A word to college professors

By readers1  |  2009/09/21 19:21 Posted in General  |  Comments (0)

Much to our surprise, this blog is already showing up on web quests, course links, and syllabi in teaching credential programs.    Who knew!!!!!

If you are teaching a college or university course, and would like to arrange a question-and-answer session between your class and me or Richard, hit the “contact us” button.  You’ll be directed to our email and we can take it from there.  

Camera 1014 386If you are teaching a course in the San Diego area, and would like to have us give a live talk to your class, email us with a list of possible dates and times.

If you’re on the East Coast (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut), please make a note that Sara will  be in the New York area between January 2 and January 18, and for much of the months of April and August.

For parent and autism organizations

By readers1  |  2009/09/21 19:20 Posted in General  |  Comments (0)

We are delighted to be invited to speak or conduct workshops relating to our blog topics.  If you are organizing a conference, meeting, or group session, feel free to contact us with dates and times. 

jigsaw_blue_12In general, we tend to stay in Southern California during most of the school year.  However, Sara is in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area for three weeks each January, several weeks in April, and on the East Coast for the entire month of August. 

We have also received inquiries about including articles or posts from our blog in newsletters.  In general, we have no objections, provided that you include the link to our site.  If you would like an article or blog post on a specific topic that we haven’t already covered, post a comment with a question, or email us.

Blogging is a two-way-street: Subscribers and Comments Wanted!

By readers1  |  2009/09/12 09:04 Posted in General  |  Comments (0)

If you like this blog and want to be notified of each new post, you can easily “subscribe” (it’s free, of course) by clicking on the RSS icon on the right of the top menu.

At_the_Computer_12You will receive a feed that contains frequently updated content.  Updated information from the feed is automatically downloaded to your computer and can be viewed in Internet Explorer and other programs. Your computer periodically checks for updates even when Internet Explorer is not running.

If you think the subject of this blog is something you’ll continue to be interested in, we’d love to have you as a subscriber. 

But whether you subscribe of not, we’d love to hear from you.  Your comments are what makes a blog different, more engaging, more interactive than reading a newsletter.  We will always reply at the earliest opportunity. And if you want a comment kept confidential, we can honor that too.

If you comment for the first time or contact us (via email, by clicking on “Contact Us”  in top menu) you can do us a big favor by mentioning how you found out about this site.  Most common so far are Facebook™ links, Google™ and Yahoo!™ searches.

Finding the words: Helping a child with autism talk about reading

By readers1  |  2009/09/06 10:18 Posted in Expressive language  |  Comments (0)

By Sara Finegan

Weak reading comprehension for children with autism is a dysfunctional cycle that can be broken if we work at it over time.

 The cycle is this: Autism involves expressive and receptive language deficits. Kids with receptive language disorders have difficulty understanding what words mean.   student_in_classKids with expressive language disorders have difficulty using words to express ideas.  

Reading comprehension requires that kids be able to understand what words mean.  Demonstration of comprehension requires that kids be able to express their understanding of text, in words.  (Though there are other ways kids can show their understanding, ultimately verbal expression is going to be required.)

Even when a reader with autism reads and understands  a piece of text, expressing that comprehension is often difficult.  Imagine that you want desperately to convey an idea, but most of the words you want to use are not immediately available to you.  They’re at the tip of your tongue, but you can’t  pull them up and use them with dexterity. 

Think  back to a time when, perhaps, you were learning another language.  Eventually you could ask for things or describe places, or the weather, or people in very general terms, using pretty generic words: 

  • “The boy is tall.” 
  • “The teacher is good.” 
  • “The weather is hot.”

 But how easy was it to go into depth, and use more explicit descriptions? 

  • “The tall boy could reach all the way to the top of the bookcase.” 
  • “The teacher, who is patient and kind, helps students learn.” 
  • “The humidity today is making us all feel like we are melting!”

dont_call_on_meIt’s tough to use words we aren’t able to pull up with immediacy.  Even when we can retrieve the words, putting them into fluent sentences with precise meaning often eludes kids with language disorders.   

One can only imagine how daunting reading comprehension work can be, and how the frustration might produce inordinate anxiety and, ultimately, a sort of “frozen” attitude on the part of the reader with autism.

So how do we, who love and support readers with autism, help to “thaw” that frozen world of talking about reading, and lubricate the pathways that enable words to come forth? 

Dictionary_Thesaurus_2We give them the words.

We give them the words.

Imagine, if you will, trying to use a foreign language to describe the weather, or a place, or a person with specificity and detail.  Or to discuss an idea you have that is important and urgent.  Now imagine that in front of you are the important vocabulary words you need.  How much easier is it to produce those complex sentences, those precise ideas?  Very.

This is the way we support our readers with autism to talk or write about what they are reading.  It’s easy to do, and all you need are a few supplies (post-its or index cards and a marker)  and a bit of extra pre-reading and preparation on your part.

Text selection and prep work

You want to begin with stories that are at your reader’s level, or slightly easier.  Choose story books or short stories or passages.  We do not begin with entire chapter books – not yet.  The purpose here is to pull out important words for your student to use when talking about the story.

For the purpose of this blog entry, I will use one of my favorite stories, Bread and Jam for Frances.     http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Jam-Frances-Russell-Hoban/dp/0064430960

Go through the story and select key words that you might use to describe various plot features (characters, setting, problem, solution, relationships).  Right now, you are pulling words directly from the book.  Choose words that are powerful vocabulary words:  We are not interested in having our reader talk about “stuff” and “things” and “good” or “sad.” Each word gets written on a card or post-it.

What words would you use?

Now, think about how you would describe the story.  What verbs would you use?  What adjectives and adverbs?  Write them on index cards or post-its.

At the conclusion of these two preparatory activities, you should have between 15 and 20 cards, each with a single word.    You are ready to support your reader with autism now.

This is the time to have your child read the story.  I like to tell them a little bit about the book first, with a one-sentence introduction that uses a few of the words that I wrote on the index cards, words, that aren’t directly in the story but came from the second preparatory activity.  Badger_3For example:  “this is a funny story about a badger named Frances, whose parents get very creative about handling her wish to only eat one kind of food every single day.”

Have the child read through the story a couple of times.   Allow him or her time to enjoy it. 

Giving the words and modeling their use

When the time comes to explore the comprehension issue, spread the index cards or post-its out on the table.  Sometimes it’s soothing to have the child organize them as he or she wishes:  making orderly rows, or designs with the words is a good way to enter into this activity. 

Take turns with the child reading each of the words aloud.  Put each of the words into a sentence for the child to hear.  These sentences are not to be about the story, but rather are examples of how the word might be used in a sentence or to express an idea. For example: 

  • Squishy:  “I hate it when mud gets squishy between my toes.  Ick! ”
  • Stubborn:  I wanted my son to take a nap, but he was stubborn and kept insisting that he wanted to play in the back yard.”
  • Patient:  “My teacher was very patient with me when I was trying to learn my multiplication facts. “

Now you are ready to begin your conversation about the story.  You will start by asking an open-ended question, perhaps about a character or the setting, and YOU will answer it, to model for the child.    In formulating your answer, do a “think-aloud” about choosing the right words and putting them together.  This helps the child see how we retrieve and use words to answer questions and that it’s not an automatic thing for everyone. Example: 

“Ok, the question is, what kind of kid is Frances?  Well, what are some good words to use?  I see the word stubborn.  That’s a good one.  And also routine.  I like that word.  And oh, here is the word refuse!  That’s a great one.   

Ok.  So let’s see how I can use these words.  Frances is……that’s a good start.  Frances is a girl who……likes a routine.  Yes.  Frances is a girl who likes a routine.  She……refuses to eat anything but bread and jam.  Yeah.  Frances is a girl who likes a routine and refuses to eat anything but bread and jam. 

How can I put in the word stubborn?  Ok.  She is so stubborn about it that she trades an egg salad sandwich for bread and jam.  Yeah!  Frances is a girl who likes a routine.  She refuses to eat anything but bread and jam.  She is so stubborn about it that she trades her egg salad sandwich for bread and jam.”

Tip!TIP:  Questions that result in a “yes” or “no” answer defeat the purpose of helping a child talk about reading.  Try to focus on the kinds of questions that force a reader to give a longer answer.  Help the child expand the answer into a more complex sentence or group of sentences by asking things like “Oh!  Where did you learn that?” or “What makes you think that?” or “Can you tell me more about this?” 

Using the words

Now you are ready to have your reader with autism give it a try.  Start with a simple open-ended question.  Be patient but encouraging as the child works through the answer, pointing if necessary to the word cards and reminding him or her that there are choices available.  Try to get the child to use two to four of the word cards in formulating the answer. 

Model the choice of vocabulary

This is the way to  begin a conversation in which the words are more readily available to the child.  I sometimes alternate turns, so that the student gets a chance to see and hear me model how I select and use words, and then an  immediate opportunity to practice the skill.  This should be done if the child is really struggling, until such time as she or he is ready to start assuming greater responsibility for independent work and thought.

Note:  Word choice and fluency go hand in hand.  Every time the child makes a statement, listen carefully.  If the child makes a grammatical error or stumbles, or if you see an opportunity to combine two simple sentences into a complex one, repeat the sentence correctly and have the child repeat it.  For example: 

Child:  “Frances enjoy to play with her friends.  She play baseball. ” Teacher:  “Ah.  Frances enjoys playing baseball with her friends.  Can you say that again?”

Expanding and deepening the use of words

What we are doing here, by providing the child with words, is encouraging and supporting talk.  We want our reader with autism to talk, and talk as much as possible about the story.  For this reason, we should not be content with simple, one-sentence statements. 

_at_the_libraryThe way to support greater and greater amounts of talk is to keep bringing back the previous answers, and incorporating them into our ongoing conversation.  Think of it as doing an ongoing restatement of the story.  There’s a lot of repetition, but the more a child with expressive language deficits repeats things, the more fluent, comfortable, and firmly embedded the language will be.

By the third answer in our discussion of Bread and Jam for Frances, the child is saying this:  

“ Frances is a girl who likes a routine.  She refuses to eat anything but bread and jam.  She is so stubborn about it that she trades her egg salad sandwich for bread and jam.  I like her parents.  They are very patient with Frances when she won’t eat chicken salad or squishy eggs.  Her mother decides to give Frances bread and jam for every meal.   So when everyone else has a regular dinner, she puts just bread and jam on Frances’ plate. ”

Don’t worry if the child can’t remember all of that.  You tell the child, and have him or her repeat it back.  Point to word cards as you go, if this helps.

Incentives and celebrations

Everyone has some way of motivating and encouraging a child with tangible rewards for doing hard work.  Some of my students use sticker cards and get a sticker for every time they use a word from the cards.  Others like raffle tickets – I give a raffle ticket for every word used in the final summary, at the end of the conversation, and once a week we have a drawing for prizes from the dollar store.

 good_job_red_ribbonAnd everyone, everyone loves praise.  Be enthusiastic about the conversation.  Kvell at your child’s use of language!   Be specific:  “I love the way you described how Frances got bored with bread and jam!”  “When you talked about the family eating dinner, I felt like I was there!  You are really able to describe what happened, buddy!”
Repeat, rinse, repeat

Repetition is key.  The word cards and conversation are not a one-time deal.  Try to work with the child at least three times on the same story, with the same cards, over a period of 3-7 days.  The activity will go much more quickly as time goes by, and the child will be more fluent and more expressive and more complete in the summary of the story. 

At the conclusion of the final session, I always have my students write about the story.  They use exactly the same sentences they’ve been rehearsing aloud.   write_on_1They can use the vocabulary cards to spell  some of the harder words, and might be invited, under the summary, to draw a picture of their favorite scene.   Displaying student work and having the child read the summary aloud to a peer or administrator are terrific way to showcase the excellent and deep work that has been accomplished.

Say what? Asking questions as one reads

By readers1  |  2009/08/15 12:52 Posted in Questioning  |  Comments (2)

By Sara Finegan

Sam, a sixth-grader, didn’t like to read anything except picture books. His independent reading level was at the fourth grade for non-fiction (he loved science and nature text) and at the low third grade in fiction. The more I conferred with him about his reading, the more it became clear that Sam’s relationship with text was purely passive: whatever meaning came to him came to him, and he made no effort to interact with the text in any way.

Questioning for meaning

Good readers have a relationship with the written word. As we read, we perform a variety of tasks simultaneously, including making inferences, predictions, visualizing, and questioning for meaning.  All of these are forms of interactions between our minds and the text. Sam did none of these, and relied purely on words he recognized and the book’s illustrations to bring him any understanding of what the author wanted him to know.

We know that writers have a purpose, and that the purpose generally involves what it is that the author wants us as the reader to think about. Many readers with autism have no concept of why a writer writes, or that readers are supposed to be thinking at all when they read. When I asked Sam what he thought I did when I was reading, he said “look at the words.” I asked if he thought I did anything else. “Look at the pictures?” he said.  Anything else? “No?”

Right here is when I made a mistake that took several days to undo.  Do not, I repeat, do NOT repeat this at home:

“What do you think I think about when I’m reading?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I think about what the author is telling me.”

“The author isn’t talking,” said Sam, very reasonably and with a bit of concern that I might perhaps be delusional.

“Oh, but she is,” I said. “She is talking in writing. The words she’s writing are her way of talking to us as readers.”

This did not go over well with Sam.  Like all readers with autism, he is a concrete thinker and takes everything absolutely literally.  Since he could not hear or see the author, the idea that she might be talking to him freaked him out.  He began looking for the author and trying to hear her, and worrying that she might not be very nice, and doing all sorts of other mental gyrations that led to a great deal of anxiety on his part.

What to do?

I backtracked.  For several days, we read picture books and did not talk about reading or what authors do.  In the meantime, I racked my brains to figure out how to convey the idea to Sam that he should be doing something in his head while he read.cat_5

As usually happens, I woke up at 2:30 a.m. one weeknight with an idea.  It took awhile to sort my thinking out, mostly because my thoughts were careening between “damnit, I have to be up at 4:45 and WHY am I waking up at the crack of 2:30?” and “here’s the deal about relating to text.” Also, Boaz the Siamese cat heard me open my eyes (they are too psychic) and started making pitiful “we are all dying of starvation, please feed us” noises, which contributed nothing to the event.

But here’s what I ultimately came up with:  Sam did not need to understand that he had to interact with the text in order to make meaning of it.  Sam just needed to interact with the text.  And not only that, but he needed to be taught a strategy that would enable him to interact regularly with the text and make meaning from it.  A strategy, I decided at 3:25, that would enable him to have an internal dialogue with the text and also be able to summarize what he was reading.

I would like to tell you that during the next few days, I developed a strategy to teach Sam how to do all that, and that from then on, he was an interactive, thoughtful reader. Unfortunately, it took several years, during which time Sam moved on to other teachers, for me to find a really good way to accomplish the objectives I set.

Say What?

For several years, I was lucky enough to teach with a Speech Language Pathologist, Cindy Hale, who not only was interested in language as it relates to reading and writing, but wanted to work in the classroom with kids on comprehension tasks.  A couple of years ago, she introduced a reading activity that has colored the world of reading in my classroom.  I call it Say What? and it was based on the concept of Storytalk that we’d been using with Cindy to help us write personal narratives.  (I’ll write about Storytalk another time).

Question and summarize

We used Charlotte’s Web, but you can use any chapter book at any level with kids in this activity.  The idea is to teach kids to question as they read and then to pause and summarize what they’ve been reading.  We do it in writing to begin with, as a group, and please bear in mind that it takes a long, long period of interactive work, with a gradual release of responsibility from adult to student, before kids begin to be able to do the work independently.  Despite this, the work almost immediately begins to influence their reading, and they love it.

You will need a copy of the text for each student or a document camera with overhead so that everyone can see the text on a screen.  If you are working with a group, you will need an easel pad; if you are a parent working with your child, then either an easel pad or lined paper will work.

IMG_1188xxDraw a line down the center of your paper.  I like to use two colors of pen or marker, one for each side.  The title of the left column of the paper is “What we know.”  The title of the right column is “Questions we have.”

Here’s how it works:  You will read aloud, paragraph by paragraph, while the kids follow along. Pause every paragraph (if it’s a long paragraph, you can stop in the middle) to ask kids to contribute questions they have about what is going on.  Write the questions in the right column. Ask the kids to let everyone know if they think a question has been answered as you continue reading.

A tip about asking questions:

Tip!Concrete thinkers like readers with autism are going to have to learn how to ask deeper questions as opposed to ones which are easily answered in the text.  We do not want kids asking what color Fern’s hair was if it has nothing to do with why her father was carrying an axe to the barn.  We want kids to develop questions about what is going on that will help them to understand the plot and the characters.

This is easier said than done.  One of the best ways to support kids in asking meaningful questions is to emphasize the great questions that they ask and minimize the weaker ones.  Thus, Cindy and I would give a little shrug and a one or two word response if a student asked a trivial question.  When a student asked a deeper, meatier question, we’d stop, nod at the student, and say something like “Wow, now that is a great question.  I like the way you asked that!  Let’s write that one down.  Wow, that is a good one.”  Within a week or so, the questions uniformly became much better in our reading groups.

If a child needs help phrasing a question, either grammatically or because you think he or she is having trouble coming up with the right words, don’t hesitate to intervene and ask the question, then have the student repeat it correctly.

Even if you are teacher who does not normally encourage interruptions, you are going to want the kids to be raising their hands and shouting out when they hear/read an answer to one of the posted questions.  This is important.  We want the kids to experience what it’s like to not only ask questions as they read, but to recognize when a question is answered and celebrate it.  This type of active listening/ reading is crucial to developing an independent interaction with the text.  Don’t stifle it.

Every few paragraphs, or whenever there’s a natural pause or change in the plot (change of scene, end of dialogue, mood shift), stop and ask the kids to help you summarize what has happened so far.  You’re going to do this as an interactive writing task in the left column.  Give the kids sentence starters and have them do most of the summarizing.  Intervene if you need to to make sure that the summary goes in proper sequence of events.  Pause and ask the kids for good vocabulary words to use.  Try to use new words  you’ve read and defined in the text, and avoid passive verbs and vague or generic nouns.  Once you’ve finished a passage summary, it should be read out loud.

Tip!Tip: if you have any good artists in your group of readers, you can assign one of them at a time to draw some illustrations of what you’re reading.  I like to draw the kids illustration boxes (like in a comic strip) so that they can make small pictures of the entire series of events as we read.  Share out and display!

What I like about this reading activity is that it introduces kids to several concepts at once: asking questions of the text, identifying and using the answers, and summarizing. Because we are also using a chapter book and taking a long time to finish the entire story, we are introducing to the kids another important concept: connecting what we’ve read earlier to what we’re reading now. This is important.

Making connections

One of the things that readers with autism do not tend to do is to make links between what they read in the same text earlier in time with what they are reading in the present. Thus, if they read a bit yesterday of The Schoolmouse they will not connect the information gleaned to what they read tomorrow.  Separate events equals separate information, in their minds.  Furthermore, they often have difficulty connecting previously read sections of a book even if they just read them 5 minutes ago.  To a reader with autism, individual chapters of a book may not be perceived as being related to one another!

By working with kids on questioning and summarizing in a single text on a long-term basis, they learn very quickly that all parts of a novel are related. gold_question_markThey see how we will pause to summarize and reflect when we pick up a book again after a break, and how we may stop at the end of a chapter before moving on in order to reflect on where the plot is going or what is happening to a favorite character.

We use the questioning/summarizing technique off and on in my classroom these days. We’ve used it in smaller texts, such as short stories, when we’ve read them slowly over a period of days, and in long, long texts, like Boy of Painted Cave, which took us weeks to complete.  In all cases, the kids’ comprehension of what was going on in the plot, and their ability to start thinking more deeply than the literal facts is invariably enhanced.  Give it a try!

 

 


 

Inferences: “He’s wearing a jacket so it must be his birthday”

By readers1  |  2009/08/15 14:45 Posted in Making Inferences  |  Comments (2)

By Sara Finegan

Students on the autism spectrum don’t tend to make inferences deliberately.  It’s not that they never make them; they just aren’t aware of it and it needs to be brought to their attention before we can teach them to transfer the skill from their own lives to the written word.  It’s important to treat inferencing instruction as a process, not a project.  By this I mean that we should be patient, slow, and consistent in implementing some sort of practice of making inferences into our instruction all year long.

There is no Language Arts unit called “Making Inferences.”   There is a gradual unveiling of the skill and ongoing work in strengthening it as a reading habit.  Reading comprehension strategies should not be taught in isolation, or in compact curricular plans.  Reading comprehension is a set of practices which layer, one upon the other, to create an overlay for any book we read.

First Steps

I never begin my instruction in making inferences by teaching it.  I begin with stories.  During our early morning housekeeping, I may tell a quick anecdote about something that happened and see what conclusions the kids can draw from it.  Essentially, my stories are about a person or an event which is described but not named.

I may talk about how my daughter called me in a panic asking for the name of a good car repair shop, and see if the kids would infer that she either had an accident or that her car had broken down. I might describe the man whose office I visited, and his spotless white coat and that stethoscope he wore around his neck, and see if the kids would infer that I was at the doctor.  normal_medicine_and_StethoscopeOr, I might talk about how my cats had suddenly started scratching themselves like crazy, and see if they would suggest that they have fleas.  Invariably, someone in the class will raise his or her hand and make a suggestion that involves an inference about the story I’m telling. And when they do, I say “excellent inference!” and proceed to restate the event, the setting, or the person I’m talking about.  It takes less than five minutes to accomplish this task, and the kids soon learn to be paying attention to my words in order to “guess” what’s going on.  Very casual, very informal.

Awareness of their inferences

The informality does not belie the purpose, which is to familiarize the kids with the concept of making inferences and an awareness when they make them. When we are supporting readers with autism in developing comprehension strategies, it’s important, though not crucial that they be able to identify the strategy and when they are doing it. (Why is it important? I believe that the children I teach need to develop an awareness of the way they think and learn. This prepares them for reflection on their progress and goals, and allows them to participate more fully in their own instruction.) The first step in teaching kids to make inferences as they read is to tell them what an inference is, and show them that they already use it to some extent in their lives.

cardAbout a month into any given school year, I add a quick routine to my morning instruction. On a series of index cards, I write word groups that are intended to provoke an inference.  I will show the kids two or three of the cards in the morning, and perhaps two or three in the afternoon, right after lunch and before we start social studies.  I simply place a card on the document camera and wait for the kids, individually or in groups, to shout out what they think the words have in common.  As with my anecdotes, the word groupings always have to do with an event or a character or a setting.  I keep it simple, and try to incorporate the kids’ own background knowledge as I write the word cards.Tip!

Tip: I have, on occasion, begun with picture cards instead of words. For a few days, I’ll show kids cards as described above, only the cards will have 3-4 pictures instead of words. Then I’ll move to word cards.

During this time, some fabulous and thoughtful discussions usually begin about the words and their connotations.  I push kids to justify their choices and explain them to the rest of the class.  If there’s a disagreement, we talk about it. My role is as facilitator, and thus I do not intervene with the right or wrong answer, but simply ask open-ended questions to help guide the kids to a deeper discussion.

Teacher: Ok, who will read the words? Sammy?

Sam:  Cake, flowers, white dress, church

Teacher:  Terrific. Who has an inference?

Jaylin:  Birthday party.

Sam:   No way.  It’s a wedding.

Jaylin:   But there’s cake.

Brianna:   I put quinceanera.

Teacher:  Three ideas! Let’s discuss! Jaylin, talk about your inference that it’s a birthday party. Tell me the words you used for that inference.

Jaylin:  Cake, ‘cause there’s cake at a birthday party. And flowers.  And a nice dress.

Teacher:  Oh, so you understood that people dress up for a birthday party, sure.

Jaylin:  Yeah. And there’s presents.

Teacher:  Oh, you used the word “presents”? Is that on the list?

Jaylin:  No.

Teacher:  Brianna, talk about your idea that it’s a quinceanera.

Brianna:  Girls wear white dresses and you can have communion at church, and they decorate with flowers.

Teacher:  Oh, so you used the word church and the white dresses and the flowers to come up with that. Have you been to a quinceneara?

Brianna:  My sister had one.

Sam:  But you don’t go to church. It’s just a party.

Teacher:  That is true in many Mexican communities, Sammy. But other cultures, like the Puerto Rican culture, often have a religious service before the party.

Sam:  Oh.

Teacher:   Sam, talk about why you think it’s a wedding.

Sam:   Because the girl wears a white dress and it’s in a church. You don’t have a birthday party in a church.

Jaylin:  Oh, yeah.

Teacher:  Ok, so Jaylin, are you adjusting your ideas now?

Jaylin:  Yeah.  He’s right, they don’t do birthday parties in the church.  I forgot that word.

Teacher:  Well, what about Brianna’s inference?

Brianna:  My sister had hers and we all went to church first.

Teacher:  So no wonder you thought “quinceneara” when you saw those words! Well, maybe we need more information to determine which inference is more reasonable. What word could we add, Sam, to make it clear that it’s a wedding?

Sam:  Wedding.

Teacher:  Well, without saying that.  How about, say, “bride” or “ring”?

Sam:   Yeah, that’s good.

Teacher:  Brianna, what word could we add to show that it’s a quinceanera?

Brianna:  I don’t know.

Teacher:  Anyone have an idea?

Stuart:  What if we say “Mexican”?

Teacher:  Do only Mexicans celebrate quinceneara?

Brianna:  No.

Teacher:  Hmmmm. Ok. Well, is there a number or a word we could use?

Brianna:  15?

Teacher:  Ohhhh. 15. Why?

Brianna:  Because that’s how old you are when you have it.

Teacher:  Oh, ok. So if we add 15, does that make people think it’s a quinceneara?

Students:  Yes.

Teacher:  And since the 15 is not on the card, what can we reasonably infer?

Brianna:  I think it’s a wedding.

(Page 1 of 2)

Continued: Be sure to click on the next page below!

Pages: 1 2

Intermezzo: A word about the spectrum

By readers1  |  2009/08/17 15:59 Posted in Autism spectrum  |  Comments (0)

By Sara Finegan

The autism spectrum is a vast and invisible entity and as I explore and write about the world of the reader with autism, you are probably wondering “well, just a damned minute here. Is she writing about someone like my kid, or does she teach the high-level kids who just have some social skills deficits?”

The answer is:   I don’t know.

normal_tape_measure_2We don’t have a piece of tape marking off the gradations of the autism spectrum, much less where each individual child would stand if we lined them all up along the edge.   I have a feeling that with the exception of the extremes on either end, placement on the spectrum is rather subjective.

Bobby was high functioning…

I stopped worrying about what level each of my readers with autism was on when I had an interesting conversation with Bobby’s mother Patty right about the time he finished his third year in my class and got ready to go off to middle school.  Patty and I had become friends during Bobby’s time in my class and you could not find a better partner to work with.   During this particular conversation I mentioned that Bobby was high-functioning and she said “well…”

Turns out, Bobby was anything but high-functioning when he came to me in the beginning of the fourth grade.   I didn’t know that, because he was the first kid with autism I’d ever had in my class, if you don’t count several with Asperger Syndrome I’d had in previous years. He was somewhere, according to Patty, in the mid-functioning area, leaning toward lower, though his compliance with rules and procedures was so high that we never had any major behavior issues.

In my naivete, I thought that since he wasn’t banging his head against the walls, he must be at a high level.

The point is that by the time Bobby left my class, he was pretty high-functioning.   True, he continued to have difficulty expressing himself and would freeze up when asked for answers to some problems, but here’s the big deal: he’s been out of my class for awhile now, and he’s been getting A’s and B’s in all general ed classes ever since.

I would like to attribute Bobby’s success to my brilliant and innovative teaching.   I would also like to be able to run a marathon next month, but the truth is, I can only do three miles at a time and even then, it’s ghastly towards the end.

Bobby, it appears, progressed along the spectrum due to several factors.  One of them was what I taught him, which was the subject of my masters thesis and will be a blog entry as soon as I get back from vacation, because I do not carry my thesis around with me when I’m out of town and I want to cut and paste copious quantities of it into my blog.

Kids “on the spectrum” are not static

small_monitor_colorsI think, though, that Bobby’s amazing jump into inclusion-land was mostly due to his own personal growth and development as a person. Kids with autism are just like other kids, who aren’t able to do some things in the second grade that they can in the fourth, and I don’t know why some of us get the impression that they are static creatures. It might have taken Bobby three years instead of two to be able to write a personal narrative, but that was okay with me.

But Bobby’s growth was also due to very high standards held by me and his mom regarding his thinking and work. We never assumed he couldn’t do things, and if he seemed overwhelmed, we would just divide tasks and lessons into smaller chunks for him.

Bobby was held to the same standard as other kids

Patty and I realized early on that it was all a matter of how we customized the learning experience for him while at the same time holding him to the same standards as others in my class.   It was an interesting balancing act and we had to keep in touch regularly.

On the one hand, we had no expectations about Bobby’s capacity to learn and use new knowledge and skills, because we couldn’t read his mind or get much insight into how he processes information. I wasn’t able to compare him to anyone because he was unique. homework_blue_2On the other hand, we expected him to do the same homework, the same math, and the same social studies work as everyone else.   Sometimes this meant that I gave him sentence-starters to get him going on a writing assignment, or he was allowed to draw a picture to show his understanding of a math problem rather than writing a complete sentence, but he did the same math as everyone else.

Now, I had those high expectations of his work because I was assuming that Bobby was a high-functioning learner with autism.   If someone had told me at the beginning that he wasn’t, I’d probably have lowered my sights.  And that would have been to his detriment.

Pay no attention to “level”

What I learned from Bobby was not to pay any attention whatsoever to what “level” any of my students with autism are on with regard to the spectrum when it comes to ability to learn and do work.   Each one is his or her own world of learning, and that’s the universe I want to live in.

So can the strategies I’ve developed work with lower-functioning readers with autism?  Sure.  Every strategy is created to be customized according to the individual students’ needs and strengths.

Tip!Tips:  If your child is non verbal or has expressive language deficits

So, if you’re using the “Who….did what?” strategy with a student who is pretty non-verbal, give the child a series of boxes on paper and ask him/her to draw a picture of each thing that a character does in a given passage. And if you have a child with expressive learning deficits that are more profound than the kids I’ve described, give him/her multiple choice options for inferences, predictions, or other activities.

And finally, don’t assume that because a reader with autism cannot perform some tasks right now, you shouldn’t keep teaching them or modeling them.  You should.  The more they observe a skill or piece of information in a variety of contexts, the more likely it is that the kids will internalize them and begin to use them.

Out, out, damned plot! Keeping track of “Who…did what?”

By readers1  |  2009/08/17 13:17 Posted in Questioning  |  Comments (0)

By Sara Finegan

Nick loved to bring high level fiction books to school, and eagerly showed them to me each time he walked into the classroom. He proudly informed classroom visitors that he brought his own independent reading from home.  Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones were two of his favorite characters, though when pressed, he couldn’t tell me much about them. thumb_sherlock

Nick, diagnosed in the second grade with Asperger’s Syndrome, habitually practiced “fake reading,” and did so without any apparent inkling that reading could be more than just staring at a page and thinking about a movie he’d seen.

During independent reading, when he wasn’t fake reading fiction books he’d brought from home, Nick would lie on the floor and read the same book about dinosaurs over and over again.   He didn’t actually read the text; he enjoyed looking at the pictures and identifying each species of the great lizards.

“Tell me what is happening…”

At the beginning of his fourth grade year, Nick stood in front of a bookcase holding baskets of all sorts of stories for more than 10 minutes, unable to decide on a choice.  I spoke with him briefly and helped him to select a novel about dragonfighters.  The next day, I pulled up a chair next to him and began a conversation about what was happening in the story.

dragon_2 Nick immediately began to tell me about the setting of the book, and that the main character was attending dragon-fighting school.   But other than a physical description of the school and the boy in the story, he couldn’t tell me anything.   It was clear that he was basing our conversation on the cover of the book and one illustration several pages into the first chapter.

Further observations led me to the conclusion that he was honing in on certain words in each paragraph, and inventing a plot around his perception of the meaning of those words.  For example, if he saw the word “dim” in a description of a heavily-forested glen, he would think about the time his mom complained that the porch light was dim, and decide that the events in the text were taking place on a porch!

A series of unrelated events

Additionally, even when Nick did read all of a paragraph as one unit, he was not able to identify which of the characters was speaking or acting.  This made following the plot even more difficult.   If he didn’t know who did what, he wouldn’t be able to understand the story at all. To him, the book would simply be a series of unrelated events.

I needed to help Nick find a way to keep track of the plot as it happened, and to connect characters to the events in the book.  First I had to make sure that he had a reasonable expectation of what the text would do.  Nick inspired me to customize an instructional strategy that has since been used to great effect with almost all of my students.  I’m not saying they like it.  But I am saying that if they do it for a month, they’ll start to read better.

Who….did what?

The plot of a story in a kids’ book is, of course, all about the action, and the action is supposed to be the really interesting part of a book.   A kid who cannot understand what is going on is not going to think that reading is very much fun and is not likely to have any expectations of text, which leads to all sorts of other problems in establishing meaning. For Nick, it all boiled down to understanding who was doing what in the story.

You can start this activity as a whole group, or pull a smaller group together for a mini-lesson and some guided practice, or you can use it from the get-go with an individual reader.  There are some key concepts that kids need to be instructed in, but complete mastery is not necessary as long as you are there to guide them and have discussions during share-outs.

What constitutes “doing”?

The first concept is about what constitutes “doing” in a text. Kids may or may not know what verbs are, and if they have had any instruction in grammar they’ve probably been told that verbs are “action words”, which is, in my mind, one of the most idiotic definitions we’ve ever used, and I include myself in the “we” part.

Consider this:

“Sara was tired of writing her blog entry. She felt hungry and wanted a nectarine.”

How is being an action? How is feeling an action? How is wanting an action?

But I digress.   My point is that we need to model for kids how the kind of verb we are looking for is one where someone is actually doing something, not being or feeling or wanting or having.  Make a list of “not doing” verbs and post it in the classroom for kids to refer to.  Our list includes “does, do, was, is, were, wasn’t, isn’t, weren’t, have, had, haven’t, hadn’t, want, wanted, wanting, can.…”

Find yourself a short-ish text to read with the kids in which there’s a fun plot.   Give a copy to each child and/or put it under a document camera for everyone to follow.  You will need an easel pad and markers, or, if you are working with an individual student, a worksheet or lined paper to use.  I put my considerable brain to work and came up with a highly-complex and brilliant worksheet that looks like this:

worksheetI am donating it to the entire world, so feel free to copy it.  Though making your own is also allowed.  (Grin)

Now, the deal is that you and the readers are going to proceed very slowly through the text, focusing on what is going on in the plot.   (Did I mention that the kids will not particularly enjoy it? Well, they do in groups, but they often aren’t particularly enthralled by the activity when they are asked to do it in independent work. But ask them to give it the old college try for a period of time, and it will change their reading lives.)IMG_1175x

Draw a line down the center of the easel pad. On the left column, write the word “Who…” On the right, write the words “Did what?”  Now, as you read, you are going to stop every 2-3 sentences and identify who….did what?  This is not an exercise in which you will write a summary of the characters’ actions; you are going to list who.…did what? for every single action in a paragraph, at the beginning. 

This is important.  Emergent readers and people who struggle with comprehension, and epecially readers with autism tend to fragment the text and to fail to pull all of the pieces together in order to get a good visualization of what is going on. Only when you capture every movement and act in a paragraph can your reader with autism start to experience what it’s like to see the story happening, like in a movie. (I will write about learning to visualize in another entry, never fear).

Feelings are not actions: What do you see?normal_big_blue_eye

As you work with your students, you’ll encounter many opportunities to discuss the difference between what a character is feeling and what a character is doing. They are related, but one is not the same as the other.  Talk with the kids about how this would be shown in a movie.  Would you be able to show someone walking to the window?  Sure.  How about showing “he felt bored”?  Notsomuch.  Well, how would we know he was bored if it was in a movie?  The expression on his face. Ahah!

So, if someone smiles, that is something to put in our Who…..did what? chart, and from that action we can make an inference about how the character feels.  This may be over your readers’ heads, but give it a shot.  Don’t dumb it down.  Maintain a high level of vocabulary, punctuated by lots of real-life examples they can relate to.  And push the boundaries of their understanding.

As you proceed in listing the “Who ….did what” information, pause periodically and ask the kids to summarize what’s happened so far.   Model it the first few times, until they understand that you are not supposed to read each “Who ….does what?” in order, but rather to give a general description of what’s happened. We do this orally without writing it down in my class, though I introduce it as a written exercise later when the kids are working independently.

Proceed slowly

I tend to use the small-group forum for ongoing activities identifying Who….did what? for a few weeks.  Initially, we use picture books but before I send the kids out for more independent work we begin to use short pieces of text without many illustrations.   As the kids move in to greater independence in following the plot sequences, be prepared for some backsliding, periodic refresher mini-lessons, and perhaps even the need to work as a group for the first 5-10 minutes of your reading period for up to six weeks.

In my experience, incorporating this activity into a reading unit 2 or 3 times per year is an excellent way to teach and re-enforce the attention to detail and action that is required for good reading comprehension.   It can be done at any reading level.