Teaching Reading to Autistic Students
Jessy Vanaja
James Fisher (2000)2 Writes about his autistic son Charlie:
“Autism is a neurobiological disorder marked by severe delays in speech, repetitive or ritualized behaviours, and especially by profound impairments in social interaction. Charlie was late to roll over, sit by himself, walk (he did not crawl but scooted around in a sitting position, propelled by his hands). From the time he was ten months old, he “read” all the books Kristina has set up as his “library.” My mother was the first to raise concerns at how long Charlie would sit. Forty five minutes and more absorbed in the colourful pages of his board. Autism is a disorder which encompasses many behavioural and learning problems, which affect the way an individual gaze at the world.
Books or looking quietly out of the window. These were not the feats of your average two year old. Yet Charlie did not do many of the things other toddlers could do. He had no other language than a baby’s babble and cries. He seemed to understand less. He started for long periods at a picture of a little Asian-American girl in one of his books but never looked at much less acknowledged, the other children on the playground. Subtle changes in routine, turning right down the sidewalk instead of left, to tantrums in which he would flip himself backwards headfirst. Once he walked back and forth, before a stone wall, eyes aslant, until we dragged him away screaming, “no” was my wife’s answer when, at an appointment for one of Charlie’s many ear infections, one pediatrician asked, “ Does he know what his hands are? Does he know his name?” Charlie did not know how to wave, much less to say “bye.bye.”
The study of Charlie holds evidence that children with autistic problem are afflicted by verbal and non verbal communication and social interaction. Teaching reading is in general a complicated employment with its uncompromising demand for attention analyzation. Motivation is incredibly onerous especially in the case of autistic children, who suffer intense tribulation being in want of reading skills. Students with autism face a number of challenges when learning to read, including difficulties with attention, lack of motivation and problems with word decoding (Learning Upgrade, 07).
One serious problem in classroom management is that, since it is a medley of different individuals with visible and invisible disparities, brisk learners invariably outclass slow learners, as a result of it slow learners feel segregated where teaching reaches its breaking point. Kluth & DarmodyLathan (2003) assert that autistic children are increasingly taught in general education classroom, so that they are often not excluded from rich and meaningful, literacy experiences like story-telling, play-acting, journal-keeping and writing workshop. The learning styles of children with autism differ from those of standard learner. Students feel cringed and ostracized by their peers and consequently are unmotivated to please and hence seem resistant to learning.
So teaching reading to students with autism as they are categorized on the norm of learning style, behaviour issues, internal factors, and environment would require special methods which may not be in full alignment with other reaching strategies applicable to general category of learners.
Learning Problems of Autistic Children
Learning through reading will persist, with which an individual goes abreast. The act of learning is based on several factors and so is reading. Albeit learning is an endless process that knows no saturation point, persistent reading will continue to augment the house of knowledge which is identified as schemata that helps the individual in assessing the present and predicting the future. Christopher Kliewer (1998,P.98) while reasoning why a student becomes illiterate says that it is due to the lack of opportunity to engage him/her in meaningful reading experiences with in a framework of thoughtful expectations.
Students with autism love to be lonesome. Language also plays a significant role in communication improvement among autistic students. Michael Powers (2000) suggests that the most noticeable symptom of autistic children is their inability to develop normal social skills. They feel inferior to others as they frequently fail to compete with non-autistic learners. Bennetto (2006) states that autistic children have trouble in answering questions that require inferences to be made about the story. Autistic students have pervasive pragmatic deficits throughout development across communicative domains, including non-verbal communication, conversation and narrative skills. (Tager-Flasberg, 2001).
To teach autistic students the teacher should have extreme endurance power. Instant positive responses are not found, while teaching autistic students. Any sign of irritation from teacher will make them febrile, hence more amiable treatment of the instructor, providing learning environment, that would meet the level of the students can help to alleviate or moderate these problems and would make the situation optimistic.
The autistic students who do acquire verbal skills appear to have intact grammatical development, but have particular difficulties in their functional use of language (Tager-Flusberg, 2004) Children with autism can be incorporated into low-level reading programme, so that they will focus on teaching basic functional reading skills.
Teaching Strategy to Autistic Children
Gradin (2002) says that autistic children are thinkers. Communication is a problem for them, when the reading material contains pictures, though they have difficulty with decoding the words, the pictures will help them imagine better, and therefore make efforts to comprehend.
In Higher classes adopting this method is so many times impracticable. But the strategy cannot be disparaged as useless and unfetching. The picture will give a vision of what the printed language has to communicate; simple vocabulary is used for illustrations or descriptions. Stories can be played in tape recorders. Language thus can be taught through music and games. Instead of fantasy any tale about practical or authentic experience would produce favourable results.
Conclusion
It is necessary for the teacher to identify autistic students in the class to extend an affectionate helping hand. Their standard ought to be improved gradually by encouraging them to involve in learning activities. The teacher should create homily atmosphere at school/college and never be cross with the flaws of children. On the whole the of autistic students is expected to possess a large sum of patience and loving heart.
References
Christopher Kliewer, C. (1998) Schooling Children with Down Syndrome New York, NY Teachers College Press.
Bennetto , L., Pennington, B.F & Rogers, S.J.,(1996), Intact and impaired memory functions in autism. Child Development 67, 1816-1835.
Tager-Flusberg, H. (2001). Understanding the language and communicative impairments in autism. International Review of Research in Mental Retardation 23, 185-205.
Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004) Strategies for conducting research on language in autism.
Journal of autism and Developmental Disorders 34, 75-80
Gradin , T.(1995) Thinking in Pictures New York, NY : Doubleday