Children who use AAC often have very limited expressive vocabularies as compared with their typical peers. A large clinical and educational research base suggests that robust vocabulary skills are related to academic achievement and written language development. Vocabulary knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of educational achievement and it is a critical foundation of literacy and school curriculum. Shared book reading at home and school has been repeatedly advocated as an important context to support vocabulary growth in the fields of early literacy instruction and communication disorders. During this presentation, we will first describe why shared book reading is so important to the development of early language skills in young children. Second, we will analyze the evidence behind the use of shared book reading as a context to support the expressive vocabulary of children who use AAC. Last, we will describe and illustrate strategies that have proven to result in noticeable word-learning gains.
