In wanting to be a Special Education teacher and having such a passion for the mentally disabled, I have always wondered how Reading Education differs between children with Autism compared to the average student. After finding,
Guided Reading with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (2007) by Cynthia G. Simpson, Vicky G. Spencer, Robin Button, and Sylvia Rendon, has informed me that teaching reading skills for average students are just as important as, and the same as, they are for students with Autism. In the article it talks of the national movements put in place so that ALL students exceed, and how teachers are trying to improve ideas and practices used in general education to teach students with autism spectrum disorders. The article is based on a guided reading practice performed by a elementary school teacher whose main goal was to increase the reading skills of students with autism. Her class room management system allowed her to know each student's ability and teach based on that ability. Something that I believe is very important. The authors provided three goals that guided reading was based on: "to meet the varying instructional needs of all students in the classroom, to teach students to read a variety of increasingly challenging texts with understand and fluency, and to construct meaning while using problem solving strategies to figure out complex sentence structure and gain an understand of new ideas or concepts"(pg.3). Something that seemed important to me was the portrayed importance of student- teacher interaction.
The article clearly explained how important it was for each student to be in close proximity to the teacher to pay close attention at all times. The article touched on many assessments that we have talked about in class such as, the Diagnostic Reading Assessment, running records, graded passages, and word lists. The article was interesting in that the teacher was not the only one implementing the lesson, there were other paraeducators that worked with students in the classroom. Each paraeducator had a purpose, one worked on phonic using the Spalding phonics program while another worked on a writing station and the third worked on functional math skills. Classroom management was very important in working with autistic students. The teacher used the gaining of tally marks, based on participation, to keep the students interactive and wanting to learn. The students liked this activity, because with each gained tally mark they got closer to getting a prize. Another activity that I thought was interesting was the use of magnetic letters to make words and help to understand words in the reading. Autistic children read less challenging books in this example, their books consisted of 10-15 pages with 5-10 words on each page. The group used choral reading to get through the book, in the article this helped weaker readers get more confident and chime in with the group. This helped the stronger readers share their skills while the weaker readers were able to listen and correspond to their peers. To end the lesson the guided reading group, based on their ability, the students either wrote a reflective statement of the story, drew a picture of something remembered from the story, or stated words that they learned from the story. I thought the article was very interesting and brought a lot of memories back from when I worked with the Special Education students in my high school years. It's neat now to understand why they did the activities and had the motivation exercises that they did. I can't wait to use these exercises and this input in my future classroom. In your opinion, is teaching Reading Education to Autistic students similar to teaching general education students?
Found Article:
Simpson, C.G., Spencer, V.G., Button, R., Rendon, S. (2007). Using Guided Reading with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus, Volume 4, Issue 1, Article 5. 17 November 2013,
http://journals.cec.sped.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1429&context=tecplus
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