If you ask a child with autism to read a story to you, chances are that she or he will read with an almost robotic voice, word for word, with no expression.  Even an accomplished decoder will focus on getting the words right rather than the phrasing. 

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.   

Our minds identify and process punctuation marks, italics, and other textual clues that tell us where and when to emphasize words and syllables.  Our narrator keeps track of what’s going on in the story so that we can infuse emotion into the dialogue and descriptions.

 This does not seem to happen with most readers with autism.  And when it doesn’t, understanding is crippled.

Read-Aloud is not enough 

 One of the strategies that both general ed and special ed teachers learn early on is to use the read-aloud to foster in our students a love for the written word and an understanding of how reading is supposed to “sound”.  As I commented in another post (“The Problem of the Read-Aloud”), many readers with autism have auditory processing issues and are just not going to be able to hear read-aloud stories and learn from them.

 A couple of activities have worked in my classroom, and they’re fairly easy to implement.  They are the Read Naturally program, and readers theater.  (See separate post on the latter for additional information.)

Read Naturally is an older, but not outdated reading program that addresses reading fluency.  It consists of short, high-interest texts, usually half a page to a page long, with accompanying cassettes.  The tapes are used to introduce a reader to the story and hear the inflection and expression used as it is read aloud.  Kids read the story out loud over and over and over, until they, too, have reached an appropriate level of speed and fluency. 

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.

Progress toward expression comes slowly 

What happens when a reader with autism works this hard at reading a story is that slowly but surely, some emphasis and  inflection begins to occur throughout the reading.  In my experience, a reader with autism who works for several months on Read Naturally, which has texts at every half-grade level from primer on up, gradually develops a “feel” for how text should sound. 

 The texts are short enough that the reader can practice for brief periods, interesting enough that most readers with autism enjoy them, and exciting enough that they can find ways to personalize them with expression.

Reader’s theater

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.

I usually introduce the script to the kids and hang out with them as they work their way the first couple of readings.  They often like to switch parts frequently, and that’s just fine, though a reader with autism may wish to stick with the same character – that’s also fine.

Tip:  Once they are all sure about the words and the story line, I like to assign leaders and let them work by themselves for awhile.  Our classroom aide checks in periodically to make sure they’re on task.

What we find is that very quickly, all of the students are experimenting with accents, voices, and inflection of the phrases.  When students experience this out loud, they are far more likely to internalize the knowledge and use it later in their independent reading. 

Hearing the internal narrator

I believe that once a reader with autism hears the internal narrator during independent reading, comprehension naturally improves and expectation that the text will tell a cohesive story increases exponentially.

Related posts:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. So he resists reading: What does he like?
3. Irresistible reading: Stories starring our kids as characters

The nuts and bolts of reading instruction often have not a lot to do with sustained reading of any kind, being really comprised of instruction and guided practice in some sort of comprehension or decoding strategy.  Kids who can’t read or can’t understand what they’re reading don’t get a lot of joy out of independent reading, so when we do include (as we always should) daily practice just reading, many readers with autism are stymied.

Some of my kids hover for the entire independent reading time in front of a bookshelf, unable to make a choice.  Others read the same book over and over, not because they understand it, but because it is familiar and may have some texturally or visually soothing quality.   Still others aren’t able to concentrate on the text, either due to visual tracking issues or attention deficit issues.  How, then, are they supposed to learn about the pure and utter joy and pleasure that reading can create?

Humorous scripts work best

One way is through reader’s theater.  Reader’s theater is the joint dramatic reading of text, usually from a script, often of a familiar story.  The best scripts to use in a classroom with kids of different learning abilities including autism are ones with a lot of humor.   (I know, I know.  Kids on the autism spectrum are supposed to be lacking in humor. I have yet to meet a single child with autism who fit into the “no sense of humor” box.   We may miss it; we may not get it, but it’s there.)

Funny reader’s theater scripts, ones involving fractured fairy tales, goofy giants, and other witty characters and dialogue, can provide our students with some of the most fun they’ve ever had in reading class.

Consider Jack. Jack hated, hated, hated, hated to read. His visual tracking difficulties made it hard for him to keep his eyes focused on an entire line or sentence.  We won’t even begin to discuss his attention deficit disorder.   He continued, in grade 5, to struggle with decoding skills.   He would become so easily overwhelmed by the task of reading that he would degenerate into a sobbing pool of misery.  And who needs that?  Not us.

Then we discovered the reader’s theater script “George the Giant.”  In a small reading group, we introduced the story to the kids, and assigned parts.  My aide took them out on the porch of our classroom and spent 30 minutes with them, practicing.  Inside, where I was working with some other youngsters on math skills, I heard rounds and rounds of laughter, squeaks, whistles, honking noises, and more laughter.  Someone was having a great time.

Idiotic, silly and absurd RULZ!

Turns out, it was Jack and all of the other kids. They took great delight in the script, which contained idiotic characters, silly sound effects, and an absurd plot.  They changed roles, worked on fluency and inflection, and had a great ol’ time.  Day after day for the next week, they begged to be allowed to do readers theater during reading class and any other free moment, and, of course, we let them.

When they got bored with George the Giant, I searched for other scripts.  I couldn’t find many at my kids’ reading level, so I wrote some of my own.  They could not get enough.  Jack learned to use funny accents and inflections to portray his role, and his reading fluency increased as he read and re-read each script.

What Jack learned from readers theater was that reading is fun, that characters actually sound like people, not his own stumbling decoder voice, and that stories have a lot inside of them, a lot more than words.   He continued to struggle with decoding and visual tracking in his book-reading.  He still dealt with frustration during reading practice. But readers theater gave him a respite from the work of reading and hours of endless enjoyment in the written word, an experience that was both academic and social.

There are some websites available that offer support for reader’s theater, but the best one I know is the website of Aaron Shepherd, a storyteller and storywriter who is beyond great and borders on genius.   His website, www.aaronshep.com, has several pages of terrific resources, including a series of wonderful readers theater scripts that make kids want to read.  I get no remuneration from recommending his site.   In fact, I haven’t communicated at all with Aaron, though I am going to shoot him an email letting him know that I’m posting a link to his site on this blog.

Related posts:

1. Reader with autism and figurative language, part 1
2. When a reader with autism needs to respond to literature…
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?