RPM is a method for teaching academics to non verbal and autistic students, which may lead to independent typing.  Many of my piano students use RPM during the lesson and to support their schooling. HALO is a non-profit organization providing RPM, which is academic instruction leading towards communication for persons with autism. Soma Mukhopadhyay developed Rapid Prompting Method to teach her own son Tito who is a published writer despite his autism. HALO’s clinic in Austin, Texas is where she conducts 1:1 Soma® RPM education and training. 

Resources

Watch the movie from my https://hennyk.com/resources/ page: 

• How RPM Rapid Prompting Method to America (CBS 60 minutes full video)
• A Mother’s Courage: Talking Back to Autism – Documentary that highlights the Rapid Prompting Method, helping non-verbal individuals learn how to point to letters on a board. This is the beginning of communication, which leads to typing.
• Graciela and John Paul on Atlanta News:  “Giving a voice to autism’s voiceless: Simple tool helping kids with autism communicate” (4 minutes)
• Ido Kedar on NBC Los Angeles, “Autistic Teen Uses Tech to Break Silence: “I Escaped My Prison” (4 minutes)
• Tito (Soma’s son) and RPM, 9 minutes   https://youtu.be/Nfiap3a7Tuo 
• Meet Nico: The Autistic Teen Who Talks with Piano Fingers – This video was directed by Nicolas Joncour, a pianist and university student in France. Nico spells to communicate. He shared his message about nonspeaking autistics and what he wants the world to understand. Click for captions, or full transcript
• This film, An Autistic’s Life illustrates a perspective of how autistics feel when they are evaluated by researchers for their inabilities by comparing them to standardized markers of human neurotypical peers.  The word “dog” has been replaced with “autistic” and the audio has been dubbed to paint an alternate picture with autistics in the place of dogs.

Then, see the videos on Soma’s page http://www.halo-soma.org 

Online Support

• FaceBook Group for hard-core parents:  This is where you can find some lesson plans.
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/627199673958985/
• RPM Basics – preparing a lesson from a book:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmGo0aWMHKI
• RPM Basics – Getting Started, # 1 (Choices):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slfnouqFqnE
• RPM Basics – Getting Started, # 2 (Spelling Stencils):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gvKz2YtxEw
• Super-Smart kids show you when they are bored – Bella is deliberately choosing the wrong answers. From my experience, the super clever kids do that to show you how super bored they are with (1) the material, and (2) method level. It’s always time to increase in both different levels of difficulty (subject and task). Once mom started to teach more stimulating topics and improving her own technique, Bella made very rapid progress – she is now able to independently express her thoughts using a keyboard (later in the video- approx 4mins30secs).
• My FaceBook group for beginners to post videos of sessions and get feedback from others: RPM Global Support Network (Skype / FaceTime) http://www.facebook.com/groups/rpmglobalsupport