RESEARCH BASED TEACHING AND

LEARNING STRATEGIES TO EFFECTIVELY

TEACH NUMERACY AND LITERACY,
CONSIDERING THE CULTURAL
BACKGROUND AND VALUES OF THE Autism Spectrum
STUDENTS Disorder
AUSTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER
 Affects 1 in 88 births.
 Fastest-growing developmental disability.
 Lifelong
 Ensure appropriate interventions or adaptations are planned and enacted .
 ASD ranges from mild to moderate and severe.
 No two students with ASD have the same learning styles or needs.
Teachers need to know their students well and how they best learn.
 HOLISTIC APPROACH - STRENGTHS BASED MODEL
Example: design tasks around their attention to detail rather than their difficulty with social interaction.
Complimentary approaches:
 Differentiation – ability levels
 Response to Instruction (RTI) - family assisted and dependent on support
 Universal Design for Learning (UDL) – backwards planning
 Explicit teaching – specific/steps based
 ASD might need Cognitive, behavioural and communication adaptations, adjustments and
interventions.
 HOLISTIC APPROACH -RTI
80–15–5 tiered system:
 80 percent of students with the curriculum with
minor adjustments and adaptations for all.
 15 percent in small-group intervention.
 5 percent in a specialised and individualised
high risk intervention – seek professional.
Family support assist in this process and dictates its
success.
 Continuum of instructional support.
 HOLISTIC APPROACH –
ALWAYS ENACTING
Background information is key:

 family member with ASD also?

 response to home life ?
 lack of sleep ?
 changes in circumstances ?

Causes:
 dealing with stressors in inappropriate
ways.
 Impact on focus and learning.
SPECIFIC LITERACY TEACHING AND LEARNING
STRATEGIES
 Assistance: decoding, print awareness and word recognition = computer-assisted instruction:
 Target concepts in gradual steps.
 Combined attention retaining strategies: least intrusive prompts/reminders
 Modifying tasks for student interests/preferred learning styles.
 Reading comprehension: peer-tutoring, cooperative learning groups and procedures.
 Reciprocal teaching: E.g., Text summariser - What happened in the text ?
 Scaffolded with questions: what a character said, felt or implied.
 Written language difficulties spelling difficulties less complex writing.
 Sight words  Tiered spelling groups
 Scaffolded computer presented video models  Multimodal texts
SPECIFIC NUMERACY TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES
Assistance: mathematical computation skills, counting, time management and money skills.
 Concrete models – Visual/Tactile
 Empty number line – breaks down process visually/links to mental strategies
 Direct/explicit instruction – think alouds lead to automatisation
 Schema based strategy – Connecting learning / not taught in isolation
 Assistance: How to solve a problem: Thinking questions:
 1- Find the problem sum – is it multiplication, division, addition or subtraction ?
 2- Break it into easy steps (what do I do 1st…. ?)
 3- Solve the problem (use aides – multiplication table)
 OVERALL – AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER
 Diverse learning needs and styles including:
 Social interaction, impairment in communication and their restrictive, repetitive, stereotypical
behaviors and interests (Spencer et.al, 2014, p. 331).
 Adaptations, adjustments and interventions:
 communication devices – computer or paper based
 extra time
 Aids – timetable charts/thinking questions/alphabet chart/cue cards
 guided social interaction - behaviour matrix in colours (green/yellow/red)
 explicit teaching and RTI
 collaborative peer group work
 scaffolding.