Is Your Child Minimally Verbal? You Might Be Doing Gemiini Wrong!
Many times children with autism or Down syndrome can understand much more than they can say. The problem isn’t with receptive language, but with expressive language.
Too often, therapy is focused on expressive goals, and the poor students miss out on meeting their true learning potential because they would be able to learn far more than they can say. Gemiini can teach to both the receptive and expressive goals independently if you spend just a few minutes per week to customize it.
This will not be too much of a concern for the young children who lack receptive language, typically up to age 5 or so. Parents or professionals can take the Gemiini assessment for the student, find the appropriate language level, push play on a pre-made therapy video and start seeing results.
However, if your child understands a lot more than he or she can say, there’s a different protocol you need to follow. Follow these directions and you’re much more likely to see stellar results!
If the old Gemiini is still in your browser, clear the cookies and the cache and type in gemiini.org to start again.
Take the assessment for your student's RECEPTIVE language (or what you think they can understand). Just click on the button and answer the questions. Once done, you’ll be given a level of the language pyramid to start receptive therapy, along with a pre-made video session..
Play your receptive video twice a day for 15-20 minutes each time. (Once a day for 30 minutes is fine too). You can’t play it too much!
Now, make a second video using Gemiini’s Session Builder for his/her expressive language. Log in and click on “Video Library" at top of screen. Next, click on the “The Gemiini Library & My Videos” button at the bottom of screen. You’ll see an orange button that says “Build A New Video- Complete Gemiini Library.” Click that and gain access to the entire Gemiini clip library.
Pick 4 words that are highly useful and/or motivating to your student. These words can be anything. “Yes" and “no" are great words to start with, but also choose two that are highly motivating. Maybe a favorite food, TV show, or animal.
Type in one of those words within the search bar at the top of the screen. Select “starts with” rather than “contains” for relevant results. Then, go to the left side where it says “clip type.” Choose "close-up" and “midshot" if he/she already knows what the word means, but just can’t say it. This eliminates the generalization that teaches what the words means, It will save time and really focus on just the articulation of the word. Do the same thing with the other 3 words you’ve chosen.
At the bottom of your screen is a session with the video clips of the 4 words you’ve chosen.
Next, to keep the video from being too boring, go back to the search bar and click “clear all”. Then click on “general humor” and pick 4 videos you think your student will like. DON’T CLICK on “high interest stories.”
Now "clear search" again at the search bar and search “X-ray” and “contains.” Find two or three x-ray sounds that are in the words you’ve chosen. (If you don’t find exactly what you’re looking for, more sounds are coming soon so wait a couple of weeks and try again.)
Go to the bottom of your page and drag the humor video clips to intersperse them throughout your session. Put one in the beginning and space them throughout the video.
Put “X-ray” sounds that you’ve chosen right before the close-up video of the words you’ve chosen. At this point your entire video might be about 60- 90 seconds along.
Title your video
Click on "save and assign," and assign to your child (if you have only one child using Gemiini, this part is easy!)
Now your child has the receptive video, from the assessment, and the expressive video you’ve just built.
Show your student the expressive videos once a day for 15-20 minutes (or as much as he/she will tolerate it).
Once your child says one of the words you’ve chosen for your expressive video, edit the video and add a new word.
You can archive the older video in your account so you can go back to it later if you want.
Change out the humor video clips once per week so your student doesn’t lose interest. Change more often if your student appears to be getting bored or is watching for long periods of time,
After your student has watched the receptive video 42 times, test him or her for receptive cognition. You may use the text feature on Gemiini, or print out flashcards and ask your student to identify pictures on the cards. If your student has fine motor issues, look for eye-gaze to determine receptive mastery.
Schedule a call with us if you need help or feel like your student isn’t progressing. Oftentimes students are progressing but aren’t being tested receptively, or simply don’t test well even though they’re understanding. We are here for you!