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Autism Spectrum and reading comprehension


Celia
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I'm wondering what your experiences are with your ASD kids.

 

I find with my son, he's able to very quickly spout off the facts of what he's read. Conceptually though, he's weak, and I think this has to do with his inability to really get into the characters mind, so to speak.

 

This is obviously something that can work as a teaching tool for him to better be able to understand the world around him. Why people do what they do in different situations, and why they don't do things that he would do. How actions influence others thoughts. Stuff like that.

 

I've noticed his deficiency in this regard mostly though WWE and FLL. It's interesting watching an ASD child try to narrate a picture! In WWE he appears to do great, but if I carefully take note of what he focusses on as he narrates, and it's always factual. This is one of those things that reading comprehension tests don't pick up on, as most of the questions deal with facts and not concepts.

 

I'm thinking these programs (FLL and WWE) could easily be tailored to help our kids with their social skills, and I plan to do so for my ds, as well as including a lot more picture narration in our day.

 

But before I do so, I'm curious if any other parents out there have found a reading curriculum before that has done this? And if there are any strategies you've used with your kids to help with their reading comprehension?

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When I taught in PS we use to make out index cards for my two ASD students to help with "getting inside the heads" of their classmates. Each card would have the name or picture of the student in the class, and the reverse of the card would have talking points about what that friend liked or disliked. "Adam---Likes to play soccer, really good at math, has a pet cat." etc.

I'm wondering if you could do the same thing for FLL? For example, take the story "The Little Girl Who Likes to Be Dirty". You could draw a picture of a little girl with a big thought bubble above her head. In the thought bubble you and your child could write down what you think the girl was thinking.

Just an idea... Good luck!

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Reading Comprehension is often a trouble spot for kids with ASD. My ds has made some great strides in his comprehension after we spent much of this last year working on inferencing with his SLP and here at home. We also went thru the program Visualize and Verbalize and that seem to really help ds. One of the steps in VV is where the child describes a picture to you that only he can see. This was very helpful for his perspective taking.

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Yes, my oldest daughter (Aspie) began reading very young and was very much accelerated in reading for years (and still is). However, she is a very concrete thinker and can only pull concrete facts from what she has read.. She cannot analyze, predict, conclude, explain a person's intentions or feelings, or anything else that is too abstract. She reads, reads, reads, and reads some more.. Addicted to the written word and practically memorizing what she reads.. But her comprehension is limited to visual concrete facts and she depends on her superior memory to get through comprehension questions.

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My son (8) has Autism and we are currently using FLL and WWE. It is definitely a struggle for him. However, we just take it slowly and day-by-day and when he gets frustrated, I stop.

 

I am also using the Modern Curriculum Press comprehension series. This has seemed to help him in this area as well. I generally do One section a week in the book. This week we focused on detail. The only problem that I see with this book is that there is a pattern to the questions and a lot of cues used. For our children, those patterns are very easy to figure out and sometimes over-ride the necessity to understand the context of the stories. This is why I favor the use of FLL and WWE.

 

Blessings,

Candace

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Yes, my oldest daughter (Aspie) began reading very young and was very much accelerated in reading for years (and still is). However, she is a very concrete thinker and can only pull concrete facts from what she has read.. She cannot analyze, predict, conclude, explain a person's intentions or feelings, or anything else that is too abstract. She reads, reads, reads, and reads some more.. Addicted to the written word and practically memorizing what she reads.. But her comprehension is limited to visual concrete facts and she depends on her superior memory to get through comprehension questions.

 

This.

 

I would say that my ds can analyze, predict, conclude and understand intentions and feelings NOW, but couldn't do any of those things for years. They are still more challenging for him, but we are getting there. Concrete facts was all he got for years in spite of reading far above grade level. He has always been a fabulous decoder and got the facts of any story, but it has taken a LOT of practice to learn the rest.

 

BTW, I never had a curriculum that helped with those things. What helped was talking about books constantly. He loved to read and I read as much as I could of what he read so I could constantly ask questions. "How do you think he felt when...?" "Why do you think she...?" etc. When he didn't know, I would give suggestions, "Do you think he was mad?" "Do you think it was because of whatever event earlier in the story?" We just talked about connections until he learned to make them.

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...BTW, I never had a curriculum that helped with those things. What helped was talking about books constantly. He loved to read and I read as much as I could of what he read so I could constantly ask questions. "How do you think he felt when...?" "Why do you think she...?" etc. When he didn't know, I would give suggestions, "Do you think he was mad?" "Do you think it was because of whatever event earlier in the story?" We just talked about connections until he learned to make them.

 

This is what we did/do too. I've never really noticed a delay, but this is an area we began working on from the beginning. Even when ds was reading Bob Books we'd talk about how Sam was "sad" and Mat was "sad" and why. Though I doubt we will ever get to a point where it is an automatic thought process like his older brother.

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Reading Comprehension is often a trouble spot for kids with ASD. My ds has made some great strides in his comprehension after we spent much of this last year working on inferencing with his SLP and here at home. We also went thru the program Visualize and Verbalize and that seem to really help ds. One of the steps in VV is where the child describes a picture to you that only he can see. This was very helpful for his perspective taking.
Some of you might enjoy this talk given by Nanci Bell, the creator of Visualizing and Verbalizing. (Warning--it's about an hour long.) She speaks about hyperlexia and autism. It's very informative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw65NKe0VmY

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My son is older (11) and we're just starting to investigate how WWE and FLL might help him. His comprehension for any math or science reading is very strong--not just that he memorizes it all immediately, which he does, but that he understands and delights in it. Fiction, though, is very much a mixed bag and what he comprehends has nothing to do with "grade level" of the reading and everything to do with some intangible level of concrete vs. metaphorical style, which I've yet to figure out myself. No problem with any of Roald Dahl's books, for example, from a very young age, but Magic Tree House mystified him and still does. Tolkien, no problem, L'Engle, he didn't have a clue. It helps him if I read aloud the books that baffle him, and we stop and talk about any interesting sentence structure or metaphorical language.

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Some of you might enjoy this talk given by Nanci Bell, the creator of Visualizing and Verbalizing. (Warning--it's about an hour long.) She speaks about hyperlexia and autism. It's very informative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw65NKe0VmY

 

I finally got the time to watch this just this morning.. Thanks for passing this on. It was very helpful to me as I try to understand my Aspies.

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Our kids have strengths, but often don't strengthen the parts of the brain that aren't being stimulated due to abnormal early sensory info/process.

 

Most of our kids have real strengths, but very weak areas.

 

When we first took our son to Brain Balance he was 3 in his right brain and 10 in his left brain at 7 yrs old.

 

He now has typical right/left brain integration and at 8 is normal. He actually became "dumber" in that he lost some of his high ability...but who cares, he's now normal.

 

A long long list of other interventions prior to taking to brain balance. Body ecology diet, biomed, and Son-Rise being our tops....but BB was the final piece for our son.

 

There are about 29 centers around the country right now.

 

Basically they stimulate the weaker brain hemisphere only. They get the right brain stimulated and correct how the body takes in sensory info. For example our son hadn't yet established body dominance. Many kids still having primitive reflexes. Babies at 12 months should loose these...our kids keep theirs. Many kids still in fight or flight mode. Never able to develop the higher processes being social, comprehension etc...

 

Check it out! We've worked hard and will always be grateful for all the pieces that helped. It was truly thrilling to see how Brain Balance brought it all together. It's like my son is just simply normal now!

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Basically they stimulate the weaker brain hemisphere only. They get the right brain stimulated and correct how the body takes in sensory info. For example our son hadn't yet established body dominance. Many kids still having primitive reflexes. Babies at 12 months should loose these...our kids keep theirs. Many kids still in fight or flight mode. Never able to develop the higher processes being social, comprehension etc...

 

What do you recommend we do if we don't have access to a Brain Balance Center? My 8yr old is still having learning issues. We have been doing biomed for 2 years and we have had BIG improvements from that alone. However, she has visual processing issues and a retained moro reflex that I can't seem to solve for her. Any home programs that you would recommend?

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