By Sara Finegan
When I began teaching in Southern California several years ago, I assumed that the fact that an entire department of my school district was devoted to autism meant that I would be able to get information on best practices and the latest research to support my students in learning. Accordingly, I would invite people from the Autism Support Department to my classroom to observe individual students in order to help me figure out the best ways to help them access academic learning.
They came and watched and gave me odd suggestions such as “well, you could use a checklist…” or “maybe you could reward him with toy time when he finishes,” neither of which really addressed my desire to help my students with autism read better. It took several months of frustrating interactions between me and two Department employees before one of them finally informed me, “Sara, we handle behavior. Not learning. The academic stuff is not what we do.”
I was on my own.
From that point on, I’ve been on a mission to discover and try out whatever instructional strategies I can find to support and shape the intellectual work of my students with autism. There hasn’t been a lot out there. We have research up the wazoo on autism, but most of it is wrapped around behaviors and causes, not how kids learn and what helps them learn.
I’ve come to the conclusion that parents and teachers are on our own here, and that just as parents have been pioneers in locating therapies and supports for their children, so must we teachers with autism in the classroom dig our own trails and share everything we learn. The mind of a child with autism is the mind of a child is the mind of a learner, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait around for our school districts to find funding to add cognitive issues to traditional autism support.
My purpose in creating this blog is to found a forum where I can share what I learn and what I’m trying on, and parents, teachers, and other people who love learners with autism and are committed to showing them how to learn can come and get ideas and share what works for them.
Readers with autism experience difficulty with tasks such as making inferences about characters and situations in text, making predictions about what will happen next, negotiating figurative language such as metaphor and simile, questioning for meaning, and a myriad of other strategies we take for granted when we navigate through a novel or short story.
Research has shown that most readers with autism do not connect parts of text. In other words, a child who is reading a story may not recognize that what happened in the last paragraph is related to what is happening in this paragraph, and thus will not be able to keep track of the plot at all.
Assisting a child in developing, strengthening and regularly using the strategies and understandings needed to fully comprehend text is the job of parents, teacher, and other support providers such as occupational and speech therapists, tutors, and teacher aides.
Our job is enormous, but we must not be daunted by the size of the task; instead, we must focus on and customize individual interventions and lessons that bridge the gap between a child’s deficits and strengths.
During my teaching career, I’ve developed with some interventions and instructional strategies that seem to work well with many readers with autism, particularly those with hyperlexia. I have also used many ideas given to me by my colleagues and parents of my students, who are my best and most wondrous partners. Support providers at every level are encouraged to try them, modify or expand them, and customize them to fit the needs of their own readers with autism. Your comments, suggestions, and questions are always welcome.
Our goal is to provide Help for struggling readers on the autism spectrum.
FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
Q: Is it “anaphoric cuing” or “anaphoric cueing”?
A: Yes.
Q: What are anaphora?
A: Anaphora are words, often pronouns, which refer back to reference words previously used in the text. For example: “Dan opened his book, put his head down on it, and fell asleep.” In this case, “his” and “it” are the anaphora and “Dan” and “book” are the reference words.
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Q: What, briefly, is anaphoric cuing?
A: Anaphoric cuing involves teaching the child to identify the anaphora and to pause to relate them to their reference words while reading. In this way, the student begins to connect the parts of the text to one another. The active engagement required to relate words to one another supports the child’s connection to the text and reduces his or her habit of passive decoding.
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Q: Who first identified anaphoric cuing as an effective intervention for teaching reading comprehension to children on the autism spectrum?
A: Researchers Irene O’Connor and Perry Klein, both of the University of Western Ontario (Canada),worked with 20 adolescent students with hyperlexia to explore the success of cloze questions, pre-reading questions, and anaphoric cuing. They found anaphoric cuing to be the most effective teaching strategy for improving reading comprehension with these students.
[O’Connor, I.M. & Klein, P.D. (2004). Exploration of strategies for facilitating the reading comprehension of high-functioning students with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34(2): 115 -127]
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Q: What is meant by hyperlexia?
A: Hyperlexia is a reading disorder characterized by a precocious ability to decode words, usually two or more levels above the child’s age or grade, combined with significantly impaired comprehension of the same words. Many children on the autism spectrum have this difficulty, even though they may not be diagnosed with hyperlexia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlexia )
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Q: Has O’Connor and Klein’s study been “proven” in the classroom?
A: This blog’s primary author, Sara Finegan, has had success with the technique (http://readerswithautism.com/2009/09/autism-and-hyperlexia-part-1-anaphoric-cuing/ and http://readerswithautism.com/2009/09/autism-and-hyperlexia-part-2-helping-bobby-read/ ) and would like to hear from other teachers or parents about their experience with anaphoric cuing or any other teaching strategy that has worked to improve reading comprehension by students on the autism spectrum.
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Q: How did Sara learn to do this?
A: As her first posts show, Sara and her student, Bobby, worked it out for themselves. The process is not complicated. Paraeducators (paraprofessionals, classroom aides) can help to implement it. (http://readerswithautism.com/2009/12/anaphoric-cuing-asking-clarifying-questions/ and http://readerswithautism.com/2009/09/role-of-the-classroom-aide-to-help-the-child-toward-independence/ )
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Q: Does the technique work with students trying to improve reading comprehension in another language besides English?
A: We don’t know for sure, but would assume that in any language that uses pronouns or other anaphora regularly in text, large numbers of children on the autism spectrum have difficulty with comprehension. This technique could be tried to see if it helps and PLEASE let us know what your results are.
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Q: I’m a teacher (or parent) willing to try anaphoric cuing but I have questions. Can I contact you?
A: Certainly. We want you to Post a Comment to any one of our articles, including this one (see below), or you may Contact Us ( http://readerswithautism.com/contact-us/ ) by email. We will respond to any communication from an educator or a parent trying to help a struggling reader.
Our Goal: Providing help for struggling readers on the autism spectrum.