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?
When we have students with reading comprehension problems, perhaps with hyperlexia, who have difficulty making meaning of what they read, it helps greatly if they care that they don’t get it. Do they want to know about these characters and what is happening to them?
Search the term anaphoric cuing today on Yahoo! and you’ll get 29,700 results. And the winner is…www.readerswithautism.com! 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 [...]
By Sara Finegan You might have noticed that most (but not all) readers with autism prefer non-fiction to fiction. With the exception of Bobby, all of my students on the spectrum have gravitated toward the fact-based section of our classroom library. Many of them become mini-encyclopedias themselves as they develop particular areas of expertise due [...]
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. Kids with expressive language disorders have difficulty using [...]
