Teaching vocabulary has multiple purposes when working with students who use AAC to communicate. These purposes include vocabulary for receptive and expressive communication, including for reading and writing as well as person-to-person communication.  Picture books are important tools for teaching vocabulary for all purposes.  This is how I teach vocabulary from picture books we read aloud during shared reading:

• Select words from the book you will be reading. Words should be level 2/3 words.
• Use a graphic organizer to present the word, definition, definition using only words found in common AAC systems, a sentence, and a video clip or image.
• Say, type/write the word, and spell it.
• Ask the kids to guess what it means. Allow plenty of wait time for them to think, look at the video/graphic and make a message with AAC. The more you so this the more they will participate and make connections.
• Share the full definition as you enter it in the organizer.
• Using a common AAC system (or more than one if you have time) model how they could say the meaning of the word with their AAC system. (Paraprofessionals/peers could do this on individual devices so more kids see their own device modeled.)
• If you have time ask for a sentence and write it down. If not, create a sentence yourself.
• Review the word, definition, how to say it with AAC and the sentence one more time
• While reading have your kids do a movement or hold up a sign or something when they hear a vocabulary word.

You need to present a word and have the student have experiences with a word many times for them to "own it". If a word reoccurs in another book you can do it again. Presenting vocabulary this way teaches tier 2/3 words using tier 1/2 words meaning - that makes it differentiated for different levels of language learning. Try to use motivating videos, images and sentences. Connect them to the students lived experiences. My students ask to do vocabulary!

When I first started virtual teaching of learners who use AAC (most of whom also have neurodevelopment disabilities) lots of parents (and students) were surprised when I asked, “what did you think of the book?” after every book we read.
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For speaking folks it is usually the first question we ask when talking about a book, “oh I just read The Women by Kristen Hannah.”

“Really? How was it?”would be a usual book readers conversation starter.

However, for most alternative communicators that isn’t a question they hear. They are read to or read books themselves and are asked comprehension questions about books, but no one ever asks what they thought. Many parents were shocked to realize they don’t ask their AAC using kid if they liked a book and why.
Most of my students have been with me long enough now that they answer, “what did you think of the book” before I ask it. Often times it is mostly, “like” or “I like it” as a response. Some kids I push a little further and ask them why and others often give apt reasons. We just wrapped up learning about World War Two and many books were tremendously sad or brave or unfair. Many of my students noted these things.

To anyone who doesn’t work with or know a child who uses a speech device this might not seem like a big deal but, trust me, it is. People underestimate my students; they infantalize my students; they commit ongoing educational neglect against my students. No one expects them to comment on the bravery of Anne Frank or the sadness of a child exposed to the Hiroshima bomb dying after making 1000 paper cranes or to comment that it isn’t fair how Jackie Robinson was treated.

They definitely don’t expect my students to further comment something along the lines of, “makes me think, my old school, seclusion, segregation, not fair”. So it is important for the world to know that my students DO comment on books and make deep and important connections with them - even books that are considered to be “beyond” them. I’m not saying every child makes every inference and deeply connects with every book - but typical kids don’t do that either.

I am saying that my students deserve to learn about Anne Frank and the holocaust, and Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, and Jackie Robinson and Josephine Baker because all of these topics are things we expect everyone to know about. They do not deserve a (whole freaking) lifetime of Brown Bear, Brown Bear and The Very Hungry Caterpillar (you would not believe how common this is - preschool books their whole lives). They deserve to be asked their opinions and to be taught how to share their opinions. They deserve teachers who want to hear their opinions.