Workshop Project

Teaching Comprehension Strategies for Students with

High Functioning Autism

Plan focus

The purpose of this workshop is to provide classroom teachers with strategies that will help teach comprehension and text understanding to students with High Functioning Autism (HFA), which includes students with Asperger’s Syndrome. Students with HFA are most often taught in regular education classes. Often, these students are able to learn basic reading skills and become accurate and fluent readers. However, due to the fact that they tend to think concretely and literally, they have difficulty with comprehension of text, especially fiction. They can have difficulty making connections with text and are often visual learners. In addition, they often have difficulty following a pattern or sequence. This can make learning across all content areas difficult for them, which raises their frustration level. Students with HFA often experience stress just trying to function in an active, sensory-filled classroom. Helping to reduce their stress level helps make them more receptive to learning.

There are certain strategies that are helpful for these students to build on their strengths and to give more support where needed. This workshop will provide an understanding of some of the reading difficulties these students encounter and strategies that can aid their comprehension.

Objectives

  1. Teachers will recognize reading comprehension difficulties of students with High Functioning Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome.
  2. Teachers will learn six comprehension strategies that will be helpful for students with HFA.
  3. Teachers will practice2strategies.
  4. Teacher will acquire a list of accommodations that will help these students be more successful in the classroom.
  5. Teachers will acquire a list of websites to reference or additional support.

Workshop Outline

(Ice Breaker: Give teachers a reading passage with no capitalization or punctuation. Instruct them to read it then write a brief paragraph summarizing the main idea supported by details. They will soon see the difficulty in the task. Explain to them that this is often how students with HFA sees material because they have often don’t read clues and have difficulty with following text.)

  1. Introduce characteristics of students with HFA that tend to cause difficulties with reading comprehension challenges. (See PowerPoint slide # 2)
  2. Introduce strategies for helping the students make connections with text, “KWL” and “Mind Mapping” Activity (PP # 3 and 4). Most teachers will be familiar with “KWL” so I will explain “Mind Mapping” Activity using a topic. (example: 5th grade science, water cycle. Use key terms in a map that resembles the path of the water cycle). The teachers will then practice this in pairs. (See “Mind Mapping Activity” Sheet.)

(Small Group Activity: Teachers will follow “Mind Mapping Activity” sheet and work in pairs to practice this strategy).

  1. Discuss use of Graphic Organizers (PP #5). Hand out various examples and let teachers suggest topics that would lend themselves to different organizers.Website to design graphic organizers:
  2. Discuss the fact that HFA students are often literal and concrete thinkers. They have difficulty with abstract ideas. Hand out “Anaphoric Cueing” Sheet to introduce this strategy. Demonstrate the strategy with a short reading passage. (PP # 6 and 7). The teachers will then practice in pairs. (See Anaphoric Cueing Sheet)

(Small Group Activity: Teachers will follow Anaphoric Cueing” sheet and work in pairs to practice this strategy).

  1. Discuss how students with HFA have difficulty finding or following a pattern or sequence. This can make fiction difficult to understand. Show them how to help students “see” the pattern with boxes for story elements (PP # 8).
  2. Discuss the fact that many students with HFA will often develop an area of intense interest (PP # 8). Find books and materials that are of interest to your students.
  • Clarify with teachers that these strategies are useful for all learners in their classes, but specifically for the HFA students.

Small Group Activity

Small group activities are embedded in the Workshop Outline.

Follow-up Activities

Ask teachers to get into grade level groups and discuss which strategies they think will be beneficial to students in their classes. The teachers will be asked to go back to their classes and implement at least three of the strategies that feel will be effective. They can do this in their Language Arts class or a content area class. Tell them to as for any clarification or assistance if they need for implementation. Follow up with answering questions that the teacher’s have.

They will need to provide documentation of implementation and student responses to comprehension questions or other assessment appropriate for lesson or topic. Set a date to have this task accomplished. Set a date to have a follow-up meeting to discuss effectiveness of the strategies they used.

Assessment of Effectiveness

Ask the teachers to let you know when they will implement one of the strategies and schedule to observe the lesson to be able to provide feedback. Ask teachers to provide a brief written reflection using the “Lesson Reflection Questions” on the use of their strategy along with student progress on comprehension.(See “Lesson Reflection Questions”) Effectiveness will also be noted during follow-up meetings and individual conferences with teachers.

Mind Mapping Activity

Mind maps are “structured outlines” that can help introduce new material to your students.

  • Preview a passage the students will be reading. Identify important concepts, key ideas, and important vocabulary.
  • Organize key concepts and vocabulary into a “Mind Map” that shows relationships and connections. Include visual elements (arrows, boxes, pictorial representations, and other ways to make Mind Map more memorable.
  • Include familiar “verbal landmarks” to help student connect to current background knowledge.
  • Before reading, show the map to the students to “frontload” learning. Discuss “Mind Map” doing the following: speculate on the meaning of new words and their relationship to the new concept, speculate on visual meaning of map, and discuss familiar “landmarks.” They can do this in pairs, small groups, or in whole group activity.
  • Have students refer to “Mind Map” during reading. They can add new terms as they read.
  • After reading they can add terms or illustrations. They can make their own “Mind Maps.” They can use the map to summarize the material.

Anaphoric Cueing

Anaphora are words, often pronouns, which refer back to reference words previously used in the text. For example: “Tom opened his book, put his head down on it, and fell asleep.” “His” and “it” are the anaphora “Dan” and “book” are the reference words. Anaphoric Cueing involves teaching a student to identify the anaphora and to pause to relate them to their reference words while reading. In this way, they can begin to connect parts of the text to one another.

With a fairly short list of anaphora (words that refer to other words) that can be listed on a bookmark, we can teach them when to stop in their reading and what to ask themselves before they move on.

When we read:

he, she, they, we, I, you

We ask who?

When we read:

hers, his, its, theirs, ours, yours

We askwhose?

When we read:

it, that, this, can, do

We ask what?

When we read:

here, there, come, go

We ask where?

When we read:

then, before,after

We ask when?

Lesson Reflections

  1. How did you find the preparation of the lesson as far as relevance to topic and time to prepare?
  1. How do you feel the student’s responded to the strategy?
  1. How effective do you feel the strategy was in achieving your lesson goal?
  1. Would you use the strategy again?

If so, would you modify it in any way? How?