Land We Can Share: Teaching Literacy to Students with Autism - Softcover

Paula Kluth; Chandler-Olcott Ed.D., Kelly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557668558 ISBN 13: 9781557668554

Publisher: Brookes Publishing, 2007

Synopsis

Teachers are going to love this book! Passionate and practical, it moves beyond "sight words" and other functional literacy skills and provides the know-how for bringing quality, meaningful literacy instruction to students with autism. Authored by respected, dynamic scholars in autism and literacy, the book breaks new ground as it focuses specifically on ways in which educators can improve literacy outcomes for students with autism spectrum disorders in Grades K–12 classrooms.

Teachers will learn:

• research-based practices in reading and writing instruction, including those consistent with the recommendations of Reading First



• ideas for planning lessons, differentiating instruction, and designing a classroom environment that promotes literacy learning while addressing the individual needs of learners with autism
• techniques for assessing students who do not or cannot show their literacy learning in traditional ways due to communication or learning differences



• strategies for including students with autism in a wide range of classroom literacy activities



• teaching tips from the words and experiences of people with autism spectrum labels and from the authors' own extensive classroom experience

This guidebook brings cutting-edge literacy concepts to special educators who are already familiar with autism but may not have specific training in teaching reading skills and is an essential "literacy meets autism" primer for general educators and reading specialists. For all readers, the book underscores the ways in which literacy can help every learner achieve a more fulfilling, rich, and inclusive academic life."

About this title

About the Author

Paula Kluth, Ph.D., is one of today's most popular and respected experts on autism and inclusive education. Through her work as an independent consultant and the high-energy presentations she gives to professionals across the country, Dr. Kluth helps educators and families create responsive, engaging schooling experiences for students with disabilities and their peers, too. An internationally respected scholar and author, Dr. Kluth has written or cowritten several books for Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., including "You're Going to Love This Kid!": Teaching Students with Autism in the Inclusive Classroom, Second Edition (2010); Pedro's Whale (2010); From Tutor Scripts to Talking Sticks: 100 Ways to Differentiate Instruction in K–12 Classrooms (2010); "A Is for All Aboard!" (2010); "A Land We Can Share": Teaching Literacy to Students with Autism (2008); and "Just Give Him the Whale!": 20 Ways to Use Fascinations, Areas of Expertise, and Strengths to Support Students with Autism (2008).

Kelly Chandler-Olcott, Ed.D., is an associate professor in Syracuse University’s Reading and Language Arts Center, where she directs the English Education program. Aformer secondary English and social studies teacher, she now teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in content literacy, English methods, literacy and technology, and writing for professional publication. She was awarded a Meredith Recognition Award for excellence in university teaching in 2000.

Dr. Chandler-Olcott’s research interests include adolescents’ technologymediated literacy practices, classroom-based inquiry by teachers, content literacy, and inclusive approaches to literacy instruction. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she and several colleagues recently completed data collection for a multiyear study of the literacy demands that reform-based mathematics curricula present for students in urban secondary classrooms. Her newest research project is a literacy intervention situated in an inclusive humanities class in an urban middle school.

Dr. Chandler-Olcott’s work has been published by such journals as English Education, Journal of Teacher Education, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and Reading Research Quarterly. She has also co-authored four books, the most recent being Spelling Inquiry: How One Elementary School Caught the Mnenomic Plague (Stenhouse, 1999), with the Mapleton Teacher-Research Group; and Tutoring Adolescent Literacy Learners: A Guide for Volunteers (Guilford, 2005), with Kathleen Hinchman.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpted from A Land We Can Share
By Paula Pluth, Ph.D. & Kelly Chandler-Olcott, Ed.D.
©2008. Brookes Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF AUTISM

Although no two students with autism will look, behave, communicate, or learn in exactly the same way, students with this label do share some general characteristics. We believe that knowledge of these common characteristics—and more specifically, knowledge of how each might play out in the context of literacy learning—can be extremely useful for educators seeking to design responsive literacy instruction for individuals with autism. Consequently, we share some of the most significant characteristics, including movement, sensory, communication, social, and learning differences, in this section. After providing a brief definition of each difference, we discuss how they are experienced by people with autism and how each might affect literacy.

Movement Differences

Movement differences describe symptoms involving both excessive and atypical movement and the lack of typical movement. Individuals with movement differences may walk with an uneven gait; engage in repetitive movements such as rocking, hand flapping, or pacing; produce speech that is unintentional; stutter; or struggle to make the transition from room to room or situation to situation. Individuals may experience difficulties in starting, executing, continuing, stopping, combining, or switching movements, thoughts, or postures, and disturbances may range from very simple movements (e.g., raising a hand, pushing a button) to those affecting overall levels of activity and behavior (e.g., completing a task).

Understanding Movement Differences

For some students with autism, even the simplest tasks can be problematic. For instance, Jamie Burke, a young man with autism, has commented on his frustration with not being able to tie his shoes as a young child. This frustration was exacerbated by the fact that his teachers felt the task was not only important but also a measure of his intellect:

"So many things were hard for me to learn. I now think it was so foolish to ask me to learn to tie my shoes. My brain moved into hiding the reason for not being able to do it, but yet my school believed it important mostly as a way to tell you that you are not just greatly smart." (2005, p. 251)

Although all of us may experience minor or subtle movement differences from time to time (e.g., jiggling our feet when anxious, being unable to complete a motor task when we are very stressed out), many people with autism experience significant movement problems on a regular basis. Consider, for example, this description from Tyler Fihe, a young man with autism

"I never really know when sounds are coming out of my mouth or when my arms need to move or when my legs need to run and jump. . . . My eyes are unable to move up and down and left to right at will without me moving my head in the directions I'm facing." (2000, p. 1)

Fihe's description of movement problems helps us better understand why students engage in behaviors associated with autism such as gaze avoidance. Taking his perspective, one can understand that lack of eye contact is not necessarily about social avoidance and that, in fact, for many with autism it is a necessary strategy that helps them interact with others. Fihe also challenges the notion that all behavior is communication or that all movements are intentional. As he illustrates, to some individuals, movement problems are just problems with movement and nothing more.

According to Donnellan and Leary (1995), atypical movements often mask the competence of individuals with autism who exhibit them, with some observers attributing the movement difficulties to other disabilities or to low cognition. In the classroom, a teacher who is unaware of movement problems might assume, erroneously, that a student who is gazing up at the ceiling or pacing in the back of the room is not attending to a lecture, when in fact, he or she may be behaving in this way without knowing it or perhaps even as a deliberate strategy to enhance attention. Paula had a student, for instance, who had a hard time sitting for teacher–directed instruction. Too much quiet time in his seat made him uncomfortable, but he was often very interested in the teacher's long presentations. During these longer lectures, it was not unusual for this student to flap his hands, rock back and forth, and even jump in the air. To respond to the young man's need for movement, the teacher allowed him to stand at a lectern, pace in the back of the room, or even take notes on the chalkboard when she was presenting information.

Gunilla Gerland pointed out another way that problems with what she calls "automatization" can cause students on the autism spectrum to be misunderstood by their teachers:

"The funny thing is that when you do everything as if it was the first time (which is the case if you have poor automatic motor skills) you usually do it better or more neatly than other people—this makes it even harder for others to understand that you have a problem with this." (1999, n. p.)

Teachers who are not aware of the extraordinary effort and concentration required for some people with autism to suppress, control, or channel their movements may wonder why their students do not consistently perform well when faced with physical tasks such as drawing recognizable images or operating a computer with efficiency.

Movement Differences and Literacy

Students with movement problems may have a range of struggles with literacy instruction, especially in classrooms with rigid expectations for student behavior. For instance, many students with autism have a difficult time sitting in a chair or at a desk to read, write, or listen for a sustained period of time. It may be challenging for them to signal their desire to enter into a classroom discussion if they cannot conform to the conventional method of raising one's hand to be called on by the teacher. And they may find the physical motions associated with reading— from tracking print with the eyes to turning the pages of a book—to be difficult to perform or to coordinate with other movements.

Imagine, given these issues, the difficulties presented for students with autism by one of the most common of literacy activities: the teacher read aloud. A daily occurrence in most elementary classrooms, though somewhat less prevalent in secondary schools, this structure typically requires learners to listen to the teacher while they sit quietly, often as a tightly clustered group in a carpeted area, with student interruptions sanctioned only when they are related to the story and signaled by a raised hand. Unless the teacher accepts more than one way to participate, the norms of such an instructional event are likely to be violated by the rocking, hand flapping, or involuntary speech that many students with autism may demonstrate in these kinds of settings.

Handwriting presents another particularly significant struggle (Grandin, 1995; Hall, 2001; Mukhopadhyay, 2000; Shore, 2003). As Temple Grandin, a woman with autism, described, having poor penmanship may cause not only academic problems but also general frustration and angst:

"I was the last person in my fourth grade to get the penmanship award. This was a big deal to the children because when the penmanship was good enough, the teacher designated you as "scribe" and you were given a set of colored pencils. I didn't care so much about the "title," but I coveted the colored pencils. I tried very hard and still I was last to qualify. . . . Learning math was even more difficult because I had a British teacher, Mr. Brown. He was a very proper Englishman and made the class do the math problems with a fountain pen. We had to rule the plus and minus signs and be ever so neat. It was bad enough trying to understand math but having to be neat besides was impossible. No matter how hard I tried, my papers were splattered with ink." (1995, p. 37)

Anecdotes like Grandin's are about more than the difficulties of meeting a fussy teacher's expectations for neatness because students' lack of facility with letter formation and the other physical aspects of writing can often interfere with their fluency—the ease with which they compose—when they try to transfer their ideas to paper. We share some ideas in Chapter 6 about strategies for supporting student writers both physically and cognitively.

Although many students with autism in today's classrooms are freed from some of their handwriting woes by the availability of word processing software (Temple Grandin attended school at a time when personal computers were unavailable in schools), such technologies are not available for all students or for all literacy–related tasks. Authors who write about their more recent school experiences, still lament handwriting as a particular challenge given the physical manifestations of their disability.

Sensory Differences

People with autism tend to have unusual sensory experiences. They routinely report differences in hearing, touch, smell, sight, or taste. Individuals may report that they are too sensitive or not sensitive enough in any one (or in more than one) of these areas. In other cases, students may have difficulty interpreting a sense.

Understanding Sensory Differences

Jared Blackburn, a man with autism, described how sensory differences can cause discomfort and frustration for those who experience them:

"One common effect of these heightened senses is that autistic people are vulnerable to sensory overload with continued low–level bombardment. This may also result from too much emotional or social stimulation. Autistic people may become overloaded in situations that would not bother (or might even entertain) a normal person. When overloaded, autistic people have trouble concentrating, may feel tired or confused, and some may experience physical pain. Too much overload may lead to tantrums or emotional outburst." (1997, n.p.)

Students with sensory problems may experience anything from slight discomfort to annoyance to distraction to the full sensory overload that Blackburn describes. Touch and proximity can be challenging for individuals with autism. It is not uncommon for these individuals to avoid being touched, to be able to tolerate only some types of touch, or to use touch in unusual ways (e.g., to be connected to or to learn about a person or object). One student we know, for instance, could not abide being touched softly. If the teacher brushed his hand or tried to guide him somewhere by lightly grasping his shoulder, he screamed as if in pain. If she gave him a firm handshake or clapped him on the back instead, he did not appear to be negatively affected and, in many cases, seemed to welcome these less gentle interactions. Other people with autism appear to find certain kinds of pressure on their bodies to be soothing. Schwarz (2006), for instance, tells a story about a student with autism who loved to be "squished" in between the gymnastics mats in his school. And Hall (2001) reported that his "jammie days," those spent reading in a sleeping bag that tightly enclosed his body, were among his favorites.

Autism also affects some individuals' hearing perception. Students may be bothered by sounds that teachers cannot even detect, as Tyler Fihe, a young man with autism, reported:

"I hear things that many people can't hear. For example, I can be in one room of the house and hear what my mother is saying on the telephone even when she has the door shut. There are also certain sounds that are painful to listen to like the microwave, the telephone ring, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, the blender, babies crying, vacuum cleaners, and my mom's VW [van] when it just starts up." (2000, p. 1)

As Fihe pointed out, a person with autism may experience anxiety over a range of noises and sounds, including those that may appear benign to the average person. For instance, an individual might be completely distressed by the sound of a crayon moving across a tablet or frightened by the hissing of a radiator. Many people with autism also have trouble understanding conversation or verbal directions if they have trouble processing sound.

Individuals with autism also may be affected by visual sensitivities to certain types of light, colors, or patterns. As Liane Holliday Willey, a woman with Asperger syndrome, described, visual sensitivity not only can have a negative impact on the person's sensory system but also can cause the individual to become fearful or anxious in general:

"Bright lights, mid–day sun, reflected lights, strobe lights, flickering lights, fluorescent lights; each seemed to sear my eyes . . . my head would feel tight, my stomach would churn, and my pulse would run my heart ragged until I found a safety zone." (1999, p. 26)

It's important to note, however, that people with autism do not always experience sensory differences in a negative way. In some cases, their heightened awareness of sensory input can be a positive attribute or a source of enjoyment. For instance, the writers of many of the autobiographies we've read report particular strengths in visualization that they link to their autism. As one of the most articulate authors on this subject, Temple Grandin, wrote:

"I think in pictures. Words are like a second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full–color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head. When somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures. . . . I value my ability to think visually, and I would never want to lose it." (1995, p. 19)

Other individuals can appreciate and discriminate among auditory data:

"Fine things happened when I mixed my voice with the monologues and original oratories I wrote. I would play with my voice, working it, pushing it to reach new tones and pitch, different volumes, and a myriad of rhythms. I enjoyed the feeling my voice left on the ear, the way it resonated in my throat and the sensation it created as it slipped past my lips. My voice did as much as my thoughts to choose the words I would put in my work. I would search long and hard to find words that tickled, words that had smooth textures, and words that warmed when I spoke them. I knew I had written something great when I found words that looked, sounded, and felt good." (Holliday Willey, 1999, p. 36)

And Echo Fling, a mother of a young man with Asperger syndrome, shares that her son, Jimmy, has a sense of smell that is not only remarkable but also incredibly useful in certain situations. One day, Fling explained, neighborhood boys were playing together with Star Wars figurines. Each boy had brought his own set of characters to add to the game. When it was time to go home, however, the boys were troubled by the fact that they didn' know which figures belonged to which boys—all of the characters had gotten mixed up in the play scenarios. Fling's son solved the problem quickly: "Jimmy held each one up to his nose, took a quick sniff, and immediately told the other boy 'this one is yours'" (2000, p. 146). Jimmy also appears to ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Brookes Publishing
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1557668558
• ISBN 13: 9781557668554
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248