WHAT IS AUTISM? 1

WHAT IS AUTISM?FOR THOSE OF US WHO TEACH!

Autism is a complex neurological disorder that affects the way people identify and experience emotions, socialize, speak and understand language, stabilize themselves physically and respond to sensory inputs. It is estimated to affect 1 in every 110 children. It is more prevalent in boys, affecting approximately 1 in 70.

Autism is often called a “spectrum” disorder because it affects people differently. Think of the spectrum as a number line. One child on the spectrum might have extreme responses to smells, while the child next to him can hear whispers across the room. One child may have expressive language with little understanding of its meaning, while the child next to him might understand meaning, but not be able to utter a word.

The Autism Spectrum – Like a Number Line

In fact, if you think of a number line, think about the area far to the left, around zero. On this part of the line, you will find people with very severe forms of autism. They may not be able to talk or understand language. They may have intellectual disabilities. They may have more extreme responses to sensory stimulation. Around the middle of the number line (or spectrum) you might see people with language but who still have some intellectual limitations and social difficulties. On the higher end of the number line, you’ll find people with “high level autism” or “Asperger syndrome.” People with these forms of autism can have average to above-average intelligence, but they are often still highly stimulated by their senses, and have social differences.

Trip to the Mall

So why do we have this “spectrum?” To help you understand, let’s go to the Oxford Valley Mall. We have to pick up a belt for our son from Macy’s, stop at Verizon to get a cover for our cell phone, and then grab a soda on our way out because we have a long drive ahead of us when we leave. So we park the car, walk past the people smoking (holding our breath because we don’t like the smell of smoke), notice the different smells and the buzz of conversation coming from the food court as we walk by. We turn left and head past the elevator, because we want more exercise. We walk to the far end of the mall to walk down the stairs, head to Macy’s, buy our belt, stop at Verizon, then walk back upstairs, buy our soda and go. While we’re doing this, we might be thinking about what we’re going to make for dinner or the route we’re going to take on our drive.

The point is, our brains allow us to multi-task, and we do that every day – practically every moment of every day!

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Now let’s go back to the mall. This time, however, we’re going to follow the experiences of a person with autism. As we enter the mall, we walk through the clouds of smoke and the smell is so strong that it makes us nauseous, causes an immediate headache and makes us dizzy. When we get through that experience, we walk though the doors and are immediately bombarded with the smells of pizza, coffee, bourbon chicken and the din of hundreds of conversations. If we look toward the diners, the colors of their clothing pop out at us and we’re practically blinded by the red, green and white lights advertising the different food displays.

With all this stimulation, we try to recall what we came to the mall to do and finally remember that we want to go downstairs to Macy’s. But when we get to the elevator, there’s a big sign saying “Out of Order.” So we proceed to the escalator, but there are dozens of mothers juggling children in one arm and hoisting baby strollers in the other, all trying to make their way downstairs. So we move toward the stairs. But when we get there, we see how steep they are, and we’re afraid of heights. Now we don’t know what to do.

This is the autistic brain. It is filled with roadblocks, altered pathways, false starts and dead ends. Many pathways to social interaction are blocked completely, while others (for instance, math and music) work more quickly than we can imagine.

How Autism affects the Brain

Some current research is showing that autism affects up to 21 different genes that control brain function. Other research is indicating that in the autistic brain, there is a fraction of a second delay in the timing of brain activity. Doesn’t seem like much? Think about the millions of signals your brain processes every fraction of a second – every nuance of what you’re seeing, smelling, touching. Think about the millions of connections your brain makes to process these messages while at the same time making sense of the words you’re hearing or reading, or the instantaneous linking of previous experiences to new occurrences, so that you know how to respond to messages. Now delay every one of those connections by a fraction of a second. Messages are out of whack. Processing of input is exaggerated, delayed, detoured or blocked.

The other part of brain function that you should know is that autism affects that area of the brain (the frontal lobe) that controls a lot of what we do, including impulse control, judgment, the production of language, motor function, problem solving, working memory, socialization, planning and controlling and behavior. Whew, that’s a lot.

What does this mean for people with Autism?

So what does this mean for people with autism? It means they have extreme difficulties making sense of a disorganized, constantly changing world. They have a

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constant need for structure, which gives them some control over the chaos they experience. It means that social interaction is confusing and anxiety-producing. It means that language is extraordinarily complex and difficult to comprehend and abstract language is impossible to figure out. It means that sensory inputs can create internal and external distractions that interfere and sometimes block their ability to learn, to relate to others, to control themselves. It means that their ability to generalize what they’ve learned in one setting to another is often impossible without repetition that would drive a neurotypical brain to distraction. (In case you didn’t get that, someone who does not have autism is often referred to as neurotypical rather than normal!) It means that processing language without visual representations is nearly impossible for some and for others, it means that impulsive speech is typical and the ability to understand the effect of words on others non-existent.

Let me add, however, that not every person with autism demonstrates the same characteristics. Remember the number line?

How do People with Autism Think?

So what does this mean for us as teachers? To explain that, it’s important to understand how people with autism think.

Temple Grandin is a gifted animal scientist, a Ph.D. who has designed one third of all livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism – because she has autism. Her explanations of what it is like to function in the “outside” world have led to a far greater understanding of the disorder.

What does this have to do with thinking styles? Well, Grandin describes thinking styles something like this: the way a person learns can be likened to the way someone takes in nourishment. The way a person thinks, can be likened to the way someone digests the nourishment.

People with autism have three basic thinking styles: Visual, mathematical/musical, and verbal/logical.

Let’s look first at visual. Try to visualize, for a moment, a plastic container that’s black. It looks kind of like a wave and it’s hollow inside. At one end it has teeth and at the other, it has a big circle with a hole in the middle. What is it?

Can’t guess? Well, scroll down a few lines, click on the image, and make it bigger. You’ll see what it is.

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Did you guess? Did you know instantaneously? Well, not only do people with autism have that blasted fraction of a second delay, but without visual representations of what we are saying, they may find it impossible to understand our words. After all, how long did it take you to understand my description?

According to Grandin, people who are visual thinkers actually think in pictures. These are often not just snapshots of words; they can turn our stories into feature-length films!

Listen to what Grandin says in her book, “Thinking in Pictures:”

“When I read, I translate written words into color movies or I simply store a photo of the written page to be read later. When I retrieve the material, I see a photocopy of the page in my imagination. I can then read it like a TelePrompTer. It is likely that Raymond, the autistic savant depicted in the movie RainMan used a similar strategy to memorize telephone books, maps and other information…

“When I am unable to convert text to pictures, it is usually because the text has no concrete meaning. Some philosophy books and articles about the cattle futures market are simply incomprehensible. It is much easier for me to understand written text that describes something that can be easily translated into pictures.”Many people with autism must draw a picture or build something when trying to solve a problem. Grandin notes that when she designs animal containment structures, it is as though she is above them, looking down. She can turn them in all which ways so she can view the structure from every angle prior to building it.

Now let’s look at mathematical/musical thinkers. Why do we link these two areas? Because they both deal in patterns. Although people with autism often have difficulty making patterns of experiences (remember, they have difficulty generalizing?) many can notice patterns in areas we can’t imagine. A student might notice that all the characters created by a single author all have odd numbered birthdays. Or that all the zebras at the zoo have precisely six stripes from the bottom of their necks to their eyes. Or a five-year-old child might automatically understand musical patterns and be able to play Beethoven on the piano, with apparent intuitiveness! But, they can also get lost in numbers. If you give them a verbal word problem (would we actually do that??) saying , ‘there were 10 children

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in line,” Kyle may begin thinking how they were lined up. Were they lined up by age, by sex, by hair color, by clothing color? He might even start asking you these questions on his mind – and you might think he’s being disruptive, or impertinent.

Verbal/logical thinkers have a love of words. Their brains are constantly overflowing with words and their logical tendencies might encourage them to place everything in order. They will often make lists to learn or be focused on things such as train timetables, or bus routes. They may want to organize your classroom library by alphabetical order. They may enjoy history, or excel in math word problems. Sometimes, however, words may simply pop out of the page at them and look like the visual below. In cases such as this, it is hard for the person to identify meaning to the words. I knew a student who loved word lists. His teacher “gave” him a large white board and every day he’d write his word lists, starting with “a” words, then “b” words, and so-on, a different letter per day.

On the logical side of this thinking style, are those people with autism who love charts and graphs, crossword puzzles and word puzzles.

Now you know a little about how the brain of a person with autism works. Now let’s explore how that affects their every-day lives. We’re going to look at five areas:

social abilities, language difficulties, sensory sensitivities, special interests and behavior.

Please be patient, however, because many of these areas overlap, so forgive me for my repetitiveness in some areas!

How do we as teachers confuse our students?

A teacher who uses every word to teach is going to have more success than a teacher who does a lot of “talking.” For instance: A teacher says “We’re going to edit our writing using a strategy called “CUPS,” as she draws a large cup on a saucer on the board. “CUPS is something called a pneumonic to help us remember the steps to editing.” She writes CUPS in capital letters down the side of the cup. “C – complete sentences. A complete sentence is a group of words that include a subject, a verb, and express a complete thought. U is for upper/lower case. We begin a sentence with upper case…. See how every word is focused on the topic?

Now listen to this teacher: “Remember we’ve talked about how important it is to edit what you write. You write something first. It might be a letter, or an essay. You also might write an advertisement. I like to write notes to my friends. No matter what you write, you need to edit…..”

See how many words she’s used, and still not gotten to the subject!!

Limit your words and enhance your impact!!

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Social Abilities

Let’s think for a moment about the difficulties people with autism have socially. Remember we said that autism affects the way people feel and interpret emotion? Well, people with autism often don’t understand emotion at all. Think about all the processing that goes along with emotions. First, you have to understand that other people have emotions. Then you have to be able to detect what emotions they’re feeling. Finally, you have to understand how your behaviors, affects others emotions.

A lot of expectations that people with autism cannot meet.

Because of the blockages in the brain pathways, people with autism don’t automatically understand “perspective-taking.” They don’t understand the “hidden curriculum” of social interaction. Facial expressions are meaningless. Body language is off the radar.

In other words, they aren’t able to walk in someone else’s shoes. This is often a blind area in the autistic brain. Think about a time when you asked a student with autism why a character in a story might have made a particular decision. You probably got an answer something like this: “Because he made the decision.”

To be social, one not only needs to understand how others are thinking or feeling, one also has to understand and care about how others perceive you.

So what is it about the social arena that causes difficulty for a person with autism?First, people’s faces and expressions and body language are difficult, if not impossible to interpret. And, people with autism are often unable to understand the implications of voice tone. (Read the following sentence, emphasizing words differently. “You need to leave the room at once.” “You need to leave the room at once.” “You need to leave the room at once.” “You need to leave the room at once.” Do you see all the various meanings based only on tone of voice? That’s great if you do. People with autism often do not!)

With all this misunderstanding, talking to others can cause great anxiety for people with autism. Now take into consideration behavioral rules. We know that we should be standing about an arm’s length away from someone when in social conversation. This is not an automatic understanding for people with autism. In fact there’s an entire “hidden curriculum” about social situations that people with autism don’t understand naturally.

Every social cue has to be taught to them, preferably using visuals; repeatedly and in various environments (remember, generalizing isn’t easy). I’m going to give you a very visual example, and forgive me, I don’t mean to offend. But if you have a young student who is using the urinal in the boys room, he has to be taught that he doesn’t pull his pants down to urinate! And he also has to be taught that when multiple

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gentlemen are using the same facilities, one does not engage in conversation with them! That’s what we mean when we say “hidden curriculum.”

Here are some other examples: The person whose birthday it is gets to unwrap the presents all by himself. It is inappropriate to take your clothes off in public, even if you’re hot. Keep food in your mouth at all times. Avoid taking a bite of food and spitting

it back onto the plate, even if you don’t like it.And here’s my favorite:

When riding on an airplane, don’t tell the person next to you that he is too fat for the seat.

Another area of social interactions that we’ll touch upon is the hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity to sensory input. We’ll talk about that later, but for right now I’ll let you know that sensory stimulation often makes social interactions uncomfortable.

So what type of social blunders might you see with someone with autism? They might blurt out comments without concern for others’ feelings. (‘Your hair looks funny today.’ ‘Your breath stinks of coffee,’ or the one I love when I’m wearing flip-flops, bunions and all, ‘What’s wrong with your feet?’ ) They might say things that are obvious to us. I work with a little boy who walked up to a classmate and announced “You’re black.” If their mom says, upon meeting the newest born member of the family, “isn’t she beautiful?” our friend with autism might believe the comment needs answering and say, “no, she’s ugly.” (After all, her face is wrinkled, and covered with red blotches, her head is still pointy and her eyes are squished shut. People with autism say what they see. And let’s face it, newborns can be very ugly!)

Language Difficulties

OK, so now you know a little about social difficulties, how does language enter in? Remember our visual thinkers? Our language is often confusing to them if we can’t decipher it with pictures. Look at this one, for instance:

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Or this:

“It’s raining cats and dogs.”

Now think about how often you use idioms or abstract language. What we say is often quite confusing for people with autism, especially young children who have far limited

opportunities to learn what language means!

What else causes language difficulty? Well, at the lowest part of the spectrum people may not be able to verbalize and this inability to communicate can often lead to inappropriate and unexpected behaviors.

But there’s more. People with autism often don’t understand the emotion behind our words. They don’t “get it” when we use our tone for emphasis. And often times we don’t finish our sentences, and this leads to……well, you know how that ends up don’t you? In short, we have certain unwritten expectations when it comes to language, that aren’t automatically clear to the person with autism.

Let’s look for a minute at the child with autism who receives a birthday present from a friend. The friend has carefully chosen the present, a dinosaur because our child with autism loves dinosaurs, and knows everything about them. Our child unwraps the present and sees that it’s a plastic stegosaurus. He tosses it off to the side and reaches for the next present. We automatically think, ‘what a rude kid,’ and we prompt our child to say “thank you.” But here’s what’s going on inside of his

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head. “Bobby told me that I’m going to love my present. But this is a stegosaurus and I already have 15 stegosaurus’ and this one’s brown and yellow and stegosaurus’ weren’t really brown and yellow, so this is a lie. And this stegosaurus has five spines and I know that real ones had two rows of at least 10 spines. And how can I love a present? My mom says that I should love her, but I don’t even know what love is, so how can I love my present?”

What should we do?

So what can we do? We can take these opportunities to teach children with autism what they “should” be doing. If Paul walks down the hallway staring straight ahead and not saying “good morning,” to teachers or classmates, we have to teach Paul our expectations. When we teach social niceties, we also have to break down our expectations to each step of the task. (See Expected/Unexpected Behaviors!)

Here’s an example. Christopher has just left the classroom and ran down the hall on his way to lunch, bumping into Emma on his way. We use this as an opportunity to instruct Christopher on proper behavior, model the behavior for him, and expect him to experience it himself.

We catch up with Christopher, get his attention and say: “Christopher, when we move through the hallways, we have to walk. If we run, we can hurt ourselves or others. And if we accidentally bump into someone, we need to say ‘Excuse me, “ or “I’m sorry.’ Let’s do it together.” Then walk Christopher back to Emma, prompt him to apologize, then walk him back to the classroom and tell him he can now walk to the cafeteria. We also have to keep in mind why Christopher was running in the first place, but more on that under behaviors!

Let’s look at another example: You want your student with autism to clean the mess off his desk.

Wrong: Clean up your desk

Right: Look at each paper. Throw away the ones out that you no longer need (you may have to

help your student identify these!) Punch holes in the ones you’ll keep (you may have to show him how) Put these papers in your blue binder by date with the most recent one

first (you may have to explain recent) Stack your books in your desk, placing the large ones on the bottom

and the smaller ones on top (you may have to explain ‘stack’.)

Sensory Sensitivities

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You’ve set up a small workspace in a New York Subway station and are trying to write a 20-page paper while hundreds of commuters swarm around you, bumping you and your laptop repeatedly. The noise is deafening and you hear snippets of conversations as though people were screaming in your ears, “Don’t forget to take my suit to the cleaner,” “My boss wants me to ….. “ “I’ll see you Saturday at….” On top of that, the squeal of the subway on the tracks is ear piercing. The smell of the metal turns your stomach, as do the overpowering smells of hundreds of different types of perfumes and after shaves. How easily does a well-reasoned essay emerge from your mind? Do you think that at some point, you might just want to snap your eyes closed and clamp your hands over your ears? Have you ever seen a child with autism doing just that?

This is often how people with autism struggle in society. Every sense can be heightened, overwhelming them again and again. (Remember, the brain has difficulties developing patterns, so experiences are often always new!) So every time the subway squeals, it’s unexpected, and frightening.

In short, people with autism often don’t receive sensory input consistently and sometimes the correct sensory messages don't connect with the input. You might hear a child with autism saying that a bell doesn’t smell right. Or a child might resist eating yellow foods because they might burn his insides. (Actually, there is a connection here that to us might seem strange, but for someone with autism is perfectly understandable. It goes like this…. If the sun is yellow, and the sun is hot, then yellow can mean hot, and therefore yellow food can burn your insides. See, perfectly logical.)

What else might we see? Brian laughs when he sees his teacher bang her shin on the desk because her hopping looks funny and the sound seems like she might be laughing.

Bobby approaches an African American classmate, someone new to the school, and says, “Are your parents monkeys?” because he just read a story about monkeys that were brown.

Edward walks up the sliding board because he can hold on to the edges and power himself up. If he slides down, the swiftness of movement scares him and the air that moves past him during the slide feels like needles pricking his skin.

Jennifer loves to swing because the gentle movement is comforting to her, but that same movement makes Alyssa feel nauseous.

Eric loves to spin because it helps to block out all of the overwhelming sensory messages bombarding him.

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Harold drags his hand along the wall whenever he walks the hallway because the coolness of the cinderblock blocks feels good on his hand.

Michael watches his feet when he walks because he’s afraid if he doesn’t focus on them he will fall.

Special Interests

Ryan knows everything about whales. He knows they are marine animals, to which scientific suborder they belong, that whales are neither dolphins nor porpoises (they belong in a different suborder), which whales feed off the ocean bottom, and so on. He can draw whales perfectly and he can relate just about every experience he has to whales.

Often times these people with autism are referred to as “little professors,” because they seem to know intuitively everything about their special interest. And while many people with autism do read about and explore their special interests, others say they’re not sure how they know, what they know, they just know it!!

Special interests can be as varied as the individual. Some people love trains, others maps. Boys will often have a special interest in famous heroes or things they can control, which can’t talk back! Girls will often show intense interest in actors, television shows or singers.

In the classroom, we might see these interests pop up as blurts to our instruction! For instance, Joey loves owls. So if you’re reading a story to the class and mention that a bird flew by the window, Joey might chime in “I know that wasn’t an owl, because owl’s only fly at night and because it is daytime in the story, it cannot be an owl. But if it were nighttime, it could be a spotted owl because…..” And off Joey goes, making off-topic comments again. But is it really off topic? Not for Joey. For Joey this is a natural progression of thought.

Behavior

As teachers, we know that all behavior is rooted in a function. For people with autism, behaviors are often times rooted in their differences from us.

For instance, Joey, above, always blurts out his “off-topic” thoughts. Charlie clamps his hands over his ears, rocks back and forth and starts humming to shut out the overwhelming sounds out in the hallway. Albert gets sent to the principal’s office because he tells a girl she has a nice “tush” and pinches her behind – just like daddy does to mommy in the kitchen. Emily walks off in the middle of a teen-aged girl

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conversation about new clothes because all clothes are prickly to her and she doesn’t understand how anyone could be interested in them. Harold tells his teacher that he hates the way she smells because he doesn’t like the smell of coffee and she drinks a cup before school every day. (And, he doesn’t realize that his words could hurt her feelings, or just be considered inappropriate.)

Bruce tries to listen to our lesson, but there are no pictures to accompany our words so he can’t understand what we’re saying. Harold tries to listen but the constant buzz and flickering of the fluorescent lights overwhelm him. Gregory wants to listen to his teacher, but it hurts him to sit in one place for long, and biting at his fingers helps take his mind off how much he wants to move around.

Peter is horribly upset because the routine that he had gotten used to with his teacher is broken because today he has a substitute. The substitute told the class his teacher is sick. Peter thinks, ‘how sick is she? Is she going to be out all week? Is she going to die? I like my teacher, I don’t want her to die. My cat died last year and I still cry. ‘ The day’s schedule isn’t posted on the board, so I don’t know what’s going to happen next, the sub is wearing a putrid-smelling perfume, her voice is loud and scratchy and she won’t let me close the classroom door when the people in the hallway are walking past, sounding like a herd of elephants. Finally, when Susie asked me why I’m not taking notes like the teacher said, I turned to her and screamed, “You’re stupid. Leave me alone.” The sub sends Peter to the principal’s office for calling Susie ‘stupid.’

As Teachers, We Need To:

Now that you know a little more about autism, let’s look at what we as teachers need to do.

Classroom practice for children with autism or Asperger syndrome in mainstream school will need to take into account the following issues:

the child's lack of generalization of learning (every situation appears different to the child)

the lack of incidental learning (everything needs to be directly taught)

the literalness of understanding (concrete rather than abstract)

difficulties in becoming involved in group activities including play and games (failure of perspective taking)

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possible reactions to over-stimulation and the fact that this can easily occur in situations that other children cope well with

observed behaviors which might be seen as simple naughtiness or non- compliance may in fact have a range of other meanings for the child with autism or Asperger syndrome (i.e. the observed 'naughty' or 'non-compliant' behavior may in fact be the child's only way of indicating the need for help or attention, or the need to escape from stressful situations, of obtaining desired objects, .of demonstrating his/her lack of understanding, of protesting against unwanted events, of gaining stimulation).

The programming for an individual pupil will need to be based on the assessments of the pupil's individual needs and developed by close collaboration of all those involved with the pupil. However, basic strategies would include:

Basic strategies (acknowledging the overlap between the following categories)

Providing a very clear structure and a set daily routine (including for play). o Ensuring the pupil knows the day's program at the start of each day

and can make frequent reference to this throughout the day, e.g. providing a 'picture board' with the day's activities 'laid out'. You can involve the child in this by developing an individual picture schedule for the child’s desk. The child can move the activity 'picture' to the 'finished' section on the board before moving on to the next activity.

Teaching what "finished" means and helping the pupil to identify when something has finished and something different has started.

Providing warning of any impending change of routine, or switch of activity Give advance warning regarding substitute teachers! Clear, simple requests or instructions, one at a time Task analysis – providing instruction on tasks step-by-step to ensure tasks

are manageable and within the child's attention span Break tasks into parts (chunk) tasks that are not preferred by student or are

perceived by the student as being very long. Consider reducing the number of practice items required.

Use “first/then” strategy. The expected task is first, the student’s preferred activity is the “then.”

Using clear and unambiguous language. Avoiding humor/irony/idioms such as "my feet are killing me or it's raining cats and dogs", which will cause bewilderment,

o Specific teaching of common idioms, similes and metaphors, to reduce over-literalness and demonstrate that words are not always to be taken at face value

Emphasizing visual cues and signals Addressing the pupil individually at all times (for example, the pupil may not

realize that an instruction given to the whole class also includes him/her.

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Calling the pupil's name and saying "I need you to listen to this as this is something for you to do" can sometimes work; other times the pupil will need to be addressed individually)

Teach expected/unexpected behaviors for each activity/environment. (This is more than teaching the process for how to do an activity, which may be sufficient for students not on the spectrum)

Simple and shared charts to record progress, and regular use of praise or more tangible rewards to mark good performance

Making clear (including with a firm, but kind, 'No') which behaviors are unacceptable

Ensure that staff does not unintentionally reinforce unexpected behaviors (giving attention to child calling out by telling him/her “no calling out” each time the behavior occurs. Ignoring child or calling on pupils who are raising their hands will not provide attention to the child who seeks it through inappropriate behaviors.) Give proximity praise: praising others nearby for doing expected behaviors

Avoiding sentences like 'Would you like to do this?' as children with this disorder will take your question literally and tell you “yes” or “no” depending on his/her wishes. (It’s time to ….. I’d like you to do …..) Avoid 'Why did you do that?' because children with this disorder may not be able to determine the answer, knowing only that they wanted to. (This necessitates the teaching of ‘cause and effect’)

Practicing newly acquired skills in different settings, in order to foster generalization

Repeating instructions and checking understanding. Using short sentences to ensure clarity of instructions.

Using various means of presentation - visual, physical guidance, peer modeling, kinesthetic, tactile

Ensuring consistency of expectation among all staff... and avoiding any 'backing-down' once a reasonable and manageable target has been set.

Recognizing that some change in manner or behavior may reflect anxiety (which may be triggered by a [minor] change to routine).

Not taking apparently rude remarks personally. Recognizing that these students must have direct instruction regarding acceptable and unacceptable comments and how to generalize the teaching

Not taking behavior aggression personally inasmuch as the target for the pupil's anger may be unrelated to the source of that anger.

Specific teaching of social rules/skills, such as perspective-taking, turn-taking, social distance, social discourse, etc.

Specific teaching, via photographs or video recordings, of how feelings are expressed and communicated, and how, therefore, they can be recognized

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Minimizing/removal of distractors, or providing access to an individual work area or booth, when a task involving concentration is set. Colorful wall displays can be distracting for some pupils, others may find noise very difficult to cope with.

Seeking to link work to the pupil's particular interests, a key strategy that can aid attentiveness

Exploring word-processing, and computer-based learning for literacy. Protecting the pupil from teasing at free times, and providing peers with

some awareness of his/her particular needs. Allowing the pupil to avoid certain activities (such as sports and games)

which s/he may not understand or like; teach student how to participate in same activities, give them time to practice

Support the pupil in open-ended and group tasks by identifying expected/unexpected behaviors make sure the child has a “job” in group activities and is given step-by-step guidance on the performance of the job. Vary the job in continuous group activities.

Allowing some access to fascinations/repetitive behavior as a reward for positive efforts.

Link fascinations (special interests) to lessons Giving students choices on how to complete assignments. For instance, a

verbal thinker might want to develop word puzzles for vocabulary words, a musically inclined thinker might write a song about a historical figure.

Regular opportunity for simple conversation, with increasing use of 'how' and 'why' questions (after direct instruction on answering such questions. “How” and “Why” questions require the student to “problem solve.” Because student lacks perspective taking (putting himself in someone else’s shoes) this ability does not come automatically. Teach “How” and “Why” by teaching perspective taking, cause and effect, reading sequential stories and identifying what might have happened before and after.

Teach that other people have feelings. Enhanced supervision during practical or physical activities Gradually increasing the complexity of reading material (and using books

designed for slower readers but with a more 'grown-up' content) Generous use of manipulatives for math instruction Opportunities for students to engage in activities to imbed understanding of

concepts Use of concrete examples to illustrate concepts

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(Did you figure out what the object was several pages ago? If not, it is pictured below)