My son has autism and is comprehending sentences at a 3rd grade level (tested at school) However, he is having difficulty with sequencing the stories. He is having good success with stories that are real (factual, or everyday activities) However, when he encounters a story for which he has no personal direct frame that he may not have experinced in his everyday life, it appears he isn’t drawing on what he does know in an attempt to figure out what is happening in the story. He is also not scanning all the information available in the pictures in the stories.
AT school they are teaching him to look at a picture from top to bottom and describe it but it hasn’t helped yet. Any ideas, activities, resources you could suggest would be appreciated. School suggested maybe using Visualizing with Verbalizing, what do you think?
Thanks
Chantelle
Re: reading comprehension
The big problem is that he has no background knowledge to connect the story to, he has no schema. The biggest part of developing comprehension is to develop a schema for the story. Pictures can help but discussing and connecting to his life and his experiences is the best way. The best texts to tell you how to teach true comprehension are Mosaic of Thought and Strategies that Work. these books delve into the strategies that great readers use to fully comprehend the text. Most special ed programs only teach literal comprehension and true comprehension goes way beyond the text.
Nan
V/V will be helpful. It’ll give him a framework to use in understanding content. He’ll get loads of practice following a routine to aid his comprehension. Since autistic folks thrive on routine, he’ll probably happily embrace the program. Some of the kids I work with are on the autistic spectrum and the V/V program has been beneficial.
It sounds as though your son’s teachers are attempting something similar to the very first V/V lesson where the person looks at a picture and describes it to the practitioner. But in V/V there are 12 structure words the practitioner uses to ask a series of questions about the picture. The child progresses eventually from just describing a picture to describing a known noun, then a fantasy noun supplied by the practitioner on up through sentences, then paragraphs. The work becomes gradually harder and you overlap these stages of the program as you work through it. The structure words are used throughout by the teacher to give the student a method to attain higher order thinking skills.
I’ve seen kids slog through for weeks and even months making little progress and then all of a sudden, it all clicks. So, although your son may not seem to be assimilating, have faith in the process. And do investigate V/V - it may be just right for him.