One of the things I feel very strongly about is that as much as possible children with autism should be educated and have access to the general education curriculum. But because their learning style is sometimes not conducive to the learning style of the typical classroom, I find that if we can use the evidence-based practice that works with all the other children and just tweak it a little bit — so it works for children with autism, that makes that more possible and it makes the teacher be able to incorporate that child into the classroom.
Primarily we have a few things that are — literature that is specific to children with autism like anaphoric reference, some graphic organizer work, some grouping kinds of things and shared storybook reading — but for the most part what we do is take the evidence-based strategies that we know of and make them more visual to help the child with autism really understand the focus of the evidence-based strategy that we’re working on, or to make the social communication part of the comprehension easier for that child to understand.
A lot of times I use thought bubbles for instance, so, “Here’s Mr. Smith, he thinks that the penny has had its day and it should go away, right? And here’s Mr. Robert, he thinks the penny is very, very important.” I’m showing these two people who are kind of arguing with each other, and they both have a different thought bubble. Well then, I’ve made those two different perspectives visual for that child with autism, and they can understand the premise of what’s being asked of them.
