Our New Years Eve was hectic. We got hacked and had to restore both our websites, this one and The Demanding Classroom. Readers With Autism is now back up and running and we’ve added security measures that should make us less vulnerable to a repeat performance.
Sorry if anyone was inconvenienced during the time we were offline. Everyone (except that one guy, who knows who he is) have a happy and prosperous 2010.
The Finegans
(Following is a cross-post from our sister blog, The Demanding Classroom. If you haven’t already done so, please take a look. There are several other posts of mine there on paraeducators, plus a wide variety of articles by Sara, on maintaining rigor across the curricula in a special education classroom.)
By Richard Finegan
You may call me a paraeducator, a paraprofessional, a one-on-one aide, a classroom assistant, a special education technician, even a teacher’s aide (though I am there for the student, not the teacher) but please don’t call me a shadow or describe what I do as shadowing.
The term shadow suggests that the aide never leaves the side of the child. That describes a bodyguard, not a paraeducator. I would not be doing my job if I hovered as close to my student as Malia Obama’s Secret Service agent.
True, I am what used to be called (and I still call) a one-on-one aide, and I do move from classroom to classroom with the same child. But my job is to help that student become more independent, more self-regulated and self-sufficient. I’ve never heard anyone explain how this can happen if I am constantly elbow-to-elbow with my kid.
A better analogy to what we do might be a sheepdog: Constantly alert and watching his or her charges but only moving in and out again as circumstances require. Yes, this analogy works better; shepherding is an improvement over shadowing. Even so, I don’t think I’m quite ready to be called a sheepdog either. Smile.
This is more than just a semantic issue. When others refer to me as a shadow or to what I do as shadowing, they consciously or unconsciously suggest that I should be sticking like glue to my student and that I am perhaps not doing my job properly if I am halfway across the classroom taking notes or, more often, walking around interacting with other students.
Worse even is what it suggests to new paraeducators trying to learn to do what we do. What they should be hearing is: Get up. Step back. Give your student some room to grow!
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:
IndiaMost 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.
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If we should in the future enter into a financial or other compensatory arrangement with any manufacturer or publisher whose product we endorse and/or advertise, we will disclose that, if and when it happens.
Why do we bother mentioning all this? Because the Federal Trade Commission, in its wisdom, has instituted regulations to protect you from unscrupulous flacks who will endorse snake oil if someone pays them to do it. That’s not why we are here or what we are about. If it was income we craved, we chose an odd profession.
Few children, even those not on the autism spectrum, will voluntarily read something they aren’t interested in.
When we have students with reading comprehension problems, perhaps with hyperlexia, who have difficulty making meaning of what they read, it helps greatly if they care that they don’t get it. Do they want to know about these characters and what is happening to them?
The first task of the the teacher and paraeducator in trying to help a struggling reader is to engage him or her in the reading.
Find something that interests the child.
When your struggling reader with autism is allowed to freely choose a book in the classroom library, what does she choose?
Even “fake readers,” kids who turn the pages, look at the pictures, and recite from memory passages they’ve heard read aloud, will generally return to the same books, or series of books, or subjects (butterflies, horses, ancient Mesopotamia).
When they are being read to, by the teacher in a read aloud, or by a parent, is there something particular they like to have read to them?
This can be a way in for some kids, but often the child with autism has receptive language deficits which make it difficult for him or her to follow a story read aloud.
If they simply don’t (yet) relate to books…
Finding what interests them is a way into their imaginations. Whatever gets and holds their attention, whatever the medium (TV, film, cartoon) can be used to transfer their interest and attention to text. Almost anything produced for kids on film or video is also available in some print form or another.
Knowing what the child cares about allows you to find high-interest fiction tailored just for him or her, and high-interest fiction may be just what it takes to begin engaging that struggling reader and make them care about the story they are reading.
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.