Teaching Strategies

A Blogger's Insight: 

Teaching Strategies  

Earlier in this module, we spoke about Break cards for children with Autism or the general population of students.  Children with Autism or children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), have an extremely difficult time with expressive communication.  First off, what is Autism? 

Watch the following video on Autism.  This video is a comprehensive look at childhood autism that takes a personal approach by focusing on two families faced with the challenge of raising an autistic child.

 

Now let's discuss one of the major difficulties children with Autism face: Expressive communication.  What is this? Expressive communication involves sending a message to another person(s) to make something happen or stop something that is already happening.  In other words, they are trying to convey a message to you.  Each child with autism is different.  Some children my just have difficulty expressing themselves, whereas others, may be completely nonverbal. 

 

I located this a video on you tube video about a twins who have overcome difficulties with expressive communication. (P.S. This is one of my favorite songs! Gets me everytime.)

 

The next video however, is showing you the good and bad behaviors of a nonverbal child with autism.

 

 

 Some other challenges in communication:

• delayed or absent speech development
• difficulty understanding the spoken communication of others (even students with relatively good communication skills can have subtle difficulties with this)
• difficulty understanding the non-verbal communication of others (e.g. following a point, understanding facial expressions or tome of voice)
• literal and concrete understanding of language (e.g. the student may be very confused by figurative language such as ‘pull up your socks’, ‘it’s raining cats and dogs; may not get sarcasm, irony and some humour)
• delayed processing of language (e.g. taking a long time to understand and act on an instruction)
• echolalia (repetition of another’s speech, including what is heard on games, TV and movies)
• different motivation to communicate, with many children commonly communicating about their needs and wants, rather than for sharing information or other social reasons