Just a couple of observations about two high school students I have worked with recently:

One writes in short, concrete sentences, almost always in the present tense, even when he’s journaling about what he did yesterday.  Is verb tense, particularly when writing, a common problem for kids on the spectrum?

Both of these students (and one is much nearer the Asperger’s end of the spectrum than the other) are capable of reading aloud with inflection if they KNOW what the emotion of the speaker is supposed to be. If there are textual clues that the speaker is angry or happy, they know how that sounds. I find this interesting since one of my students speaks in a monotone generally and reads routinely in a very soft tone.

Yet if the text says something like:

John was angry. “Give me my backpack!” he demanded–both will add appropriate, louder, inflection when reading John’s words.

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.  They usually won’t infer this from the situation, even though most of us will.  But they know how an angry person sounds if they know he’s angry.  Or a happy person.  Or a sad person.

The more they recognize the different tones of voice, the easier it will be to infer emotions in daily communication.  Perhaps.

Related posts:

1. Inference Cuing: What is the most likely reason for that?
2. Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading
3. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?

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?

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

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 to their highly-focussed interests.  They’ll read the same books over and over (and over) again.  They’ll re-read the same pages on a regular basis.

They don’t seem to have a whole lot of difficulty understanding expository text.  I think I know why.

Why is non-fiction easier to understand?

First, expository text tends to have primarily literal significance.  The writing is clear and straightforward, organized and efficient.  There aren’t a lot of critical thinking requirements.  There are just facts. 

To be sure, someone who really wants to have a deep knowledge of a given topic needs to be able to connect, analyze, evaluate and synthesize the facts, and someone on the autism spectrum may not be able to do so very easily.  But it is not required.

Secondly, the text doesn’t contain a lot of the features that someone with autism might find difficult.  There is very little figurative language, not much in the way of emotions, and there aren’t usually characters one needs to think about in any way other than as actors in a scene.  No inferences need to be made, no empathy is necessary.

The text does, however, have certain features that I think have great meaning for a reader with autism: 

1. The text is organized into sections in most of our non-fiction library books. 
2. The chapters don’t go on and on.
3. There are independent passages separated by photos, topic headings, captions, etc. 
4. One can read just a short piece of the text and get information, make meaning. 
5. Reading stamina doesn’t have to be too great to perform meaningful reading tasks.

And then there’s the fact that the relationship between the reader and the text is much easier than with fiction.  The reader can ask questions and get them answered without too much probing.  The reader’s job is just to collect information, gather facts, and store them.  This is something that many readers with autism are quite good at, and particularly enjoy. 

A feeling of competence ensues when a reader with autism can navigate through this kind of text without much difficulty.

What I like about my readers with autism and their relationship to expository text is that it shows me that they very clearly understand about reading with purpose. 

Having a purpose for reading is essential to comprehension.   

When we read a book about Ancient Egypt, or about shellfish, we have a purpose, which is to learn about how people lived back then, or the different kinds of sea creatures that live on the ocean floor.  The text is replete with facts and we know that our job is to collect them. We know, in other words, what we’re looking for.  We know what questions we want answered.

It’s not that easy with fiction…

…which is why kids with autism often don’t know how to relate to that kind of text.  It’s not immediately obvious what they’re supposed to be looking for, and even if they have an idea, the finding part often requires deeper thinking or more steps. 

Inferring might be necessary (which is completely alien to most readers with autism) or comparing one character’s motives to another.    If I wasn’t good at making inferences, or if I didn’t know why I was supposed to be reading a novel,  I wouldn’t want to read fiction either.

My question is always:  How do I harness the skills this reader obviously has when it comes to non-fiction and help her to use it with fiction? 

The first thing is to give the reader a purpose.    A job, if you will, to do while she’s reading.  Something she knows how to do, not something that is alien and uncomfortable.  Like…

• identifying all of the parts of the setting, or
• making a graphic organizer about the relationships between characters, or
• physical decriptions of the people in a story.  

These are all parts of the story that the reader is probably going to be able to understand without having to do too much work, and since they are all about outward manifestations or connections between people, they call for literal understanding, not in-depth thinking, which we are not going to be working on just yet.

One reading “purpose” at a time

I assign the child only one type of thing to be looking for; no multi-tasking is involved. 

TIP:  At this point in the reader’s exploration of fiction with purpose, I am not going to give her a long story or  a chapter book.  In the first exercises of this nature, with these kinds of purposes, I am going to provide her with a short, one-page story with as many familiar text features as possible, including topic headings and maybe a picture or two with a caption.  If this means that I need to retype a page to insert headings, I am willing to do that. 

The goal is to make the fiction text look as much like non-fiction as possible from a superficial level – it’s reassuring and familiar, and eliminates a lot of anxiety for my reader.

The assignment is quick and dirty, and I expect my reader to come back to me or the classroom aide with a report fairly soon.  With any luck, the child will have located the information I asked for, and can repeat it back.

Are we going to try to engage in a long conversation about it?  Absolutely not.  If this is a child who avoids fiction like the plague, what I am going to do is heap the praise, repeat the information back, and have the child do some sort of quick exercise with me to cement the experience.  This might be dictating to me a series of key words found in the text, or doing a quick entry into a graphic organizer.  Five minutes.   

And then the child is sent off to do something she loves, which might be going back to the same old book about shellfish, or bouncing on a ball.  Something pleasurable.

Same text, different purpose

The next time we approach the fiction work, we’re going to use the same text.  But now we’re going to assign  a different purpose.  If the student collected data about the setting during the last read-through, now I’m going to ask her to find out what the characters look like. 

Once again, the child is being given a specific purpose to find readily-located information in the fiction passage.  And once again, the reporting back is going to be quick, followed by a quick recording activity and a lot of praise.

“How cool!  You’re reading a fiction story!  And you understand it, don’t you!  I’m so proud of you.  Now go take a play break.”

I may have the child read the fiction passage 3 or 4 times, each time with a different purpose.  I want her to become relaxed with the text, and to experience success in making meaning of what the story is telling.

Lots of practice, short pieces

A reader with autism who is just beginning to experience success in comprehending parts of fiction stories is going to need a lot of practice with short pieces.  I try to have a selection available at the child’s independent reading level or a little lower than that, even, so that we can pick and choose several to work on over a two to three week period. 

I’ll write about the next steps in another week or two.

Related posts:

1. Non-fiction matters, Part I
2. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
3. Finding the words: Helping a child with autism talk about reading

By Sara Finegan

Students on the autism spectrum don’t tend to make inferences deliberately.  It’s not that they never make them; they just aren’t aware of it and it needs to be brought to their attention before we can teach them to transfer the skill from their own lives to the written word.  It’s important to treat inferencing instruction as a process, not a project.  By this I mean that we should be patient, slow, and consistent in implementing some sort of practice of making inferences into our instruction all year long.

There is no Language Arts unit called “Making Inferences.”   There is a gradual unveiling of the skill and ongoing work in strengthening it as a reading habit.  Reading comprehension strategies should not be taught in isolation, or in compact curricular plans.  Reading comprehension is a set of practices which layer, one upon the other, to create an overlay for any book we read.

First Steps

I never begin my instruction in making inferences by teaching it.  I begin with stories.  During our early morning housekeeping, I may tell a quick anecdote about something that happened and see what conclusions the kids can draw from it.  Essentially, my stories are about a person or an event which is described but not named.

I may talk about how my daughter called me in a panic asking for the name of a good car repair shop, and see if the kids would infer that she either had an accident or that her car had broken down. I might describe the man whose office I visited, and his spotless white coat and that stethoscope he wore around his neck, and see if the kids would infer that I was at the doctor.  Or, I might talk about how my cats had suddenly started scratching themselves like crazy, and see if they would suggest that they have fleas.  Invariably, someone in the class will raise his or her hand and make a suggestion that involves an inference about the story I’m telling. And when they do, I say “excellent inference!” and proceed to restate the event, the setting, or the person I’m talking about.  It takes less than five minutes to accomplish this task, and the kids soon learn to be paying attention to my words in order to “guess” what’s going on.  Very casual, very informal.

Awareness of their inferences

The informality does not belie the purpose, which is to familiarize the kids with the concept of making inferences and an awareness when they make them. When we are supporting readers with autism in developing comprehension strategies, it’s important, though not crucial that they be able to identify the strategy and when they are doing it. (Why is it important? I believe that the children I teach need to develop an awareness of the way they think and learn. This prepares them for reflection on their progress and goals, and allows them to participate more fully in their own instruction.) The first step in teaching kids to make inferences as they read is to tell them what an inference is, and show them that they already use it to some extent in their lives.

About a month into any given school year, I add a quick routine to my morning instruction. On a series of index cards, I write word groups that are intended to provoke an inference.  I will show the kids two or three of the cards in the morning, and perhaps two or three in the afternoon, right after lunch and before we start social studies.  I simply place a card on the document camera and wait for the kids, individually or in groups, to shout out what they think the words have in common.  As with my anecdotes, the word groupings always have to do with an event or a character or a setting.  I keep it simple, and try to incorporate the kids’ own background knowledge as I write the word cards.

Tip: I have, on occasion, begun with picture cards instead of words. For a few days, I’ll show kids cards as described above, only the cards will have 3-4 pictures instead of words. Then I’ll move to word cards.

During this time, some fabulous and thoughtful discussions usually begin about the words and their connotations.  I push kids to justify their choices and explain them to the rest of the class.  If there’s a disagreement, we talk about it. My role is as facilitator, and thus I do not intervene with the right or wrong answer, but simply ask open-ended questions to help guide the kids to a deeper discussion.

Teacher: Ok, who will read the words? Sammy?

Sam:  Cake, flowers, white dress, church

Teacher:  Terrific. Who has an inference?

Jaylin:  Birthday party.

Sam:   No way.  It’s a wedding.

Jaylin:   But there’s cake.

Brianna:   I put quinceanera.

Teacher:  Three ideas! Let’s discuss! Jaylin, talk about your inference that it’s a birthday party. Tell me the words you used for that inference.

Jaylin:  Cake, ‘cause there’s cake at a birthday party. And flowers.  And a nice dress.

Teacher:  Oh, so you understood that people dress up for a birthday party, sure.

Jaylin:  Yeah. And there’s presents.

Teacher:  Oh, you used the word “presents”? Is that on the list?

Jaylin:  No.

Teacher:  Brianna, talk about your idea that it’s a quinceanera.

Brianna:  Girls wear white dresses and you can have communion at church, and they decorate with flowers.

Teacher:  Oh, so you used the word church and the white dresses and the flowers to come up with that. Have you been to a quinceneara?

Brianna:  My sister had one.

Sam:  But you don’t go to church. It’s just a party.

Teacher:  That is true in many Mexican communities, Sammy. But other cultures, like the Puerto Rican culture, often have a religious service before the party.

Sam:  Oh.

Teacher:   Sam, talk about why you think it’s a wedding.

Sam:   Because the girl wears a white dress and it’s in a church. You don’t have a birthday party in a church.

Jaylin:  Oh, yeah.

Teacher:  Ok, so Jaylin, are you adjusting your ideas now?

Jaylin:  Yeah.  He’s right, they don’t do birthday parties in the church.  I forgot that word.

Teacher:  Well, what about Brianna’s inference?

Brianna:  My sister had hers and we all went to church first.

Teacher:  So no wonder you thought “quinceneara” when you saw those words! Well, maybe we need more information to determine which inference is more reasonable. What word could we add, Sam, to make it clear that it’s a wedding?

Sam:  Wedding.

Teacher:  Well, without saying that.  How about, say, “bride” or “ring”?

Sam:   Yeah, that’s good.

Teacher:  Brianna, what word could we add to show that it’s a quinceanera?

Brianna:  I don’t know.

Teacher:  Anyone have an idea?

Stuart:  What if we say “Mexican”?

Teacher:  Do only Mexicans celebrate quinceneara?

Brianna:  No.

Teacher:  Hmmmm. Ok. Well, is there a number or a word we could use?

Brianna:  15?

Teacher:  Ohhhh. 15. Why?

Brianna:  Because that’s how old you are when you have it.

Teacher:  Oh, ok. So if we add 15, does that make people think it’s a quinceneara?

Students:  Yes.

Teacher:  And since the 15 is not on the card, what can we reasonably infer?

Brianna:  I think it’s a wedding.

(Page 1 of 2)

Continued: Be sure to click on the next page below!

Related posts:

1. The problem of the read-aloud
2. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
3. Fiction with a purpose (but one at a time)

Nick loved to bring high level fiction books to school, and eagerly showed them to me each time he walked into the classroom. He proudly informed classroom visitors that he brought his own independent reading from home.  Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones were two of his favorite characters, though when pressed, he couldn’t tell me much about them.

Nick, diagnosed in the second grade with Asperger’s Syndrome, habitually practiced “fake reading,” and did so without any apparent inkling that reading could be more than just staring at a page and thinking about a movie he’d seen.

During independent reading, when he wasn’t fake reading fiction books he’d brought from home, Nick would lie on the floor and read the same book about dinosaurs over and over again.   He didn’t actually read the text; he enjoyed looking at the pictures and identifying each species of the great lizards.

“Tell me what is happening…”

At the beginning of his fourth grade year, Nick stood in front of a bookcase holding baskets of all sorts of stories for more than 10 minutes, unable to decide on a choice.  I spoke with him briefly and helped him to select a novel about dragonfighters.  The next day, I pulled up a chair next to him and began a conversation about what was happening in the story.

Nick immediately began to tell me about the setting of the book, and that the main character was attending dragon-fighting school.   But other than a physical description of the school and the boy in the story, he couldn’t tell me anything.   It was clear that he was basing our conversation on the cover of the book and one illustration several pages into the first chapter.

Further observations led me to the conclusion that he was honing in on certain words in each paragraph, and inventing a plot around his perception of the meaning of those words.  For example, if he saw the word “dim” in a description of a heavily-forested glen, he would think about the time his mom complained that the porch light was dim, and decide that the events in the text were taking place on a porch!

A series of unrelated events

Additionally, even when Nick did read all of a paragraph as one unit, he was not able to identify which of the characters was speaking or acting.  This made following the plot even more difficult.   If he didn’t know who did what, he wouldn’t be able to understand the story at all. To him, the book would simply be a series of unrelated events.

I needed to help Nick find a way to keep track of the plot as it happened, and to connect characters to the events in the book.  First I had to make sure that he had a reasonable expectation of what the text would do.  Nick inspired me to customize an instructional strategy that has since been used to great effect with almost all of my students.  I’m not saying they like it.  But I am saying that if they do it for a month, they’ll start to read better.

Who….did what?

The plot of a story in a kids’ book is, of course, all about the action, and the action is supposed to be the really interesting part of a book.   A kid who cannot understand what is going on is not going to think that reading is very much fun and is not likely to have any expectations of text, which leads to all sorts of other problems in establishing meaning. For Nick, it all boiled down to understanding who was doing what in the story.

You can start this activity as a whole group, or pull a smaller group together for a mini-lesson and some guided practice, or you can use it from the get-go with an individual reader.  There are some key concepts that kids need to be instructed in, but complete mastery is not necessary as long as you are there to guide them and have discussions during share-outs.

What constitutes “doing”?

The first concept is about what constitutes “doing” in a text. Kids may or may not know what verbs are, and if they have had any instruction in grammar they’ve probably been told that verbs are “action words”, which is, in my mind, one of the most idiotic definitions we’ve ever used, and I include myself in the “we” part.

Consider this:

“Sara was tired of writing her blog entry. She felt hungry and wanted a nectarine.”

How is being an action? How is feeling an action? How is wanting an action?

But I digress.   My point is that we need to model for kids how the kind of verb we are looking for is one where someone is actually doing something, not being or feeling or wanting or having.  Make a list of “not doing” verbs and post it in the classroom for kids to refer to.  Our list includes “does, do, was, is, were, wasn’t, isn’t, weren’t, have, had, haven’t, hadn’t, want, wanted, wanting, can.…”

Find yourself a short-ish text to read with the kids in which there’s a fun plot.   Give a copy to each child and/or put it under a document camera for everyone to follow.  You will need an easel pad and markers, or, if you are working with an individual student, a worksheet or lined paper to use.  I put my considerable brain to work and came up with a highly-complex and brilliant worksheet that looks like this:

I am donating it to the entire world, so feel free to copy it.  Though making your own is also allowed.  (Grin)

Now, the deal is that you and the readers are going to proceed very slowly through the text, focusing on what is going on in the plot.   (Did I mention that the kids will not particularly enjoy it? Well, they do in groups, but they often aren’t particularly enthralled by the activity when they are asked to do it in independent work. But ask them to give it the old college try for a period of time, and it will change their reading lives.)

Draw a line down the center of the easel pad. On the left column, write the word “Who…” On the right, write the words “Did what?”  Now, as you read, you are going to stop every 2-3 sentences and identify who….did what?  This is not an exercise in which you will write a summary of the characters’ actions; you are going to list who.…did what? for every single action in a paragraph, at the beginning. 

This is important.  Emergent readers and people who struggle with comprehension, and epecially readers with autism tend to fragment the text and to fail to pull all of the pieces together in order to get a good visualization of what is going on. Only when you capture every movement and act in a paragraph can your reader with autism start to experience what it’s like to see the story happening, like in a movie. (I will write about learning to visualize in another entry, never fear).

Feelings are not actions: What do you see?

As you work with your students, you’ll encounter many opportunities to discuss the difference between what a character is feeling and what a character is doing. They are related, but one is not the same as the other.  Talk with the kids about how this would be shown in a movie.  Would you be able to show someone walking to the window?  Sure.  How about showing “he felt bored”?  Notsomuch.  Well, how would we know he was bored if it was in a movie?  The expression on his face. Ahah!

So, if someone smiles, that is something to put in our Who…..did what? chart, and from that action we can make an inference about how the character feels.  This may be over your readers’ heads, but give it a shot.  Don’t dumb it down.  Maintain a high level of vocabulary, punctuated by lots of real-life examples they can relate to.  And push the boundaries of their understanding.

As you proceed in listing the “Who ….did what” information, pause periodically and ask the kids to summarize what’s happened so far.   Model it the first few times, until they understand that you are not supposed to read each “Who ….does what?” in order, but rather to give a general description of what’s happened. We do this orally without writing it down in my class, though I introduce it as a written exercise later when the kids are working independently.

Proceed slowly

I tend to use the small-group forum for ongoing activities identifying Who….did what? for a few weeks.  Initially, we use picture books but before I send the kids out for more independent work we begin to use short pieces of text without many illustrations.   As the kids move in to greater independence in following the plot sequences, be prepared for some backsliding, periodic refresher mini-lessons, and perhaps even the need to work as a group for the first 5-10 minutes of your reading period for up to six weeks.

In my experience, incorporating this activity into a reading unit 2 or 3 times per year is an excellent way to teach and re-enforce the attention to detail and action that is required for good reading comprehension.   It can be done at any reading level.

Related posts:

1. When a reader with autism needs to respond to literature…
2. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
3. Role of the classroom aide: To help the child toward independence

By Sara Finegan

When I began teaching in Southern California several years ago, I assumed that the fact that an entire department of my school district was devoted to autism meant that I would be able to get information on best practices and the latest research to support my students in learning.  Accordingly, I would invite people from the Autism Support Department to my classroom to observe individual students in order to help me figure out the best ways to help them access academic learning.

They came and watched and gave me odd suggestions such as “well, you could use a checklist…” or “maybe you could reward him with toy time when he finishes,” neither of which really addressed my desire to help my students with autism read better.   It took several months of frustrating interactions between me and two Department employees before one of them finally informed me, “Sara, we handle behavior.  Not learning.  The academic stuff is not what we do.”

I was on my own.

From that point on, I’ve been on a mission to discover and try out whatever instructional strategies I can find to support and shape the intellectual work of my students with autism.   There hasn’t been a lot out there.  We have research up the wazoo on autism, but most of it is wrapped around behaviors and causes, not how kids learn and what helps them learn. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that parents and teachers are on our own here, and that just as parents have been pioneers in locating therapies and supports for their children, so must we teachers with autism in the classroom dig our own trails and share everything we learn. The mind of a child with autism is the mind of a child is the mind of a learner, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait around for our school districts to find funding to add cognitive issues to traditional autism support.

My purpose in creating this blog is to found a forum where I can share what I learn and what I’m trying on, and parents, teachers, and other people who love learners with autism and are committed to showing them how to learn can come and get ideas and share what works for them.

Readers with autism experience difficulty with tasks such as making inferences about characters and situations in text, making predictions about what will happen next, negotiating figurative language such as metaphor and simile, questioning for meaning, and a myriad of other strategies we take for granted when we navigate through a novel or short story.

Research has shown that most readers with autism do not connect parts of text.  In other words, a child who is reading a story may not recognize that what happened in the last paragraph is related to what is happening in this paragraph, and thus will not be able to keep track of the plot at all.

Assisting a child in developing, strengthening and regularly using the strategies and understandings needed to fully comprehend text is the job of parents, teacher, and other support providers such as occupational and speech therapists, tutors, and teacher aides.   

Our job is enormous, but we must not be daunted by the size of the task; instead, we must focus on and customize individual interventions and lessons that bridge the gap between a child’s deficits and strengths.

During my teaching career, I’ve developed some interventions and instructional strategies that seem to work well with many readers with autism, particularly those with hyperlexia.  I have also used many ideas given to me by my colleagues and parents of my students, who are my best and most wondrous partners. Support providers at every level are encouraged to try them, modify or expand them, and customize them to fit the needs of their own readers with autism.  Your comments, suggestions, and questions are always welcome.

Our goal is to provide Help for struggling readers on the autism spectrum.

Related posts:

1. The child in the IEP: Can we really see him as described?
2. Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
3. Don’t stop advocating for the child with autism!