Tag Archives: learning disabilities

FAQs about anaphoric cuing and reading comprehension

Q: What, briefly, is anaphoric cuing?
A: Anaphoric cuing involves teaching the child to identify the anaphora and to pause to relate them to their reference words while reading. In this way, the student begins to connect the parts of the text to one another.

The problem of the read-aloud

By Sara Finegan One of the most frequent questions I get, from special education and general education teachers alike, is how to deal with the fact that their students with autism do not pay attention during story time.  Readers with autism are generally not good listeners and often will not only fail to attend to [...]

So he resists reading: What does he like?

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?

Anaphoric cuing: Asking clarifying questions

Comprehension problems are not unique to kids on the autism spectrum, and some practical hints on how to use anaphoric cuing can be gleaned from the literature on reading comprehension generally.

Stories they help us write

What happens when our readers with autism get a high-interest story like this that requires them to be paying attention so that they can add a word or phrase here and there is that they tend to stay with the story, hang on to what’s happening, and enjoy the interaction they have with the text.

The child in the IEP: Can we really see him as described?

I do not know how it is possible for anyone to create an IEP that only addresses one part of the reading process. If I am going to support a child in reading, there are many things I want to know besides the simple decoding skills he or she has or does not have:

Irresistible reading: Stories starring our kids as characters

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

Reader with autism and figurative language, part 1

The text was overflowing with figurative language. The first story we were supposed to read was a short piece by Sandra Cisneros, who is a brilliant and evocative author (The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek) whose work is just so amazing I could read it over and over without getting bored.