Still Working on Colors and Basic Concepts! Help!

In middle school and still working on basic concepts and vocabulary such as colors, body parts, or clothing? It can be difficult to find motivating and age appropriate tasks to incorporate these concepts; everything often looks childish. Here's an activity to integrate colors, body parts, clothing, and basic language formulation along with social pragmatics!

Also, if you have a mix of students in your group, one who needs to work on these basic concepts, and others who need to work on some slightly more advanced skills such as sentence formulation, this activity can allow all group members to work together but target their own goals successfully.

Get Started:
Use a drawing app that allows you to take pictures and use these as your background. There are plenty to choose from; here's an example called Draw Free.

 

To work on the targeted concepts, take a picture of a person (the student, a peer, teacher, etc.) and use this as your background within the app. You can also upload photos from your library (e.g. photos of family members, celebrities, TV characters, etc.) for your background, whatever is motivating for your student! 

You can provide structure and scaffolding by giving visuals / symbols for all the concepts and picking one from each pile, from a topic board, or using a communication device. For example, pick a color and a body part. "Green hair?! That's crazy! Give Ms. Heydt green hair!" The student can use the drawing features to select the color and draw over the correct body part. Pick a color and a piece of clothing. "Red shirt. Now Ms. Heydt needs a red shirt! .... And a yellow smile! .....Give her a pair of sunglasses!" (There are a few objects such as sunglasses you can insert.)

An example of a photo with some drawing over it. Don't I look great?

Go Further:

This has allowed you to integrate basic concepts, work on receptive language/vocabulary, and even target following directions. Now, here's your opportunity to target the expansion of expressive language and development of social interactions. Provide supports such as symbols, topic boards, and pages on communication devices, as needed for any of these skills:

• Before taking a person's picture, greet them and ask their permission. Examples: Hi! Picture please?; Hello, can I take your picture please? 
• Make a sentence or any kind of expressive utterance after each addition to the picture. Describe the picture and include the concepts being targeted. Examples: Green hair; Ms. Heydt has green hair; Hair is green; Ms. Heydt's hair is green.
• Make comments: She looks crazy!; Wow!; Her hair looks awesome!; I don't like green hair.; She looks like an alien.
• Target pronouns: Work on he, she, his, her, your, my, etc. by incorporating these into the student's descriptions and comments.
• Target verbs is/are: Her eyes are blue.; The shirt is red.
• Take turns giving the directions and give the student the opportunity to direct you or direct another student
• Share the end result with others: Hey look at this!; Check this out!; Wanna see something funny?

Students who are typically developing love using apps to distort and augment images of people. Morphing apps are popular; my friends and I have even enjoyed a few laughs while using the features available in Google Hangout (adding funny images and objects to the video as you chat). This activity lets our students get in on the fun and learn at the same time!