I am a 4th grade teacher. I have two students with autism this year. I have limited experience with autism (3 and 4 year olds). I have looked up many sites on the internet and am currently waiting on the IEP's for each boy.
The two boys are very different but both have speech/communication issues. I guess my question is, what is your experience in working with older children w/ autism? What modifications did you make in the classroom? Please know that I do not have a full time aid and I have 18 other students (3 ELL and 3 behavior issues).
I am a feeling a bit unprepared and looking for any suggestions. Thanks!
I have a high functioning autistic son who is 8. I would love to tell you that I have all the answers you need to help your studnets, but all kids are different. What works for one might not work for another. Your best bet is to talk to their teachers from last year. They know them the best and could give you the best insight. YOu may be surprised to find that they are the easiest of your 18 to worry about! Autistic kids are very literal and most are good at following your rules. E-mail me back anytime and I would be happy to give you more information to help ease your mind. You can also visit our website www.thejtfoundation.org that may help too!
I've had one student with diagnosed autism, and one student who was I'd be willing to bet was autistic, although there was no documentation in his records.
Both were a HOOT to have in class. They didn't socialize with the other kids much, but the other kids were pretty good to try to include them anyway. Both were VERY literal, which made things a little tough since I teach literature, which relies so much on figurative language. One always spoke in complete sentences and always repeated everything. For instance, if I said, "Are you going to the library?" He would say, "You want to know if I'm going to the library?" For both I had to say their names before speaking to them or they didn't answer me. One was very good natured and worked hard on all assignments I gave. The other was generally the same, but had a "meltdown mode" I triggered on a few occasions. Both made good grades, had no aides, and added a lot of unique personality to the room.
One came back to see me last year. He's a junior in high school! He shook my hand, asked how I was doing, and then proceeded to tell me he was practicing shaking hands and looking into people's eyes while he talked.
I have taught 6 or 7 kids with autism- like the others said- for the most part they were a delight to have in class. The kids were very, very different. A couple of my boys did not like to be touched at all and had some self stimulating behaviors (rocking, humming, moving hands). I had one boy who was ESL and autistic....he would get frustrated in class sometimes and stand up and yell, "You FIRED!! You FIRED!!!" . I was fortunate enough to work in a district that provided one on one aides for these kids. You truly get a sense of someone being trapped inside a body.
Ok- so none of that helps you in class. Here are some things that helped me- having all of their notebooks, folders, book covers and pencils to be one color. Easier for them to find. I had a schedule (with pictures) on each of those kids' desks. The schedules were laminated and they used a vis-a-vis marker to check off each item. I tried to seat them away from air conditioning vents or high traffic areas, since some autistic kids can be extremely sensitive to noise. I always had a plan for what to do in case of a blow up- the autistic kids I had were all prone to having these blow ups when they felt very frustrated or overwhelmed. I talked to the class as a whole about what to do in that case- which was basically to ignore and stay away and stay quiet. We created a flip book for one kid who was nonverbal. It had pages with pictures for lunch choice, a page with happy, sad, mad, etc. emotions, a page with a kid with his hand up......my fella would point to the appropriate picture. It was quite effective. For example, if a teacher stopped him in the hall and said, "David, how are you?" David would whip out his flip book and point to the picture of the face that matched his feelings. We had a wonderful resource teacher who worked on communication issues with our kids. She would have them look in mirrors and practice showing different emotions on their faces. Autistic kids can have a very flat affect.
I hope this helps- it was a challenge sometimes, but I really enjoyed teaching my "artistic" kids (that was what my regular ed kids called them!) Good luck!
I had a couple of autistic students last year. The one thing that you have to have is structure and consistency. Any change in the day, can really upset them. Visuals are a must as the above post mentioned. They want to know what is going on ahead of time.
My student had a feeling thermometer. It went from 0 to 5. You would want for him to be at a 3. But one of the problems that autistic students have is dealing with their emotions. If he was above a 3 he had some choices of tasks to help him calm down. The one that worked the best was putting together interlocking cubes. It worked every time. The nice thing about it was that once he cooled down, he was fine. It was also hard for him to verbalize his feeling, so if he showed me he was above a 3 I would tell him to choose a task. We made him a task board. There was clip art of different activities attached with velcro and he would tear off the task of his choice and give it to me. Tasks might be: blocks, reading, drawing, etc.
He had difficulty with organization. So one of the interventions we implemented was to bind all of their subject folders together. This helped to be sure that everything was all together. They would both become frustrated if they could not find something.
The best intervention was to have a set of green and red stickers. These stickers were for homework. Green meant "for homework", red meant "stay home". He would lose his homework and become upset or papers were coming home and the student didn't know what they were for. Yes, we went over it in class, but the colored stickers helped him be more organized and remember what was homework. It relieved a lot of stress at home and at school.
Dismissal was tough for him too. We had p.e. at the end of the day. When we came back, we would grab our backpacks and line up. He was scared he was going to miss the bus and would have an anxiety attack. So, we allowed him to pack his backpack early and take it with him to p.e. He was dismissed by the p.e. teacher and this solved the problem. It takes a team effort sometimes.
Talk with parents, past teachers, and hopefully you will be given opportunities to attend staff development. It was a challenging year, but I loved them both! Both of my students were exceptionally gifted and were able to grasp concepts taught in class rather quickly.
It is also important that if you do not have an aid to help out that you make a plan for if the unexpected happens. If they are not able to calm down, what then? Is there a place where they can go to calm down. Any day that was not a "normal" day...you should come up with interventions...just in case.
Hi My name is Gail. Thank you all for the post that I have been reading. I have a 6 yr old beautiful little grandson who has autism and his teacher is great but uneducated about autism so is the resource teacher. I am collecting idea's tips anything that would help the teachers to help my grandson. So far he is having a hard time in his 1st grade class and alot of meltdowns that have to be controled by taking him out of class and into the resource classroom. I have been working with Korey for a long time on some things and do not claim to have many answers to his problems but have found that when a meltdown starts with Korey I can begin with him breathing deeply and then counting fingers. But this is not done in school and he has no aid with him. So far I am hoping that the school will allow me to be in Koreys classroom with him for a while each day. Thank you all and good luck
Gail
08-09-2007, 03:29 PM
Simple View
