http://readerswithautism.com/2009/12/hello-world-2-leave-us-a-comment-and-tell-us-why-you-visited/
Our very first post, on August 15, 2009 (just four months ago), was titled “Hello World!” At the time, with no one even knowing we existed who wasn’t a blood relative, it seemed a little pretentious.
So no one is as surprised as we are today to notice that in the past 10 days alone we have had visitors to Readers With Autism from:
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India -
Sweden (Sara är född i Uppsala)
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Australia
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The Philippines
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Great Britain
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Malta
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Panama
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Israel (ken, anachnu yehudim, ve Sara makira et ha-aretz tov-tov)
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Canada
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and more than a dozen U.S. states
Most of the visitors come looking for information about anaphoric cuing, and we are proud to be in the forefront of websites talking about that strategy, and perhaps the only one showing teachers and parents how to use it to help a struggling reader.
We are happy you found us and we want to help anyone who is attempting to improve the reading comprehension of a child with autism, Asperger Syndrome, or hyperlexia.
Leave us your comments. Tell us about your experience teaching a reader with autism? What has worked for you? What has not worked for you? What is your experience with anaphoric cuing? If you are a student yourself, do you have questions about this technique that our posts haven’t answered?
We have found this small niche for ourselves in the huge internet and we like it, so let us hear your thoughts about anaphoric cuing. We’ll be happy to share them with the world.
Related posts:
- FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
- Anaphoric cuing: Asking clarifying questions
- Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
- Autism and hyperlexia, part 2: Helping Bobby read
- Anaphoric cuing: We are Number 1!
7 Comments
I came seeking information about hyperlexia. My son has ACC and autism, also mega-musical memory and strong pattern recognition. In combination, that means that he can identify “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, and comprehensively memorize books and lyrics if they are associated with strong musical or sing-song story interests. He is echolalic, but I suspect that this memory is a much stronger tool for reading, and possibly reading morphing into speaking in context.
Thanks for creating such an exciting site!
I found your site from a facebook network. You’re doing great work here! I tutor reading. If I ever work with a child with autism or one who is decoding better than connecting to text and comprehending, I’ll give anaphoric cuing a try. I’ll also recommend this site to teacher’s and parents of a child on the autistic spectrum. I have a blog called Beginning Reading Help http://beginningreadinghelp.blogspot.com
You may find something useful. There are some lists of free online books and reading games.
We are grandparents of Keelan, a 13 year old autistic who lives with us. [His mother has 4 boys, 3 of whom are on the spectrum, the other of whom has dispraxia.]
We visited your site because of our deep concern for Keelan’s poor reading and expressive language skills. My husband is excited by what he has read, and our hope is that you will provide the answers we need to be able to help Keelan.
Keelan is unable to function in the classroom, so he is educated at home using a Distance Education Programme. I am a long retired teacher who has been really concerned about Keelan’s lack of reading skills – he is excellent at decoding words but that’s about it.
Meant to say our website was established to help people with children on the spectrum access free advocacy in their battle for adequate services in Tasmania, Australia.
Jean
Jean:
Thanks for the link to your website, and we hope you find anaphoric cuing or other techniques discussed here successful in your work with your grandson, Keelan.
Richard
I found your link on Wikipedia and am glad I did. I am a paraeducator working this school year with a 7 yr. old child diagnosed w/ autism. Mostly in a contained classroom (just the 2 of us). When the child does spend time in general ed. it is not seated at a desk, but rather roaming and exploring. A delightful, bright child, and hyperlexic. Speech is a concern; as words and phrases become longer, the tendency is to babble.However, this child reads on grade level w/ questionalbe comprehension.Obviously the retell is a problem. My educational background is psychology, gerontology and therapeutic recreation. I ended up here after retirement and a stint at substitute teaching. What a blessing. I too feel that this position is more rewarding than the classroom teacher, at least at this juncture. I wonder what is in store for the emergent ASD adult? Thank you for your work, insights and shared strategies.
Cynthia:
We’re also glad you found us. You might share Sara’s posts about anaphoric cuing with your student’s teacher. If he has hyperlexia, this may be successful and you can easily implement it.
I’ve been working mostly with older kids (6th grade through high school) and have certainly seen both improvement with socialization and high academic achievement. My personal feeling is that helping develop social skills (e.g. partner and group work) are the most important thing we as paraeducators can be doing to help a kid succeed as an adult with ASD. If the IEP has goals that that force you to address, say, a child’s inability to multiply three digit numbers by two digit numbers (when this is not directly related to his ASD and most of his peers also struggle with it) then somebody has missed the boat.
Anyway, off my high horse. Good luck, and check in periodically. We really will be posting more frequently again soon.
You might also check out our sister website http://www.thedemandingclassroom.com where I have several other posts relating to paraeducators.
Richard