I’m in the process of writing some social stories for an incoming student of mine who is  a boy with medium-functioning autism, and it got me thinking about the power of stories about the kids who are actually reading them.

(Social Stories are a tool for teaching social skills to children with autism and related disabilities.  They provide an individual with accurate information about those situations that he may find difficult or confusing.  The situation is described in detail and focus is given to a few key points: the important social cues, the events and reactions the individual might expect to occur in the situation, the actions and reactions that might be expected of him, and why.  The goal of the story is to increase the individual’s understanding of, make him more comfortable in, and possibly suggest some appropriate responses for the situation in question.  From http://www.polyxo.com/.)

Many of my students on the autism spectrum have been kids who really, really disliked reading, and avoided it whenever possible.  This was partly because they really struggled with the decoding process, and partly because they really struggled with comprehension, and, in some cases, partly because they  struggled with focus issues.

Many years back, I hit on a sure-fire way to get kids like that more engaged in reading.  I started to write serial stories about kids in my class.  

I think the first one I wrote was about “The Day Aliens Kidnapped Eddie and Joey.”  It was set at our school, and all of the students in my class, plus my aide and our principal were characters. As I recall, the narrative began when, while waiting for the school bus, Eddie and Joey were suddenly snatched up by an alien spaceship.  The aliens were fascinated by homework, and tried to conduct a cross-examination of Eddie and Joey about their assignments.  In the meantime, the rest of us were trying to figure out how to save them. 

Each of my students had a role in devising a brilliant strategy to get Eddie and Joey back.  Our principal, who happened to have a huge supply of hot air balloons in the library storage room, provided both inspiration and logistical support. 

Every few days, I’d write another installment of the story, and the kids would gather together in pairs to read and respond.  The excitement was palpable.  Students began to submit ideas for scenes, and suggestions as to what we could do with the aliens once we reached their space ship (feed them cupcakes….teach them to moonwalk….).  Kids in other classes began to hear about the story and wanted copies.  It became quite a cool thing to be in my class that month.

Long story short, even kids who hated, hated, hated to sit down with a book waited anxiously for each new installment about Eddie, Joey, and the aliens.  They were perfectly willing to read and re-read the story to answer comprehension questions, identify different uses of language (simile, metaphor, hyperbole, dialogue), etc. 

Bobby, who had a lot of difficulty connecting to text in general, began to ask a lot of questions about the story:  Why did the aliens pick San Diego?  What if Eddie and Joey get thirsty?  Why can’t the principal just call the aliens?  Where is Superman when we need him?  (See my other posts about hyperlexia, anaphoric cuing and helping Bobby read.)

Then, Bobby started a running commentary:  Eddie and Joey should be careful on the spaceship, because some aliens have slimy skin; Mrs. Finegan should stop singing while she makes helmets for the kids who are going up in the hot air balloon, because it might scare them (!); we should probably eat lunch before we launch the rescue mission, because there’s no food in space.

I managed to stretch out the alien story for about 6 weeks.  When we finally finished, the kids continued to read independently for longer periods of time; their stamina had increased by between 4 and 10 minutes.   They were more willing to work their way through stories at their instructional reading level, and their interest in setting and characters improved.

Since then, I’ve tried to write short stories featuring my students or, several times a year, another longer tale in installments. 

For readers with autism, being a part of the story is a terrific introduction to the concept of “jumping into” a book.

Related posts:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. So he resists reading: What does he like?
3. Stories they help us write

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.

We 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

I 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. On 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.

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.

Related posts:

1. Asperger Syndrome rolled into new Autism Spectrum Disorder
2. The problem of the read-aloud
3. Don’t stop advocating for the child with autism!