By Sara Finegan
I’ve written a great deal about the specific interventions I use to help kids learn how to make meaning from text. Because kids with autism often do not hold on to a story while they read, much of what we must do to support comprehension involves teaching them about how to think while they read.
The other part of the equation that creates comprehension is, of course, the concept of purpose and engagement in the text. Kids who don’t want to read are not going to understand what they read. Kids who do not read for a purpose aren’t going to get much out of it.
To that end, I’ve posted about finding books of interest for readers with autism and, more recently, my experiences writing serial stories about my students for them to read. There’s another technique that works well with younger or more immature readers, and that is writing stories for the kids to complete.
I got the idea when I happened to buy a book about one of my favorite worlds, Pern (author Anne McCaffrey writes sci-fi, which I don’t ordinarily like, but this series has to do with dragons, and I was hooked). I thought the book was going to be a bunch of short stories about Pern, and it was, but there was a catch. It was one of those “choose your ending” stories, which I hate, hate, hate.
There are many such books available for kids, and many children love them. Readers with autism do not tend to enjoy them, for the simple reason that they don’t feel comfortable using their imaginations in that way. They are perfectly prepared to enter a world of fantasy, where things exist that don’t exist in the real world; they just aren’t willing to write their own endings.
I understand that completely. It occurred, to me, however, that if my readers with autism did like that kind of book, it would be a really great way to get them engaged in a text.
Several weeks later, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about fill-in-the-blank worksheets. (I hate it, because when I wake up like that with an idea, I’m too sleepy to flail around looking for a pen to write it down with, even if a shred of paper did exist on my bedside table.) I had no idea why, but as I let my mind drift, the pick-your-own-ending books straggled around the edges of my thoughts.
In the morning, the idea seemed to gel in my caffeine-loaded brain, and I began to work on a story for one of my students who had trouble staying with a narrative. His mind would start to wander and he’d start fake-reading about a paragraph into any text. What I discovered in my new strategy was a way to keep him hooked to the text and striving for meaning all the way through.
I call this particular intervention the “stories we write together,” even though I do most of the writing and all the reader has to do is fill in a word or two here and there. The idea is to write a story for your reader about a topic that interests him or her. Hope that it is a topic for which there are photos or clip art on the web, because you need to illustrate it.
Every few sentences, leave a word blank. When your reader comes to that blank space, he will be asked to fill it in with a word. You can write it, or the student can write it.
What happens when our readers with autism get a high-interest story like this that requires them to be paying attention so that they can add a word or phrase here and there is that they tend to stay with the story, hang on to what’s happening, and enjoy the interaction they have with the text.
TIP: I’m sure you could use stories that already exist – just retype them onto a text document, add illustrations, and insert your own blanks where you think the student will be able to add meaningful words or phrases. Not all of us love making up stories at the drop of a hat.
If you do decide to write your own, don’t worry about the quality. For God’s sake, don’t sweat about character development or setting; the point is to create a narrative that intrigues the child, and believe me, children don’t get wound up over glitches or parts that don’t make as much sense as they could if we spent hours writing the plot.
Here’s an example: “Teddy Meets The Incredible Hulk”. My original had cool illustrations (Google Image is a teacher’s best friend), and you can easily add them to any such stories you write.
You should enjoy this as much as the reader with autism!
He spent the second half of last year in our lower-grades Special Day Class, and now he’s with me. I took a look at his IEPs for the past several years, and I must say I’m disappointed. 
When we are working with a child on comprehension in reading, we build on the skills that exist now. I cannot devise a plan of action unless I know what the child already knows, and what he almost knows.
I think the first one I wrote was about “The Day Aliens Kidnapped Eddie and Joey.” It was set at our school, and all of the students in my class, plus my aide and our principal were characters. As I recall, the narrative began when, while waiting for the school bus, Eddie and Joey were suddenly snatched up by an alien spaceship. 
The aliens were fascinated by homework, and tried to conduct a cross-examination of Eddie and Joey about their assignments. In the meantime, the rest of us were trying to figure out how to save them. 
The excitement was palpable. Students began to submit ideas for scenes, and suggestions as to what we could do with the aliens once we reached their space ship (feed them cupcakes….teach them to moonwalk….). Kids in other classes began to hear about the story and wanted copies. It became quite a cool thing to be in my class that month.
Bobby, who had a lot of difficulty connecting to text in general, began to ask a lot of questions about the story: Why did the aliens pick San Diego? What if Eddie and Joey get thirsty? Why can’t the principal just call the aliens? Where is Superman when we need him? (See my other posts about hyperlexia, anaphoric cuing and helping Bobby read.)
I managed to stretch out the alien story for about 6 weeks. When we finally finished, the kids continued to read independently for longer periods of time; their stamina had increased by between 4 and 10 minutes. They were more willing to work their way through stories at their instructional reading level, and their interest in setting and characters improved.
It must have been the sunny weather that made me refrain from kvetching and take a dive into this unit without floaties. We started reading “My Name” last Wednesday, slowly, line by line, as a whole group (my class is 15-strong).
My problem isn’t choosing between a variety of programs, or determining which is the most successful at helping kids learn to decode the letters and their sounds. 
Over the years, I’ve had numerous students enter my classroom in the fourth grade and up who still do not know their vowel sounds and blends, and are not able to decode any words that have more than one syllable. These students have been given intensive interventions, either in self-contained classrooms or in pull-out sessions in the Resource Room, but despite at least four years of work, still have not been able to learn basic decoding skills.
An essential component to the basic reading response is the way we connect to events, people, or emotions in a story. When we teach students about connections, and model how we make them as we read, we often focus, in the lower grades, on personal connections. I often talk about how I can relate to Mrs. Weasley in the Harry Potter books, because I have a bunch of children of my own, worry about them a lot, and have to throw together meals quite often. 
connections to text. 
Good readers actually “hear” the story in their heads; there’s a voice or a narrator operating in our minds as we read a narrative. 
Tip: I tend not to use the tapes as often as other teachers do, because I like to read each story to a student and discuss with them how and when I decide to emphasize certain parts and how I decide where to infuse my reading with emotion. Then I send him or her off to practice. A child has to read a story between 10 and 20 times to get the right speed, smoothness, and expression. I might listen to him or her read the story 2-4 times in between practices, so that I can monitor the inflections.
The second instructional strategy that often works to help readers with autism develop their own internal narrator is the use of readers theater. Put a child in a group of peers with similar reading levels, and give the group a quirky, funny script to read. They will have fun and try on all sorts of voices, mannerisms, and methods of expression.