better than Boardmaker-I would use them for adapted books, visual aids, everything!

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  9. I would love to use Smarty Symbols to make visuals to support my students who are still developing their language skills!

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  10. I would use Smary Symbols to create visuals and materials to use with my speech/language students!

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  11. I would love to use these great Smarty Symbols with my son who is still nonverbal.

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  12. I would love to try out Smarty Symbols for making visual supports for use in therapy! Thanks for the opportunity!

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  13. I would use it to make symbol supports for creating sentences, to make visuals to go with activities for kids using the Speak For Yourself AAC app (since it uses these symbols), to make visual supports, to make visual social stories & more. Thanks for the great giveaway 😃

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  14. I would love to win this to make visual supports for speech and language activities. Thank you!

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  15. I would love to use smarty symbols with some of my special needs students for communication as well as some other students that need visual schedules, visual reminders & sentence starters...so many uses!!

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  16. I have about 15 students on my caseload that are non-verbal and many students with autism that benefit from visuals. This would be a great resource for me to try out for a year to see if I like it. I have a Macbook air at home that does not have a CD drive and this program would allow me to work on resources at home!

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