Tag Archives: autism spectrum

Writing rules for a kindergartner with autism

By Richard Finegan Just when I thought I knew what I was doing after years as a paraprofessional working one-on-one with children with autism, life teaches me a hard lesson:  it is a different world in kindergarten! I mean, kindergartners are barely socialized!  And I’m not talking about the ones with autism.  They have to [...]

Non-fiction matters, Part I

By the time a kid hits the fifth grade, we are requiring them to write multiple-paragraph essays about topics related to social studies or science units. Our readers with autism don’t get an automatic pass on that requirement

Welcome, new readers from Choice Literacy

We got  a  comment this morning from Sarah who tipped us to the wonderful mention we just received in Brenda Power’s The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy newsletter: 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 [...]

Textual clues to emotion will help with inflection

To get a student with autism to read with inflection, especially the younger ones, perhaps we need to TELL them what the emotion of the speaker is.

Inference Cuing: What is the most likely reason for that?

What can we infer is the reason for this character’s behavior? Readers with autism 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?

Asperger Syndrome rolled into new Autism Spectrum Disorder

For those like me curious about the actual proposed wording of the new section of the DSM-V (and I’ll admit I’m a wonk and want to see these things verbatim, not just interpreted for me by someone who thinks I can’t read well enough to understand it), here it is:

What were they thinking? Teach vocabulary!

Those of us attempting to help struggling readers on the spectrum to comprehend what they read in narrative, in text, are limited by the breadth of the child’s working vocabulary. Anything we can do to expand that working vocabulary pushes us closer to a grade-appropriate level of reading comprehension.

Why I object to the term shadow

You may call me a paraeducator, a paraprofessional, a one-on-one aide, a special education technician, even a teacher’s aide…but please don’t call me a shadow or describe what I do as shadowing. The term shadow suggests that the aide never leaves the side of the child. That describes a bodyguard, not a paraeducator.