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?

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