Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network Teaching Students with Autism to Read: A Focus on Comprehension October 13, 2015.

Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network

Teaching Students with Autism to Read: A Focus on

Comprehension

October 13, 2015

PaTTAN’s Mission

The mission of the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance

Network (PaTTAN) is to support the efforts and initiatives of the

Bureau of Special Education, and to build the capacity of local

educational agencies to serve students who receive special

education services.

PDE’s Commitment to Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)

Our goal for each child is to ensure Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams begin with the general education setting with the use of Supplementary

Aids and Services before considering a more restrictive environment.

Who is in the Room?

• Please stand when your role is identified by the presenter… Parent/Guardian Special Education Teacher General Education Teacher Administrator Paraprofessional School Psychologist Speech Pathologist Other?

• We hope to meet your learning needs by...1. validating effective

practices that you already use.

2. reminding you about effective practices that you may have used, but forgot about.

3. learning about new effective practices.

Fist to Five

How comfortable are you addressing the comprehension needs of your students?

Learning Outcomes

• Review research supporting scientifically based reading instruction

• Discuss the 5 essential components of reading instruction

• Identify and discuss the relationship between oral language, vocabulary and comprehension development

• Explore resources and strategies to support comprehension for students with autism

Autism and Literacy Learning Connections

• Teaching reading to a student with autism requires special considerations- not one size or approach fits all learners

• Teachers need to be aware that there are a wide range of learning differences

• Teaching methods must be flexible

It Takes a Team!

• General/Remedial Reading Educator– Instruction in Reading– Assessment– Programs

• Speech/Language Pathologist– Oral Language– Assessment

• Special Educator, Autism Support– Instruction

• Family Members– EVERYTHING

Autism and Literacy Learning Connections

• Growth in reading is closely tied to levels of oral language

• Assessment of progress needs to be frequent

• Children with autism seem to function better when given a systematic set of guidelines to apply to their behavior and in social situations- being predictable and using routines

• The same systematic approach works in literacy learning

Effect of Autism on Comprehension

1. Students have had less literacy instruction2. Inferences, symbols, and language difficulties3. Lack of experiences with tasks (classroom

experiences)4. Lack of experience in settings (sensory

considerations)5. Lacking in opportunity to participate and learn

from the ‘competent’ learner6. We lack appropriate reading assessment data

especially for non-verbal students

Current Scientific Research

• There is limited research on how to best teach students with autism to read

• Current research focuses on typical and struggling readers

• It is not clear if this research translates directly to students with autism

• Teachers must base their instruction on the research and best practices while considering the characteristics of this student population

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Background on Reading Research

• Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin. 1998)

• National Reading Panel Report (2000)

• Beginning to Read (Adams. 1990)

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Teaching Reading is URGENT! Teaching Reading is URGENT!

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Instructional Planning That Can Improve Reading Outcomes

Based on Data Based on

The Goal

MeasureGrowth Based on the Goal

The 5 Essential Components of Reading

1. Phonemic Awareness2. Phonics3. Fluency4. Vocabulary5. Comprehension

The Many Strands That Are Woven Into Skilled Reading

● Background Knowledge● Vocabulary Knowledge● Language Structures● Verbal Reasoning● Literacy Knowledge

● Phonological Awareness● Decoding (and Spelling)● Sight Recognition

SKILLED READING: fluent execution and coordination of word recognition and text comprehension.

LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION

WORD RECOGNITION

increasingly

automatic

increasinglystrategic

Reading is a multifaceted skill, gradually acquired over years of instruction and practice.

(Scarborough, 2001)

Why Promote Vocabulary Development?

Meaningful Differences in vocabulary knowledge by the age of three.

Cumulative Vocabulary

Children from professional families 1100 words

Children from working class families 700 words

Children from low SES families 500 words

Hart & Risley (1995). Meaningful Difference in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.

Why Promote Vocabulary Development?

Cumulative Experience

Words heard per hour

Words heard in a 100-hour week

Words heard in 5,200- hour year

4 years

Inpoverished 616 62,000 3 million 13 million

Working Class

1,251 125,000 6 million 26 million

Professional 2,153 215,000 11 million 45 million

Hart & Risley, 1995

The Matthew Effect

• Based on research by Keith Stanovich and Anne Cunningham

• The Matthew Effect refers to the Bible parable of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

• Children who read learn more words, they understand more, so they are motivated to read more – They get RICHER

• Children who don’t read much, learn fewer words, understand less and are less motivated to read – They get POORER

Connections

What are the connections between oral

language, vocabulary and comprehension?

The Importance of Background Knowledge

• “Cognitive scientists agree that reading comprehension requires prior “domain-specific” knowledge about the things that a text refers to, and that understanding the text consists of integrating this prior knowledge with the words in order to form a “situation model.”*

• *E.D. Hirsch, The Knowledge Deficit – on the work of Walter Kintsch

Balancing Knowledge and Reading Skills

• How much do you know about baseball???• Students who were good decoders but knew very

little about baseball did not comprehend as much as their peers who were weaker decoders but had good domain specific knowledge about the game.

• But…..both are important! *W.Schneider and J. Korkel, Contemporary Educational

Psychology, 14, (1989)

A Definition of Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the “process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language.”

(RAND Reading Report, 2002)

Comprehension Activities

• Pre-Reading

• During Reading

• Post Reading

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Comprehension: Pre-Reading Activities

• Preview text

• Make predictions

• Complete a K-W-H-L chart

• Connect to prior knowledge

• Preteach basic factual concepts and provide relevant facts needed for comprehension

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Comprehension: During Reading Activities

• Have students periodically stop and summarize what they have read (chunk the text)

• Explicitly teach text structures like main and details, sequence, cause/effect, compare/contrast, description, story elements

• Use visualization, visuals/photographs, and have students draw pictures to support understanding

• Use checklists/other visual supports to provide individualized cues to stop and ask for help, how much of the text is to be read, etc.

• Explicitly teach the meanings of idioms, pronouns, other difficult language concepts

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Comprehension: After Reading Activities

• Have students provide a summary of the main idea and details orally, through writing or drawing

• Teach summarization explicitly (Post-It Note Activity)• Make explicit connections to earlier learning• Use related stories to create a solid fact base that

helps students make text-to-text connections to improve understanding

• Have students generate questions and answers about the text they just read

Visuals to Support Comprehension

Visuals continued…

Use Graphic Organizers

A Note About Scaffolding

Research Based Comprehension Strategies

• Monitoring one’s own comprehension• Using graphic and semantic organizers• Generating questions• Using mental imagery• Summarizing• Answering questions

(National Reading Panel, 2000)

Keep in Mind

What level is your learner?

•Word•Sentence•Paragraph•Multiple paragraph text or book

Cognitive Theories

Be aware that many children with autism that struggle with comprehension may have difficulty with the following:

•Theory of Mind-difficulty with perspective taking, understanding, and explaining why others think what they think and do what they do

•Central Coherence-process of deriving meaning from context to create an understanding of the “whole”

•Executive Function-cognitive process related to planning, organization, execution of plans and self-monitoring

(Iland, 2011)

Reading Instructional Tips

• Base your instructional choices on assessment results

• Plan an I Do, We Do, You Do lesson format• Create opportunities for frequent, distributed practice• Link prior learning to new learning• Include multisensory aspects of the activities• Give students opportunities to create their own

mental images or provide visual supports

(Dodson, 2008)

Reading Instructional Tips

• Incorporate humor into your lessons• Bundle skills and strategies to maximize

opportunities for distributed practice• Modify your instruction if progress monitoring does

not show adequate growth• Accelerate as well as remediate• Connect with your students and incorporate their

interests

(Dodson, 2008)

Turn and Talk

Turn and talk to a partner about one new idea you have for your classroom/instruction from this presentation.

Resources

50 Nifty Speaking and Listening Activities

50 Nifty Activities for 5 Components and 3 Tiers of

Reading Instruction

Resources

Drawing a Blank: Improving Comprehension Strategies for Readers on the Autism Spectrum

By Emily Iland

www.PaTTAN.net

• www.pattan.net• Click on Educational Initiatives tab• Click on Reading tab• Explore the Reading page for resources, videos

and upcoming events

Contact Information www.pattan.net

Kathryn [email protected]

Wendy [email protected] Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Tom Wolf, Governor

Pennsylvania Department of EducationPedro Rivera, Secretary of Education

Pat Hozella, DirectorBureau of Special Education