Several people have asked me recently which program I recommend to teach kids the mechanics of reading:  decoding and phonemic awareness.  I’m having a hard time answering. 

My problem isn’t choosing between a variety of programs, or determining which is the most successful at helping kids learn to decode the letters and their sounds. 

My problem is that I’m not convinced that decoding is as important as everyone seems to think it is.    Before you start throwing rocks at me, let me explain. 

If you spend any time at all thinking about how you read, you are undoubtedly going to realize that you actually use your phonemic skills to decode words less than 10% of the time.  Maybe less than 5%.  I did a little survey of myself (it was fun, being both the subject and the observer!) and discovered that in 847 pages, I only had to decode one word. 

How can this be?  Isn’t the foundation of reading the ability to put the letter sounds together to form actual words?

Not…..really.  It may be so at the beginning, but I’m wondering if it isn’t a really limited period of time in the life of an emergent reader. 

 What do readers do, really, at all but the primer stage?

 We recognize words. 

 My theory, and it is untested and will not necessarily be particularly popular among reading researchers, is that sight words are more important than decoding skills.  I think that good readers are people who recognize words when they see them.  I think that the difference between any level of reading in elementary school through middle school has more to do the expansion of one’s personal bank of sight words than anything else.  The more words we can recognize and know, the more words we can read.

 Don’t get me wrong:  I still spend time with my students on basic phonemic skills.  I don’t allow people to leave my class without knowing the basics, more or less.  But we spend a lot more time on word recognition, which we work on in a variety of ways.  Much of what we do is outlined in the Reading Category on our other blog, The Demanding Classroom (www.thedemandingclassroom.com).

 Over the years, I’ve had numerous students enter my classroom in the fourth grade and up who still do not know their vowel sounds and blends, and are not able to decode any words that have more than one syllable.  These students have been given intensive interventions, either in self-contained classrooms or in pull-out sessions in the Resource Room, but despite at least four years of work, still have not been able to learn basic decoding skills.

Now, my school’s Resource Specialist is a gem among gems, an incredibly talented teacher with endless patience and know-how.   Teachers in the primary level of our self-contained classroom at our school had more training than I  in reading instruction, and a good many more years of experience.  If they couldn’t get a child to competent decoding levels, there  isn’t a lot I can do. 

It has seemed like focusing intensively on the phonemic skills was not working.   I’ve come to the conclusion that in cases such as these, we need to approach the reading from another angle, and the angle that seems to have the most success is addressing word recognition and reading fluency.

In the coming weeks, I’ll try to post some more about what we do, and why.  In the meantime, check out The Demanding Classroom!

Related posts:

1. Irresistible reading: Stories starring our kids as characters
2. Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?

If you ask a child with autism to read a story to you, chances are that she or he will read with an almost robotic voice, word for word, with no expression.  Even an accomplished decoder will focus on getting the words right rather than the phrasing. 

Good readers actually “hear” the story in their heads; there’s a voice or a narrator operating in our minds as we read a narrative.   

Our minds identify and process punctuation marks, italics, and other textual clues that tell us where and when to emphasize words and syllables.  Our narrator keeps track of what’s going on in the story so that we can infuse emotion into the dialogue and descriptions.

 This does not seem to happen with most readers with autism.  And when it doesn’t, understanding is crippled.

Read-Aloud is not enough 

 One of the strategies that both general ed and special ed teachers learn early on is to use the read-aloud to foster in our students a love for the written word and an understanding of how reading is supposed to “sound”.  As I commented in another post (“The Problem of the Read-Aloud”), many readers with autism have auditory processing issues and are just not going to be able to hear read-aloud stories and learn from them.

 A couple of activities have worked in my classroom, and they’re fairly easy to implement.  They are the Read Naturally program, and readers theater.  (See separate post on the latter for additional information.)

Read Naturally is an older, but not outdated reading program that addresses reading fluency.  It consists of short, high-interest texts, usually half a page to a page long, with accompanying cassettes.  The tapes are used to introduce a reader to the story and hear the inflection and expression used as it is read aloud.  Kids read the story out loud over and over and over, until they, too, have reached an appropriate level of speed and fluency. 

Tip:  I tend not to use the tapes as often as other teachers do, because I like to read each story to a student and discuss with them how and when I decide to emphasize certain parts and how I decide where to infuse my reading with emotion.  Then I send him or her off to practice.  A child has to read a story between 10 and 20 times to get the right speed, smoothness, and expression.  I might listen to him or her read the story 2-4 times in between practices, so that I can monitor the inflections.

Progress toward expression comes slowly 

What happens when a reader with autism works this hard at reading a story is that slowly but surely, some emphasis and  inflection begins to occur throughout the reading.  In my experience, a reader with autism who works for several months on Read Naturally, which has texts at every half-grade level from primer on up, gradually develops a “feel” for how text should sound. 

 The texts are short enough that the reader can practice for brief periods, interesting enough that most readers with autism enjoy them, and exciting enough that they can find ways to personalize them with expression.

Reader’s theater

The second instructional strategy that often works to help readers with autism develop their own internal narrator is the use of readers theater.  Put a child in a group of peers with similar reading levels, and give the group a quirky, funny script to read.  They will have fun and try on all sorts of voices, mannerisms, and methods of expression.

I usually introduce the script to the kids and hang out with them as they work their way the first couple of readings.  They often like to switch parts frequently, and that’s just fine, though a reader with autism may wish to stick with the same character – that’s also fine.

Tip:  Once they are all sure about the words and the story line, I like to assign leaders and let them work by themselves for awhile.  Our classroom aide checks in periodically to make sure they’re on task.

What we find is that very quickly, all of the students are experimenting with accents, voices, and inflection of the phrases.  When students experience this out loud, they are far more likely to internalize the knowledge and use it later in their independent reading. 

Hearing the internal narrator

I believe that once a reader with autism hears the internal narrator during independent reading, comprehension naturally improves and expectation that the text will tell a cohesive story increases exponentially.

Related posts:

1. FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension
2. So he resists reading: What does he like?
3. Irresistible reading: Stories starring our kids as characters

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 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!”

It’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? 

We 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.  For 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:  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. 

The 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.

 And 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.   They 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.

Related posts:

1. The child in the IEP: Can we really see him as described?
2. Irresistible reading: Stories starring our kids as characters
3. Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading