Everyday Teaching Autism Resources

Providing visuals in the daily routines and various learning experiences is critical in special education classrooms.  It is a powerful way to increase their understanding of behavior expectations and learning concepts. Also, it helps prevent inappropriate behavior from occurring in the first place. Providing visuals is one of the powerful antecedent strategies. 

This is a student with limited language skills and some behavior challenges. I always think this as a subtle level of protesting, as long as appropriate, is a way of self-advocacy. However, he is not easily motivated to do his work.  

Communication-how can we support him to express his needs and wants throughout the day using picture icons, vocal speech, or any form of appropriate communication instead of crying. 

Behavior-When things were presented in front of him, he would run away or climb under the counter and cry for 30 minutes to protest.  He is clearly using his behavior to escape from task demands, or the task demand could be too difficult for him. The demand could be too boring, not motivating him to perform. That’s another possibility. Before considering conducting the full Functional Behavior Assessment, there are many things we can consider in this scenario. Clearly. 

Motivation- how can we motivate this child to perform tasks and routines in a meaningful way. That is something I first think about. In that sense, I just ordered a whole bag of toys (especially dinosaur sets) from Amazon thinking of this guy. I wasn’t sure if they will work as reinforcement but I needed fun toys for him after completing tasks to increase his future frequency of attending/task completion behavior. Will he “work for” them? Will he start associating his work time with preferred activities by pairing? 

Then, this happened.

It was a field trip day for this student and we did not think that cared much about his schedule board or the trip.  When he was told to “Check your schedule”, he looked at his schedule board glaring at a yellow school bus icon.

At first, we all thought he would be more than happier to see that there was only one icon on his schedule board because he does not seem to enjoy most of what we offer at school. Well…we were all wrong. 

Suddenly he ran over to the cabinet where I stored all the icons. He dug through all the icons and found 3 icons and put them on his schedule board before he went out for the bus.

Table Time, Recess, and Quiet Time 

He apparently had some motivational activities happening at school, and he showed them to us by using the picture icon on his schedule board.  Most of my students may not be able to tell me what they enjoy or what not. Having visuals available in an autism program allow the learners and teacher to communicate with each other and process the expectations throughout the learning experiences.

I hope he had a great time on his trip.