1. Supporting Students on the Autism Spectrum and Beyond
08/03/2017

2. What is Autism?

3. Inside Look at Yourself
Daily Routine
“Need for same”
Calendar
Daily schedules
Sensory
Self-regulation
Textures

4. Inside Look at Your Room
Is there a quiet area?
Is it organized even a little bit?
How close are the student’s to each other?
Is it obvious what happens in different places in your room?

5. Routines and Hidden Curriculum
Classroom routine
Homeroom PE
Music
Library
Computer
Lunchroom
Recess
Other classrooms if they change classes
Hidden Curriculum
Refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school.
Examples??

6. Prevalence of Autism
Autism statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identify around 1 in 68 American children as on the autism spectrum.
Autism is 4-5 times more common among boys than girls.
1 out of 42 boys and 1 in 189 girls are diagnosed with autism in the U.S.

7. Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity
Back and forth conversation
Reduced sharing of interests
Reduced emotions or affect
Failure to initiate or respond to social interactions.

8. Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction
Abnormal eye contact or body language
Deficits in understanding and use of gestures
Total lack of facial expressions
Nonverbal communication

9. Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships
Adjusting behavior to match various social contexts
Difficulties sharing imaginative play
Difficulties making friends
Absence of interest in peers

10. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech
Lining up toys
Flipping objects
Echolalia
Idiosyncratic phrases

12. Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, ritualized patterns
Extreme distress at small changes
Difficulties with transitions
Rigid thinking patterns
Greeting rituals
Need to take same route
Eat same food everyday
Preoccupation with unusual objects/interests

13. Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in environment
Indifference to pain/temperature
Adverse response to specific sounds or textures
Excessive smelling or touching of objects
Visual fascination with lights or movement

14. Visual Supports
A permanent product – can leave them for a student for them to refer to (on their desk).
Can include written words, symbols, photos, pictures or graphics, graphic organizers, timelines, scripts or objects.
We process visuals/pictures much faster than words.
Visuals strip the social layer of understanding from the communication.

15. Visual Schedule How many of you have a classroom schedule posted?
Post small version on child’s desk – can break into morning and afternoon.

16. Other Examples of Visual Schedules

21. Ideas Escalation vs. de-escalation Choices
Quiet place
Helper – carry books to library
Mark areas where to stand, sit, activity, etc.
Consider closeness to others
Structuring task/task analysis
Choices
Fidgets – must teach how to use
Picking your battles
Parking lot
Prepare for changes
Peer helper
Incorporate sensory breaks
Heavy work

22. “Don’t think that there’s a different, better child ‘hiding’ behind the autism. This is your child. Love the child in front of you. Encourage his strengths, celebrate his quirks, and improve his weaknesses, the way you would with any child. You may have to work harder on some of this, but that’s the goal.” – Claire Scovell LaZebnik

23. “People with autism are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It’s that you’re destroying the peg.”- Paul Collins
 “Autism … offers a chance for us to glimpse an awe-filled vision of the world that might otherwise pass us by,” Dr. Colin Zimbleman, Ph.D.