Read Alouds are a vital component of the literacy curriculum, yet many autistic children do not respond well to them.  With autism on the rise, advice on this issue from the Readers with Autism blog couldn’t be more timely:

http://readerswithautism.com/2009/08/the-problem-of-the-read-aloud/

You can subscribe to us here or on Facebook.  Look for a series of new posts on reading and autism coming in October.  As always, if you have specific questions, please post them.

You might also find interesting our sister blog about rigor in the classroom (particularly special education), The Demanding Classroom.com.

Related posts:

1. The problem of the read-aloud
2. Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading

It has frequently been observed that children on the autism spectrum  tend to be concrete and literal thinkers who have difficulty with abstract concepts like inferring a character’s unstated motive.  When reading fiction, the concrete thinkers will focus narrowly on the minute physical details and often miss the “big picture.”

Fernando’s red jacket flapped in the wind as he raced on his new bicycle down Maple Street.  Ignoring the stop sign at the end of the block, Fernando ran straight into the side of a passing city bus.  When he woke up he heard a siren and realized he was in the back of an ambulance.

The child with autism should have no difficulty telling you that Fernando’s jacket was red, and his bike was new.  He probably would be able to report that Fernando ran into a bus.

Yet some may not recognize that the person in the ambulance is Fernando, because Fernando’s name is not stated in the last sentence, only the pronoun “he” is used (an example of anaphora).  Children with autism frequently will not connect one sentence to the next, even within paragraphs.

While it may seem to us both obvious and critically important for the reader to recognize that Fernando is injured, the child with autism may make no such connections without coaching.  They do not always think about the ramifications of coats flapping in the wind, bicycles speeding, and stop signs ignored.  The visual image of a child’s body striking the side of a moving bus does not automatically come to them, or necessarily suggest to them an ambulance ride to the hospital, or worse.

Anaphoric cuing (about which there are several articles on this blog) teaches the child to stop when he gets to anaphora and ask himself who or what, or where or when or why questions to focus his attention on the meaning of what he is reading by identifying the referent words.  The reader needs to think about who is waking up in an ambulance, and why.  Was Fernando napping or was he knocked unconscious?

Inferring motive

A character’s motives may be similarly difficult for the child with autism to recognize, even when they seem clear to most readers.

Bob’ s favorite green Boston Celtics hat was missing from his locker!  He looked up and down the hallway and spotted George wearing a green hat!  Bob ran down the hall, shoved George against the wall, and grabbed the hat off his head.  As Bob was walking away, he noticed that the green hat he was holding said Dallas Mavericks.

The child with autism might know that Celtic hats are green, might know Bob’s was missing, might know the hat George was wearing was green, and yet may be stumped by the question:  Why did Bob shove George and take his hat? Since the text does not explicitly say that Bob suspected George of taking his hat, the reader with autism might not make this seemingly obvious inference.

How to infer state of mind, emotion, or motive from a character’s actions is something that must be taught patiently to young readers with autism.  Often the teacher or aide must have to learn how to recognize themselves when they are inferring so they can guide the student to a similar inference.

What is most likely?

When a character is described as frowning and speaking loudly, we may infer “anger” without even being aware we made an inference.

Julia waited on the front porch of Elizabeth’s house for 15 minutes.  When Elizabeth finally came outside, Julia frowned and asked loudly, “Can we go now?”

The concrete thinker, if asked, might surprise us with the number of other possible (if implausible) explanations for speaking loudly while frowning.  They can always come up with fanciful scenarios (“maybe a caterpillar crawled in her ear“) which have no connection whatsoever to the text.  They may need to be prompted to focus their thinking on what is most common and most likely under the circumstances of the story.

• What are the most common reasons why someone would do that?

• What is the most likely reason this character is doing that, considering what just happened to her?

Keeping track of details is a strength

When instructing a whole classroom of students, most of which do not have autism, on a long piece of fiction one may discover an advantage that many readers with autism have: they can often keep track of a surprising number of minor characters and minute details, even if they have difficulty connecting them.

A high school student with autism, having studied an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet for several weeks in class, was watching the Zefferelli film and laughed to himself when Romeo’s servant, Balthazar, passes a monk on a donkey while on his way to Mantua to tell Romeo of Juliet’s apparent death. “Friar John” the student said.  Friar John was not named in the version of the play studied.  The name was mentioned once in class weeks before.

I have also observed (to my surprise) that some children with autism are as capable as other kids of learning the meaning of idioms such as “nose to the grindstone” or “sick as a dog” or “hold your horses.”  In fact, they may even recognize the humor in certain idioms, once they learn the meaning, that others more familiar with the terms may overlook.  Drawing an absurd picture to illustrate a witty idiom may be great fun for these children.

Related posts:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. Anaphoric cuing: Asking clarifying questions
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?

Q: Is it “anaphoric cuing” or “anaphoric cueing”?
A: Yes.

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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://paraeducatorcentral.com/2011/02/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.

Related posts:

1. Anaphoric cuing: Asking clarifying questions
2. Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?

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:

• India
• Sweden (Sara är född i Uppsala)
• Australia
• The Philippines
• Great Britain
• Malta
• Panama
• Israel  (ken, anachnu yehudim, ve Sara makira et ha-aretz tov-tov)
• Canada
• 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:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. Anaphoric cuing: Asking clarifying questions
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 2: Helping Bobby read

In their book The Mosaic of Thought (1997) Keene and Zimmerman identified six“cueing systems” which they described as the channels or sources through which the brain receives information during reading:

• grapho-phonic cuing–the identification of letters and sounds
• lexical or orthographic cuing–the identification of sight words
• syntactic cuing–the recognition of the form and structure of language
• schematic cuing–prior knowledge or association
• pragmatic cuing–the purposes and needs of the reader
• semantic cuing–the meaning of the text

The authors identify a sample semantic cuing problem:  reading words fluently but experiencing difficulty defining what is meant by a word, sentence, or text. (p. 203)

This is precisely where we often find our kids with autism (and always those with hyperlexia) stuck in their comprehension.  And this is where (with due credit to the study done by O’Connor and Klein, 2004) we find anaphoric cuing (also spelled cueing) as a useful semantic cuing tool to help get them unstuck. 

See Autism and hyperlexia, Part 1, http://readerswithautism.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=256 .

Comprehension problems are not unique to kids on the autism spectrum, and some practical hints on how to use anaphoric cuing can be gleaned from the literature on reading comprehension generally.

As Cris Tovani notes in her book I Read But I Don’t Get It (2000), good readers ask themselves clarifying questions as they read.  Who, what, when, where, and why questions about characters, setting, or events.  (p. 52)  Asking themselves these clarifying questions focuses the reader on meaning, not simply on decoding, word by word.

But if the child with autism or hyperlexia has lost the meaning of what they’re reading, how do they know what questions to ask themselves? 

There is the beauty of the anaphoric cuing technique.

With a fairly short list of anaphora (words that refer to other words) that can be listed on a bookmark  we can teach them when to stop in their reading and what to ask themselves before they move on.

When we read:

he, she, they, we, I, you

we ask who?

When we read:

hers, his, its, theirs, ours, yours

we ask whose?

When we read:

it, that, this, can, do

we ask what?

When we read:

here, there, come, go

we ask where?

When we read:

then, before, after

we ask when? 

By learning a list of specific words and answering a few related questions, many kids can make significant improvement in their comprehension of text, particularly narrative fiction, which often is the most difficult for a child with autism to comprehend.

Related posts:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 2: Helping Bobby read

Bobby approached my kidney-shaped conference table hesitantly, walking on tiptoe around the nearby rocking chair.  He was carrying a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  I greeted him; he did not meet my eyes. 

This was the first day of the second week of school, and we had fashioned name tags, written letters for school mail, smelled Jamie’s flatulence several times, learned about Georgia O’Keefe, and made a sheet cake into a replica of the State of California.  Earlier this morning we had chosen our favorite books.  Now I was beginning to conduct some assessments of my new students’ reading abilities.

 Bobby opened to the first chapter of the book and began to read for me: 

Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.  For one
thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time
of year.  For another, he really wanted to do his homework, but
was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night.  And he also
happened to be a wizard.

Bobby read quickly and smoothly and made no errors.  I raised my eyebrows as he continued, his tongue tripping over the words and his eyes fixated on the page.  This was a reader.  This was a fourth grader who could read Harry Potter.   I motioned for him to stop.

 “So,” I said casually, “what is going on with Harry?”

 Bobby looked anxious.  I could almost see his mind turn inwards.  He seemed absorbed in some internal sensory experience that I could not share.  I pulled him back. 

“Bobby?  How is Harry different from other kids?” 

“I don’t know.”  

I did a quiet mental double-take. 

“Can you find it in the text?”

 He scanned the first page.  Shook his head.  Bobby did not understand a word he had just read.   No matter what I asked, how I prompted, or where I pointed in the text, he made no meaning at all of the words. 

I sent him back to his seat with a Dumb Bunny book.  I sat back and watched him turn the pages, laughing vaguely and pointing at the words.

»  »  ¤  «  «

 Bobby was my first student with autism.  I had just changed the focus of my work in San Diego from a middle school ED class (which stood for “emotionally disturbed” though that was rarely spoken) to a mild-moderate Special Day Class for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. 

On the first day of that school year I met Bobby, who was moving to the upper level SDC class after two years in the lower grades at my new school.  He was compliant, wanted to please, and was completely accepted by his classmates.

The results of that first reading conference were confirmed when I administered the Analytical Reading Inventory (ARI): Bobby could decode at the ninth grade level.  His comprehension was at the primer level. 

A review of his Language Arts standardized testing results for the previous year revealed that he consistently scored “Far Below Basic” on the CAT-6 test each spring.  In October, the kids took the Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) test, which consists of a series of cloze exercises.  Bobby scored, once again, Far Below grade level.

Hyperlexia

Bobby has hyperlexia, which is a precocious ability to decode words in text with next to no understanding of what they mean. 

Children with autism tend to share some common learning characteristics, not the least of which is deficits in reading.  Within the realm of reading comprehension, they generally exhibit difficulties making sense of complex sentences, struggle with figurative language, make few inferences or in any way access their background knowledge, and connect to fiction text in minimal fashion. 

When a child with autism decodes at a high level but has considerable comprehension deficits, she or he cannot learn strategies for inferring, integrating text, or making personal connections to text unless the hyperlexia is first confronted.

 This blog post is the story of my next two years with Bobby, and why, as he completed the fifth grade, all standardized and authentic assessments confirmed his ability to both decode and comprehend at grade level or higher. 

So what could I do to help?

Bobby not only introduced me to hyperlexia, but bore with me when I discovered that there was but one professional journal article which provided a hint about a potentially-significant intervention for this particular reading disability.  By necessity, we were forced to follow up on it in our own way, on our own.
 
 The first hundred or more times I attempted to locate information on interventions that work in cases of hyperlexia I drew a complete blank.  Most of the professional literature pertaining to hyperlexia has to do with defining it and describing it.  There are very few articles that describe how to fix it.

I didn’t particularly care why Bobby had hyperlexia, or how it manifested; I wanted to know what to do about it to help him make meaning when he read. 

I became increasingly frustrated in my research, which was my first entrée into investigating teaching strategies for working with kids with autism.  Plenty of people wanted to describe their child’s hyperlexia.  Plenty of researchers wanted to discuss whether it was a part of autism or a part of language disorders.  Nobody really had any useful ideas about how to handle it in the classroom.

Success!  Sort of…

 Finally, late one night while I was on vacation in New York, I did one last, desperate Google™ search.   And up popped an abstract of an article describing a test of three different interventions: pre-questioning strategies, cloze exercises, and something called “anaphoric cuing.”  Only the last intervention showed success in improving reading comprehension. 

[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]

Ahah!  But what is anaphoric cuing and how did the researchers use it? 

By yet another bit of poor luck, I was unable to obtain a good copy of the article for several months.  Lacking patience, I decided to go ahead and try to figure out what anaphoric cuing was on my own.  The first thing I had to do was locate the definitions of all of those big words.  I learned the following from a variety of sources:

Definitions

• 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.
• Anaphora are words, often pronouns, which refer back to reference words previously used in the text.  For example: “Dan went to his locker to retrieve his jacket.”  In this case, “his” is the anaphora and “Dan” is the reference word.
• Anaphoric cuing involves teaching the child to identify anaphora and to pause to relate them to their reference words while reading.  In this way, the child begins to understand text as an integration of phrases and 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.

O’Connor and Klein’s study 

Eventually I obtained their article and learned that Irene O’Connor and Perry Klein, both of the University of Western Ontario, had worked with 20 adolescent students with hyperlexia to explore the success of cloze questions, pre-reading questions, and anaphoric cuing. 

While instruction using the first two techniques had little impact on the quality of reading comprehension, anaphoric cuing resulted in significant improvements.

O’Connor and Klein suggested that students with hyperlexia do not understand that anaphora refer back in the text and the researchers theorized that if such students could be coached to stop and identify the reference made by the anaphora, reading comprehension would improve.

They selected several texts in which 12 anaphora were underlined, and underneath each one provided three choices as to the reference word.  Students were encouraged to pause at each underlined word and choose the correct reference word. 

The students demonstrated the ability to pause and consider each underlined anaphora accurately, choosing the correct reference word 5 of 6 times.  In addition, their ability to answer comprehension questions following the session of anaphoric cuing was demonstrably improved.

But in the winter of Bobby’s fourth grade year, with only an educated guess of what “anaphoric cuing” must involve, I began to work with him.  What exactly did I do?

That will be the subject of my next post.

Related posts:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. Anaphoric cuing: Asking clarifying questions
3. Reader with autism and figurative language, part 1

When I met him, Bobby was a fourth grader with autism, struggling to make meaning of the words he so easily read aloud (decoded).  He had hyperlexia, a common condition with children on the autism spectrum, in which they seem to read well but comprehend little. 

Research suggested to me that something called anaphoric cuing was the key to helping Bobby.  The earlier post “Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?” discusses what anaphoric cuing is and how I came to discover it as a possible intervention.   In this post, I will discuss exactly what I did with and for Bobby.

Weekly routine

Bobby was given one-on-one attention and instruction for 20 minute sessions, three days a week.  This took place at a kidney-shaped table in the corner of the classroom, shielded from the activity of other students. 

  There were three stages to the process: 

• Initial implementation of anaphoric cuing,
• release of responsibility, and
• gradual development of independence. 

Initial implementation of anaphoric cuing

During the first several months, Bobby met with me three mornings per week.  Each session began with a conversation about the previous day’s work, with the following questions:  (1) What did you read yesterday?  (2)What do you remember about what you read? 

Following that introductory conversation, I presented Bobby with his book and his comprehension worksheet from the previous day.  The worksheet asked him questions about the anaphora from the previous day’s text, such as: 

• Who is “he”? 
• Where is “there”? 
• When was “then”? 
• What is “it”?

Here is an example:

Pages 10 and 11:

1. Who is May?

2. What does May think about the fact that Marvin likes Rosie?

Page 12:

1. Why does Marvin think Rosie is so mean?

2. What does May think of Marvin’s theory?

Page 14:

1. Why does Mr. Brock want to sell his farm?

2. Why did May think that selling Rosie was a good idea?

If he had answered all questions correctly, he was given a new assignment.  If there were questions to be corrected, he did so under my supervision.  Prior to starting a new reading section, I asked Bobby to restate the procedure for reading: 

“First, I read a page.  Then I stop and think about it.  Then I answer the questions for that page.  I don’t turn the page of the book until I have answered all the questions for that page.” 

(I did mention, didn’t I, how compliant Bobby was?)  Only then did I let him begin reading that day’s text.

 During the next 15 minutes, I observed Bobby’s reading behaviors and completed a checklist.  (See Exhibit 1: Retell Checklist, below) If he was off-task or not following the stated procedures, (i.e. reading ahead before answering questions) he was gently redirected by the question “Bobby, what are you supposed to be doing now?”

 At the end of each session, I evaluated his worksheet and tabulated the results.  At the end of each week, the checklists were compiled and the data recorded.

Release of Responsibility 

Bobby's Bookmark

Once Bobby had progressed up several levels of narrative fiction text and built his stamina to 20 minutes at a time, I released some of the responsibility for addressing anaphora to him.  Bobby was taught what anaphora are, and the types of words they might be. (For example, he, them, it, there, that, then.)

I made for him a laminated bookmark listing many of the words to look for.

  He was instructed to pause before reading each paragraph and to scan and underline any anaphora he saw.  He was then told to to stop as he read at every underlined anaphora and identify the reference word (the word to which the anaphora refer). 

His reading comprehension worksheets were redesigned to focus on a summary or restatement of each paragraph using different words.

Gradual development of independence

 When Bobby moved up three grade levels to books at the fourth grade level, I decided to nudge him into a new phase of independence and responsibility for his own work.    The comprehension worksheets were removed entirely and he was asked to create his own questions to prompt identification of anaphora and reference words.   

When he exhibited some reluctance to assume this responsibility, I taught him the types of question words he might use for each anaphor:  pronouns generally lead to “who” inquiries; whereas “there” might lead to a “where” question. 

Once he had practice in identifying the types of questions he might ask based on the nature of the anaphora, he was encouraged to work more independently. Supervision was limited to observation of his reading behaviors and once weekly conferences when I asked him to retell what he’d been reading. 

Evaluation of process

 The process I followed involved ongoing and consistent collection of data, which was used not only to monitor levels of improvement in reading comprehension, but to identify problems and design solutions. 

For example, observations led me to conclude that Bobby needed to build reading stamina before he could proceed into more complex types of narrative fiction text, and accommodations were made that allowed him to gradually increase the amount of text read in each session. 

Tip:  Constant and careful observation and recording of various reading behaviors is necessary if the teacher is going to customize reading instruction in anaphoric cuing, adapt to the resulting improvement in comprehension, and resolve related issues which invariably arise.  No two students are alike. 

 One-on-one instruction and guided practice proved to be a key to the consistency of Bobby’s progress.  Direct instruction was provided in small chunks in a step-by-step basis over time.  All instruction was assessment-based, building on observations from the previous session.  

The result was Bobby’s gradual movement from dependence on comprehension checklists and worksheets to independent habits of reading.

You can do this!

 This particular classroom intervention can be performed by any teacher or paraprofessional with minimal training.  Each part of the daily work session routine is simple to implement and the student will quickly learn what to do and expect.  Gradual release of responsibility for thinking and working occurs after the child has become comfortable with anaphoric cuing.  

If a paraprofessional performs the daily conference tasks with the student, the teacher must regularly review the results to gage when to move to a new phase or how to resolve issues that arise. 

Because the involvement of instructional staff is limited in anaphoric cuing, the child quickly understands that the staff is not going to answer questions or do the work for him or her.  This teaches independence and responsibility for the thinking without much struggle.

But back to Bobby…

 The anaphoric cuing method used with Bobby was an evolving process of ongoing assessments to consider how to promote independent reading behaviors.  In the middle phase, Bobby was required to slow his reading and limit reading stints to but a few sentences at a time.  He was encouraged to identify reference words and retell each passage using those reference words to cement and demonstrate his understanding. 

Later, Bobby was asked to assume more responsibility, first to identify the anaphora in text; then to ask himself questions that connected the anaphora to the reference words.  Both standardized and my informal assessments (for example, Exhibit 2: Bobby and the Doughnut Store, below) revealed striking improvements in Bobby’s ability to read and comprehend text.

Epilogue

One cold and rainy day in January of 2008, I looked across my classroom and saw Bobby, now a sixth grader,  building a fort out of pillows.    He was once again holding a copy of  Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban in one hand while elbowing pillows into place with the other. 

I watched as he nested into his fort, opened his book, and began to read.  Two years before, while he could fluently read this book aloud, he comprehended almost none of it.  After awhile, I went over to him.

“What’s happening in the book?” I asked. 

“Oh!  I think Harry Potter is different from other kids,” said Bobby.

“How so?”  I asked.

“ Oh!  He hates vacations and he likes homework,” said Bobby.  “Also, he’s a wizard.  Wizards aren’t like normal people.  Oh!  And he does his homework with a feather pen.  I do mine with pencil.”

Exhibit 2: Bobby and the Doughnut Store

Exhibit 1: Retell Checklist

 

Related posts:

1. The problem of the read-aloud
2. Reader with autism and figurative language, part 1
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?

On Google, and on bing, we come in at number three.  Not bad, we think, for a blog that began in August 2009. 

Granted, not many teachers and parents yet know the term anaphoric cuing.  But we hope that is changing.  We are trying to do our part to hasten the day when kids on the autism spectrum (and/or with hyperlexia) no longer struggle to comprehend narrative writing.  And to provide adults endeavoring to teach those kids with the tools to help them enjoy the fun of reading fiction.

Related posts:

1. Inference Cuing: What is the most likely reason for that?
2. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
3. Anaphoric cuing: Asking clarifying questions

This blog is a collaborative effort between my wife Sara and me.  She does most of the writing.  I do all of the editing, formatting, illustrating (mostly clip art), layout, etc.  Since neither of us had ever blogged or had a website before, it has been a new and rewarding experience.

I am a Special Education Tech in a large Southern California school district where I have worked for several  years, usually assigned in general education classrooms working one-on-one with students on the autism spectrum.  My assignments have included one elementary, two middle, and two high schools and even the school to which  they remove students  for zero-tolerance violations.

I have a degree in journalism, a law degree, and am only a few hours short of being certified as a mild-moderate special education teacher.   So why am I working as a para-educator/classroom aide?

Because I like being able to focus on the students.  Only on the students.  Not grading 150 of yesterday’s five-paragraph essays, or preparing tomorrow’s lessons, and especially not tolerating all that frustrating, annoying administrative stuff that teachers are expected to deal with.  (As an hourly classified employee, I rarely even have to attend staff meetings!)

The role of para-educator

Helping the teachers, of course, is part of our job description but we are not there for the teacher’s benefit (to make copies, or grade homework, or mop the floor, though I’ve done all those things).  We are there only because one or more of the kids in that class has an IEP that says they need extra classroom support.

Don’t be shy about telling the teacher when and why you can’t do something they ask you to do if you truly feel  it intereferes with something one of your students needs from you.

So what is the role of the special education classroom aide in a general education classroom?

To help the child with an IEP become more independent.

When a child no longer needs me, I have succeeded.  When a child continues to depend on me for something other children do without assistance, I have failed.  I have asked in the past not to continue  with a particular student because I thought they had progressed as far as they needed to go with me.

Tip: I rarely sit next to “my” student.  Though I may be in a particular class only because Brandon, or Susie, or Juan is there, I do not want the other kids to know that unless it seems necessary that they know that.  I watch my student from a distance, take notes, move in with advice or assistance and move back out again.  Meanwhile, I’m helping other students all around the classroom.  No student in the classes where I am assigned feels any stigma because I step over and talk to or assist them.  Most of them couldn’t tell you why I’m there.

Children on the autism spectrum can be great to work with as an aide.

I worked with a sixth grader who was fascinated by Alfred Hitchcock (they often have intense interests) and wrote an essay about the filmmaker discussing several of his movies.  An eighth-grade student on the spectrum was a math whiz who read ahead in his algebra book for fun (and also composed on the piano).  A ninth-grader who rarely spoke required almost no help in completing earth science worksheets, finding answers from the textbook.

Yet all of these students, capable as they were in certain areas, had difficulty following even simple plots when reading fiction.  I don’t know that they had hyperlexia, but I would think it highly likely.  Often this particular reading deficit is not specifically identified.

What can you do to help a child who understands the vocabulary but still can’t follow the story?

Well, you can read Sara’s two posts on this blog about Autism and Hyperlexia.   And whether or not your teachers know about or focus on anaphoric cuing, you can use what you learn about it to help any student comprehend narratives, particularly fiction.

Simply put, anaphora are words that refer to other words.  Most of us know almost instinctively who “his” refers to when we read:

“Bob slung the backpack over his shoulder and followed Julio.”

A child with autism will often be unsure who is carrying the backpack.

So first, we have to identify the anaphora that may confuse a child.  These include more than just the obvious pronouns :

• I
• we
• us
• ours
• you
• yours
• he
• his
• she
• hers
• they
• theirs
• them
• it
• its

but also such words as:

• there
• then
• can
• do

When the child encounters these words in reading, we can ask (and teach them to ask themselves)

• Where is “there”?
• When was “then”?
• What is “it”?
• Who is “he”?
• Whose is “theirs”?
• “Can” what?
• “Do” what?

Reading connections that most of us make almost automatically the child with autism may need coaching and repeated practice to learn how to make accurately and regularly.

If you, the para-educator, can help a struggling reader learn this seemingly simple reading strategy, you may just open the door to a lifetime of reading enjoyment.  It is worth the effort.

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PS: I love this slogan “When children can not learn…It’s time to change the way we TEACH” They offer more than 40 products with this alone, and have dozens more autism-related designs.  We make not a dime off this endorsement, by the way.    http://shop.cafepress.com/design/17338377

Our Goal:  Providing help for struggling readers on the autism spectrum.

Related posts:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. The child in the IEP: Can we really see him as described?
3. Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading