This cockatoo is probably smarter than your dog
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NewsTranscript
00:00 - I'm Jennifer Kuna and this is Ellie's story for GOP.
00:05 - You ready?
00:11 - When I got Ellie, she really loved to learn.
00:17 And so I thought if I could teach her how to read,
00:27 our learning would be unending.
00:28 - Ball.
00:29 Good job.
00:32 Ball.
00:34 Where's ball?
00:36 Tall.
00:37 Each day I taught her new letters
00:39 and I started blending the sounds together
00:41 and she seemed to pick it up.
00:42 Where's Pat sat on a couch?
00:44 Look, yeah, there's a little cat right there.
00:46 Every morning we would wake up and we'd learn new things
00:49 and it became this journey of friendship and collaboration
00:52 and she became my best buddy.
00:53 Yay!
00:54 Hi, good job.
00:57 We have the tablet for communication.
00:58 Do you like your play area here?
01:00 Do you like your play area here?
01:02 - Yes.
01:05 - And lots and lots of games.
01:05 Ellie was playing her tracing game
01:07 and I thought 'cause she'd done a couple of them,
01:09 maybe she'd wanna do something else instead.
01:11 So I popped her back into the Com Board
01:14 to see what else she wanted to do
01:15 and instead I got an earful.
01:17 She does tons of communicating on her tablet.
01:21 What do you wanna eat?
01:22 - A pancake.
01:25 - Uh-huh.
01:27 Pancakes are yummy.
01:28 - Cook breakfast.
01:30 - Okay.
01:30 - Chop.
01:36 - You want chop in your pancake?
01:37 I can add chop to your pancake.
01:38 How are you feeling today?
01:40 - Sad.
01:41 - We have menus for feelings.
01:42 So she can say that she feels happy
01:44 but then her happy button opens up to a menu of like,
01:47 I feel happy or I wanna feel happy.
01:49 I felt happy, I will feel happy.
01:51 So she can use them in really interesting nuanced ways
01:54 with past tense or future tenses
01:56 to add a lot of complexity to it.
01:58 Can you bring it up?
01:59 Call it up.
02:01 Good job.
02:02 That was great, high five.
02:05 A lot of times I like wake up,
02:06 I come in and she's already like turned it on.
02:08 Ellie's already coloring.
02:10 Look at you, look at you, you made it so pretty.
02:12 She's learning how to write letters on her tablet.
02:14 I think she has 14 letters.
02:16 My hope is that she'll be able to write sentences
02:18 a couple of words a week, maybe.
02:20 Where is today?
02:23 Most of her reading that we do is books or word cards.
02:27 When did you watch Peppa Pig?
02:29 When did you watch Peppa Pig?
02:32 Yesterday.
02:33 There's Pat sat on a bat.
02:36 I'll read a sentence and then she has to find
02:39 which page has that sentence.
02:40 I won't read it in order, she has to look at it
02:42 and guess between the two
02:43 and pick out the sentence I just said.
02:46 That's the bat.
02:46 High five.
02:49 Her reading is one sentence per page.
02:52 I think kindergarten or first grade level.
02:54 Fish, there's a little fish.
02:56 That's a unicorn, did you see the unicorn?
03:00 Uh-huh, that's probably the unicorn.
03:02 There's the unicorn.
03:03 She spends a lot of time telling about her temperature
03:06 and whether she really likes the temperature or not.
03:08 77 seems to be the room temperature.
03:10 She's like, wow.
03:13 She's been learning vocabulary for 11 years.
03:15 Nice banana, good job.
03:18 I was a lawyer and then because of this amazing
03:21 little feathered creature,
03:22 she completely derailed everything in the best way.
03:25 Where it says egg.
03:27 No, where's egg?
03:29 Good job.
03:33 Tag.
03:34 I'm an affiliate researcher with Northeastern.
03:36 So we have peer reviewed publications
03:38 on some of the things that she's done.
03:39 She scored 92% on blind reading comprehension tests.
03:43 Jump.
03:44 Some interesting stats are about 89%
03:46 of her communication requests are around social things.
03:49 She likes to do stuff together,
03:50 playing games together, calling friends.
03:52 Even though 26% of her speech board,
03:55 she could be asking for treats and foods and drinks,
03:58 she really only uses it for about 6%.
04:00 To do that, most of it, 89%,
04:02 is around doing things with other people.
04:04 It's a beautiful journey for us.
04:06 It's so meaningful and I absolutely love it.
04:08 She gives us 60 to 70 years.
04:10 I wonder what's it gonna look like tomorrow.
04:12 One, treat.
04:13 (car engine roaring)
04:16 (gentle music)
04:18 (gentle music)
04:21 (gentle music)
04:24 (gentle music)