Teaching Strategies
The following are teaching strategies and suggestions that can be used to support children with autism in the classroom. These strategies should be used in conjunction with accurate knowledge of students' individual needs. No single strategy works for everyone, and teachers should be willing to constantly adapt their teaching styles to help create the most successful environment possible.
Visual Support
Students with autism often demonstrate strengths in concrete thinking, rote memory, and understanding visual-spatial relationships, but struggle with abstract thinking, social cognition, communication and attention. Oral information can be problematic to process and so visual aids can help the students focus on the information. In the classroom, this looks like:
- Depicting scheduled tasks and activities
- Encouraging independence
- Facilitating organization
- Teaching social skills
- Promoting communication
- Encouraging appropriate behaviour
- Making expectations clear
- Depicting choices
Classroom Structure
- Students with autism often thrive in structured classrooms so it is important to be consistent in day-to-day routines. In the classroom, this looks like:
- Designating specific areas of the room for specific tasks
- Clearly marking supplies and storing in an organized way
- Keeping desirable objects and activities out of sight
- Color coding
- Creating “start” and “finished” folders/bins for the students' independent work
- Fully completing one activity before moving on to the next (closure is key!)
- Limiting the text to the portions you want read and highlighting key words
- Providing a variety of visual examples
Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA)
ABA is a branch of psychology that involves analyzing and modifying human behavior. It involves the application of behaviouralist principles in order to increase or decrease a particular behavior, to improve the quality of a behavior, to stop an old behavior, or to teach a new behavior. Some of the key principles of ABA are:
For more information on ABA visit the Janus Academy, Autism Speaks, or Rethink Autism.
- Focus on behaviours that can be measured and tracked
- Examine the function of the behaviour
- Break down complex tasks or skills into discrete steps
- Use positive/negative reinforcement/punishment
- Ensure that intervention strategies and target behaviours are clear to everyone involved
- Have signals that have been previously discussed with the student
- Engage in ongoing evaluation
For more information on ABA visit the Janus Academy, Autism Speaks, or Rethink Autism.
Encourage Independence
Students with autism need the opportunity to develop the ability to act independently otherwise they may become over-reliant on teaching staff. The student must be encouraged to complete tasks and activities as independently as possible, while the teacher must provide the only the necessary supports (prompts) to ensure success.
- Fading Prompts: as students experience success in the classroom prompts can be faded out. Visual aids help to decrease reliance on physical and verbal prompts.
- Fading Physical Presence: teaching staff should closely monitor the student’s progress and fade assistance and presence as new skills emerge. Peers can be used to reduce the dependence on adult assistance. They can provide direct prompting as well as modelling (showing the appropriate behaviour to be copied).
Peer-Mediated Approaches
Students with autism might find that the attention of a peer is more motivating than that of an adult. The teacher should instruct the student's peers to model desirable behaviour, and, thus, the teacher should also reinforce the peers for their efforts.
Effective Teaching Strategies
- Task Variation – vary tasks to prevent boredom, and alternate activities to reduce anxiety and inappropriate behaviours. For example, alternate familiar, successful experiences with less preferred activities and large group activities with calming activities.
- Task Analysis – break complex tasks down into sub-skills to ensure success. Each subskill needs to be taught and reinforced in sequence. Life skills, social skills and academic skills can also be broken down this way.
- Forward and Backward Chaining – breaking down tasks into sub-skills and giving the student assistance with either the last or the first steps, respective to forward and backward chaining.
- Precise and Positive Praise
- Meaningful Reinforcements – offering free time (listening to music, exercise, playing with water, etc.) as a reward for desired behaviours.
- Plan Tasks at an Appropriate Level of Difficulty: differentiation can be broken down into 4 levels of adaptations. They are:
- Level One: No Adaptation – completing the same task or activity under the same conditions as the rest of the class.
- Level Two: Same Activity with Adaptation – student may receive extra time, less work, more assistance, etc.
- Level Three: Parallel or Alternate Activity (of the same subject) – a completely different assignment from the rest of the class but it is on the same or closely related topic.
- Level Four: Alternate Functional Activity – student assists the teacher in “housekeeping” activities relevant to the subject matter.
- Use Age-appropriate Materials
- Provide Opportunities for Choice
- Introduce Unfamiliar Tasks in a Familiar Environment
- Teach self-monitoring skills
- Provide Appropriate Sensory Stimuli – such as: lotion to rub on hands, scratch and sniff stickers or hard candies to suck on.
Teaching Social and Functional Communication
- Functional language skills are best taught in the social context where they will be used and where they have real meaning. Teach in the natural environment.
- Model speech by speaking in full sentences to the students.
- Use vocabulary appropriate to the student’s comprehension level. If the student has a severe communication disability, choose familiar, specific, concrete words and repeat as necessary
- Use clear, concise language – avoid figures of speech or irony
- Speak slowly so as to provide ample time to process information
- Students need to learn the steps involved in listening, i.e. look at the speaker, put hands in lap
- Use visual aids to support oral communication
- Use an augmentative communication system – gestures or nonsense syllables used to convey a specific meaning. It is important that the parents are involved so the communication is consistent.
Teaching Appropriate Social Skills
- Give students opportunity to participate and interact in a variety of natural environments where appropriate models, natural cues are available.
- Have students participate in classroom tasks requiring them to interact with other students
- Have students with autism reinforce other students by handing out stickers/prizes
- Plan group or partner activities (assigned partners)
- Begin with basic skills such as making eye contact before addressing skills such as friendship behaviours
- Models and opportunity to practice social skills are often not enough. Autistic students need to be explicitly taught how to interact socially.
- Use visual cues to remind students of appropriate social behaviour
- Use social stories told from the perspective of the autistic student to help them cope with new or difficult situations
Functional Skills
For students who have needs in the area of functional skills development, goals should be identified in the student’s IPP. In the field of special education, educators have developed a variety of models for the domains of functional skills. These are:
Once specific goals are identified in these areas, a variety of strategies listed above can be put into practice in order to encourage appropriate functional skills.
- Domestic or self- care
- Functional academics
- Vocational or job skills
- Social, including leisure skills
- Community, including travel and using services.
Once specific goals are identified in these areas, a variety of strategies listed above can be put into practice in order to encourage appropriate functional skills.