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From Chapter 7, Getting Started
Give the Child Time
The nervous system of the child with ASD sometimes needs extra time to do things. This is particularly true of language-related tasks. He may need extra time to think about a question you asked or to read a passage. He needs extra time to shift his attention from one topic or activity to another. On a larger time scale, he may need more time than the other children to adjust to the classroom; it may be several months before he's really comfortable with the rules and procedures.
See the Child's Strengths
An autism spectrum disorder is a disability. It comes with limitations and challenges. But it also comes with a certain cognitive and personality style that can be a real asset in many ways. The child with ASD is seldom deceitful or manipulative. (Of course, he may try to get out of unpleasant tasks by engaging in behaviors that have been rewarded with escape in the past, but he's not playing with your head.) Children with ASD tend to be quite honest (sometimes too honest). Their preoccupations can lead them to have real passions for subjects (music, astronomy, insects, and rocks) and they can become highly expert in their preferred subjects. They're not too concerned with the subtleties of their peers' reactions to them (although many children with ASD very much want to be liked by other children) so they're not mindlessly conformist. They like and understand rules, so if you can get them to understand and accept basic classroom rules, they are likely to abide by them.
Let the child know that you see his strengths; compliment him often on these traits and on his attempts to master new skills as well as on his successes. When you are getting to know the child, observe whether he responds well to great enthusiasm, or whether he responds better to quiet and moderate praise.
Try to Understand the Child's Motivations
This is difficult. We've been working with children on the autism spectrum for many years and we often don't agree what's driving them to do some of the things they do (part of what keeps us fascinated).
One way to try to understand behavior is to consider the old psychological theory about why people work. It often applies nicely to other behaviors as well. The three motivations are suggested to be power, facilitation, and achievement.
Do you work or pick a specific job (aside from the need to pay the rent, of course) because you like to be around other people, have others to talk to, and form relationships with others (affiliation)? Do you work because you like the authority and responsibility; the chance to control others and tell them what to do (power)? Or do you work because you like to really get things done, get projects finished, see the completed work done right (achievement)? We can all think of people who have a balance of motivations tipped to one or the other of these. Well, children with ASD are usually big on achievement. If your student seems bossy to other children or demanding of adults, it is quite likely that this is not, as it might seem, a matter of trying to get power over others. He's just trying to keep things on the right track, make sure things are going the way they should, and maximize the chance of the expected or desired outcome.
What Teaching Strategies Work In Inclusive Classrooms?
There is a small but well-done set of studies on some teaching strategies that promote success of students with autism spectrum disorders in inclusion classes. We present a summary here (adapted from a research review by Joshua Harrower and Glen Dunlap; see References).
Use Pre-practice or Pre-teaching Liberally
Expose the child ahead of time to activities or materials that you anticipate he will find difficult. If you're discussing the calendar or the weather in circle time, have his aide or one of his therapists prepare him with this material the day before or just before circle time, so he's familiar with the material and will find your language easier to understand as it flows by in real time. Also, preparing him with an answer will enable him to volunteer an answer (maybe with a prompt). Obviously, you won't be able to pre-teach everything--that would double the child's school day! Pick the most difficult activities for the child for if they're too difficult for him, give him something else to do during those activities, and focus on the material he has a better chance of getting--the material of intermediate difficulty).
Provide Prompts
Expect that the child with ASD will need more prompting to stay on task, provide correct answers to questions, and interact with peers than typically developing children do. If the child is off-task or does not know the answer to a question, provide prompts of increasing specificity, giving the child as much opportunity as possible to return to task or give a correct answer on his own.
For example, if your student is supposed to be doing a worksheet and appears to be off-task, a hierarchy of prompts might be:
1. strolling down the aisle and making eye contact and a smile,
2. reminding him quietly of the time left,
3. reminding him quietly of the incentive he's working for in staying on task and completing work,
4. asking him if he needs help with a particular problem,
5. providing help with the problem he got stuck on.
Prompts can be of other types, too. Researchers found that putting a vibrating device (like a cell phone with the ringer turned off) in a child's pocket, timed to go off intervals, served as a prompt to the child to make a social initiation to another child, such as inviting him to play, or asking a social question. Artificial as these prompts may seem, they can help to make appropriate behaviors more habitual and give the child opportunities to get reinforced for success. Then, over time, he will be able to generalize the behaviors (use them in other settings with other people) and become independent of the prompts.
