The article entitled Sam Comes to School: Including Students with Autism in Your

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Lorena Walters
5 years ago
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1 Jen Beakas Learners with Mild Disabilities Professor Shipman March 17, 2009 The article entitled Sam Comes to School: Including Students with Autism in Your Classroom, found in The Clearing House and written by Diana Friedlander, discusses the techniques that general education teachers can use to help successfully include students with autism into their classroom. The article does not just discuss autism, but rather it focuses on all of the disabilities under the category of Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD. ASD disorders include Autism, Pervasive Development Disorder, Asperger s Syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and they affect nearly 1 in every 166 children that are born in the United States. Students who are diagnosed with ASD have many problems that can interfere with their ability to learn. The one that usually has the most impact and is the most problematic is found in their social abilities. Students with ASD have trouble picking up social and emotional cues from other classmates, and this can severely impact their ability to make and keep relationships. This also affects a student s language ability, because although they may be good beyond their years at expressing their own feelings, their receptive language may be compromised. Yet another place where students with ASD may experience problems is in

2 sensory integration. Some students may be over stimulated by things such as lighting or noises, while other students may need a bit of extra stimulation. This article provided several tips for teachers on how to integrate students with ASD into their classrooms. One thing that teachers should do is to find out all that they can about the student before he or she enters the classroom. They should ask the parents of the students as many questions as they can, because the parents know their child better than anyone else. A good idea would be to plan a meeting with the parents and the student before school starts, so that they feel more comfortable, and the teacher can gather information. The teacher may want to schedule the child for a visit in the late summer to the classroom, so that the student can get used to the set up of the room. Another useful technique is for the teacher to provide the student with a visual schedule of what will be going on throughout the school day, utilizing photographs or drawings of activities. Whenever there will be a change to the schedule, the student should be allowed to watch the teacher make the change on the schedule, or the student should be permitted to make the change themselves. The most important thing for teachers to remember is to stay organized and always be consistent. Many students with ASD experience hyperlexia, or a precocious reading ability accompanied by difficulty acquiring language or social skills (142). A new technique, known as Social Stories, has been developed to help students improve their social skills, while utilizing their above average reading skills. In Social Stories, a teacher, parent, or other person close to the child creates a picture book with captions about a social situation. For example, if a student becomes frustrated when a library rule states that he or she can only check out one magazine

3 when they want to borrow two, a Social Story could be created to explain that only one magazine at a time is allowed to be taken home. As a future classroom teacher, this article will prove to be very beneficial to me. It provided many helpful tips on how to incorporate students with autism into the general education classroom. While I may teach general education, I really want to work with students who have special needs, and the tips in this article are able to be applied to a special education classroom as well. Some of the things, such as always being consistent and allowing the child to visit the classroom beforehand, are things that I have heard reiterated again and again in my education courses. However, there were also many new techniques that I am eager to try in my own classroom. For example, the article discussed having bean bags around the classroom, or providing the children with fidget toys, for those students who may benefit from extra stimulation when trying to maintain information. Also, I thought that the visual schedule was a good idea, not just for students with autism, but for other children as well. Children of all abilities can benefit from knowing what to expect throughout the day. I was also fascinated with the idea of Social Stories, since this is a relatively new idea that I haven t really heard much about. I can see it being most useful to students with Asperger s Syndrome. This summer, I worked as a camp counselor, and one of my children had Asperger s. He was one of the brightest children at the camp, and he loved to read, and could do so very well. However, he was also very socially awkward, and had some problems interacting with his peers. Social Stories are good because they cater to a child s talent in reading, while teaching the student about one of their weaknesses, social interaction, at the

4 same time. Also, since these books are written by teachers or parents that know the student, the stories can be very specific to the child s problem or a certain incident that may have occurred. Knowledge of how to teach students with autism is becoming increasingly important in today s society. As we learn more about autism, more and more students are being diagnosed and recognized as having an ASD. In 2007, autism affected every 1 in 166 children, compared to Down Syndrome, which affects only about 1 in 800 babies born in the United States. Because autism is becoming so prevalent among children, it is important that educators and parents know all that they can about the disability, and are armed with as many new techniques as possible to attempt to give these children the education they deserve. Autism is a relatively new disability, and scientists and educators still have a lot to learn about it. As a result, there is constantly going to be new information coming out, and educators should always be aware of the latest techniques being created, so that their children are receiving a quality education.

5 Resource: Friedlander, D. (2009, January). Sam Comes to School: Including Students with Autism in Your Classroom. Clearing House, 82(3), Retrieved March 14, 2009, from Academic Search Premier database.

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