Teaching a child with autism to read.
I replied to a post last night on Facebook from a lady looking to teach her son with autism how to read and seeing as I managed to teach my darling girl Charlotte to read and she is only five and a half, I thought that my method might be worth sharing and so here is my response (cleaned up a lot since I wrote it last night) to her.
My daughter is five and a half and reads at the level of a nine year old. It was very difficult at the beginning but she suddenly got there last Christmas and is now reading fluently and beautifully.
When I began teaching Charlotte to read just after she turned four I originally started to try and teach her to read phonetically. This means learning to read words as they are spelt. We firstly learnt what every letter says (Two things that were a great help were firstly the alphablocks on the cbeebies website. They are fun and entertaining and she could watch them for hours and the second thing was an alphabet song from the 'Busy Beavers' that we watched over and over again on you tube. This is the link to it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaMS_of8cKU) but for months after that I tried to get her to blend her letters together to make words and it was no good. She just couldn't get it.
I then bought a box flashcards on line (pictures and words on one side of the card and just words on the other) to see if seeing the word and a picture of the word together would make things any easier for her. The method that I used for introducing each new word was a Montessori method entitled the three period lesson and the three period lesson goes like this. -
First you introduce three words, for example apple, dog and cat. You then show the child each card saying very clearly "This is the word apple - APPLE. This is the word dog - DOG" and so on.
The next step is putting the cards picture face down with only the words visible and mixing them up and then saying "Show me apple; Show me dog" etc.
And the Final step is then holding up each card and asking the child "What is this?"
So the three stages are "This is", "Show me" and "What is this?"
If your think that your child is able for more than this you can introduce more than three words at a time or if you find that they are struggling then perhaps start with only two words at a time. Charlotte is a visual thinker though and loved all of the pictures and so learnt all of this box of flashcards in the space of about a fortnight.
After learning about fifty words by sight it suddenly clicked with Charlotte what I wanted her to do with blending and she then started to blend letters and read words phonetically all by herself.
I then bought new flashcards on line and this time I bought what are known as 'sight words'. Sight words are words like 'the' 'he' 'she' 'people' etc. and these are words you simply learn off by heart by just looking at them. My sister is a teacher and told me that if a child can read these one hundred or so sight words, then they can usually read just about anything because the rules of reading English (or more correctly, the exception to the rules of reading) are in all of these words. Charlotte found these words a little bit more difficult than the flash cards with all of the lovely pictures and so I took this a lot more slowly and only introduced three words a week for the first couple of months and then more and more words a week as she got better at it. Amazingly, one day after she had only learnt about fifty sight words she just picked up what I considered to be quite a difficult book and started to read it out loud (to be precise, the day in question was St. Stephen's day 2012 - I will never forget it :-)). We were all just so happy. What an achievement for a little girl who up until last year only spoke to us using echolalia (learnt words and phrases).
The whole process took a year and four months but we did it EVERY day for at least ten or fifteen minutes and I stopped immediately if I sensed Charlotte getting frustrated or upset. It is so important to remember that children with autism (and probably most typical children as well) cannot learn if they are stressed and anxious and to continue on with the lesson if your child is displaying these feelings is counter-productive as he or she may develop an aversion to the very thing that you are trying to teach.
I have now started teaching Charlotte her tables through flashcards and so far in only two weeks she has learnt her 0+ tables and her 1+ tables so I think that all of this shows that if your child is a visual learner, then I really do believe that flashcards are the way to go.
I hope this method is helpful and clear and that I haven't rambled on too much but if anyone reading this has any questions then feel free to message me or comment below and I will try to answer them.
My daughter is five and a half and reads at the level of a nine year old. It was very difficult at the beginning but she suddenly got there last Christmas and is now reading fluently and beautifully.
When I began teaching Charlotte to read just after she turned four I originally started to try and teach her to read phonetically. This means learning to read words as they are spelt. We firstly learnt what every letter says (Two things that were a great help were firstly the alphablocks on the cbeebies website. They are fun and entertaining and she could watch them for hours and the second thing was an alphabet song from the 'Busy Beavers' that we watched over and over again on you tube. This is the link to it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaMS_of8cKU) but for months after that I tried to get her to blend her letters together to make words and it was no good. She just couldn't get it.
I then bought a box flashcards on line (pictures and words on one side of the card and just words on the other) to see if seeing the word and a picture of the word together would make things any easier for her. The method that I used for introducing each new word was a Montessori method entitled the three period lesson and the three period lesson goes like this. -
First you introduce three words, for example apple, dog and cat. You then show the child each card saying very clearly "This is the word apple - APPLE. This is the word dog - DOG" and so on.
The next step is putting the cards picture face down with only the words visible and mixing them up and then saying "Show me apple; Show me dog" etc.
And the Final step is then holding up each card and asking the child "What is this?"
So the three stages are "This is", "Show me" and "What is this?"
If your think that your child is able for more than this you can introduce more than three words at a time or if you find that they are struggling then perhaps start with only two words at a time. Charlotte is a visual thinker though and loved all of the pictures and so learnt all of this box of flashcards in the space of about a fortnight.
After learning about fifty words by sight it suddenly clicked with Charlotte what I wanted her to do with blending and she then started to blend letters and read words phonetically all by herself.
I then bought new flashcards on line and this time I bought what are known as 'sight words'. Sight words are words like 'the' 'he' 'she' 'people' etc. and these are words you simply learn off by heart by just looking at them. My sister is a teacher and told me that if a child can read these one hundred or so sight words, then they can usually read just about anything because the rules of reading English (or more correctly, the exception to the rules of reading) are in all of these words. Charlotte found these words a little bit more difficult than the flash cards with all of the lovely pictures and so I took this a lot more slowly and only introduced three words a week for the first couple of months and then more and more words a week as she got better at it. Amazingly, one day after she had only learnt about fifty sight words she just picked up what I considered to be quite a difficult book and started to read it out loud (to be precise, the day in question was St. Stephen's day 2012 - I will never forget it :-)). We were all just so happy. What an achievement for a little girl who up until last year only spoke to us using echolalia (learnt words and phrases).
The whole process took a year and four months but we did it EVERY day for at least ten or fifteen minutes and I stopped immediately if I sensed Charlotte getting frustrated or upset. It is so important to remember that children with autism (and probably most typical children as well) cannot learn if they are stressed and anxious and to continue on with the lesson if your child is displaying these feelings is counter-productive as he or she may develop an aversion to the very thing that you are trying to teach.
I have now started teaching Charlotte her tables through flashcards and so far in only two weeks she has learnt her 0+ tables and her 1+ tables so I think that all of this shows that if your child is a visual learner, then I really do believe that flashcards are the way to go.
I hope this method is helpful and clear and that I haven't rambled on too much but if anyone reading this has any questions then feel free to message me or comment below and I will try to answer them.
Comments
Post a Comment