Power Books: Conversation {product review}

I recently had the opportunity to check out this new product from Turning Points Media,  Power Books: Conversation.  Read about them below!

Description (straight from Turning Points Media's website):

"Power Books: Conversation is a resource of lesson plans and materials for teaching basic conversational skills to children with high functioning autism or social communication disorder. This is a downloadable product that comes with a pdf file for the book and also two audio files: The "Conversation Song" and an instrumental version."

These lessons were created by Joe Rothstein, who is an SLP in California.  He basis his work on current research, which is so so so important these days!

The book includes lessons for the following areas:
-whole body listening (body positioning and using you eyes)
-staying on topic (reciprocal statements and asking questions)
-expanding topics
-talking too much
-background/ context
-tact

Each lesson in the program includes the following elements:
-direct instruction
-guided practice
-independent practice
-homework
-redirection cues

Here's an example of a lesson:

Other pages in the book include supplemental pictures to go along with each lesson, such as these conversation starters or emotions images.

Also included in this download is the conversation song and lyrics for those songs! Check out a clip of the song here:

Here's what I love about Power Books: Conversation:

-I love that it's research based!  This is so so so important. 

-I like the different levels of instruction/practice for the students.  

-I like that there are included multiple lessons under each topic.

-I like the songs!  My students love music, so this was a fun way to add to their learning. 

-I like how easy it would be to prepare these lessons. It's all laid out for you.

-I like that, even though they are laid out for you, you can adapt them to your students' needs.

If there's one thing that I would like to see in future updates, it would be real photos for the emotions.  The illustrations used are not terrible, by any means.  Sometimes my students with autism have difficulty with illustrations and benefit from real images.  Just a personal preference and a suggestion based on what works for my students.

If you're interested in this book, you can purchase it from Turning Points Media here!  They are listed for $10.00 each and contain a digital download of the book and recordings of the Conversation Song!

What do you think?  Would you use these in your speech room?