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Are you parenting a child with autism? Below are some ideas to consider that can help your child learn and connect at school. These suggestions were written and created by Teresa Hedley and her son with autism, Erik.
Meet Erik and Teresa
Watch the videos below.
Reach Me, Teach Me in Pictures
Erik is sitting at his bedroom desk, staring at a piece of paper. It is a page of words. He looks anxious but determined. Time passes. He gets up and paces the room, then he sits down and stares some more. Finally, a voice.
“I don’t understand.” And then more quietly, “I don’t know how to begin.”
I take a peek over his shoulder. It is a page of detailed project instructions… and it looks rather perfect… for someone who learns in words.
“Have you asked the teacher to re-explain?”
“Ye-ess…,” he replies haltingly. “But it’s just the same thing… more words… more words, too fast… floating … and then evaporating.”
And then with a pained look, “I don’t like not understanding.”
“I know,” I sigh, “neither do I.”
I work on a reframe. “Instead of saying ‘I don’t understand…’ have you thought of ‘Could you please explain that in a way I can understand? Using pictures?'”
He brightens. And he remembers.
“You mean, like ‘Good throw? Good catch?'”
“I do,” I reply. And I am reminded of something Erik once said to me, an epiphany early in the journey: “Words evaporate like they never even happened. I think in pictures.”
And a second flash of insight splashes across my conscience: If we are not teaching students the way they learn, then we are not teaching. And they are not learning.
Excerpt from “I Have Autism and I Need Your Help: Reach me and Teach Me in Pictures” Fall 2016. Full article below.
A pop-up Tip from erik
It's Erik, here. Below I will list and talk about how we have used visuals to help me connect and learn. Some of these ideas are our own, some we have learned from other people, some we have changed a little, and others we are still working on. We have created visual strategies for home and for school. For this lesson, I am going to present thirteen visual strategies for school.
I hope you find these thirteen visual ideas helpful. I also hope that you might add some of these ideas to your own toolkit.
Where to Use Visuals
Visual Strategies For Use At School
For each idea, I’ve talked a little bit about it and then why I need information presented this way. Also some of the visual strategies for school can be used at home.
1. School Readiness
2. Classroom Readiness
3. Desk Top
4. Daily Calendar
5. Social Stories
6. Transition Tools
7. Weekend Picture Strips
8. Visual Assignments
9. School Clubs
10. School Readiness via Tablet/ Phone
11. Assignment Expectations/Procedures
12. Model of End Product
13. Assignment Blueprints
25 Reasons to Use Visual Schedules
Visual prompts help children at home and at school accomplish tasks more independently. When you are designing a visual tool ask yourself this, “What is the purpose of the tool?” The answer to that question might guide the way the visual is designed and used. For example, an appropriate prompt for setting the table at home would be a diagram of the table and the place settings because where items are placed is the purpose for the visual.
Click on the slider below to view 25 reasons to use visual prompts with your child with autism. As you read through the following list, count how many ways your child currently receives visual support at home and at school. Could more support be provided?
Providing information to children in a concrete, visual form helps our child with autism feel in control.
Visuals help them to manage their day with much less anxiety.
With graphic support, a child shifts from confused and frustrated to orderly and enabled.
Visual strategies also provide a way for children and youth to take part in life activities more independently.
For further details and to learn more about using visual strategies to help children with autism, visit Linda Hodgdon at *www.usevisualstrategies.com
Also by Linda Hodgdon, Visual Strategies for Improving Communication
Want More Ideas to Help Your Child with Autism?
Take a walk with Erik, Teresa and their family on their personal and inspiring autism journey as they share their experiences, challenges, successes, and discoveries . Explore strategies, ideas and concepts that can help you support AND create an approach that can expand and enhance your child or youth with autism by taking eLearning course,
Pathways to Potential: Parenting Children and Youth with Autism.
"A child with autism is like a gift unopened. Let’s open your gift together…"
About Teresa
Teresa Hedley is a teacher, a writer and an autism advocate. In addition to instructing, Teresa has a master’s degree in curriculum development and training and has developed print materials for the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation.
A former Ottawa-Carleton Special Education Advisory Committee member representing Autism Ontario, Teresa has also consulted to families of children with autism as a Parent Resource Consultant.
Outside of education and advocacy, Teresa is a mother to three young adults. Her son Erik has autism.
As a Canadian Armed Forces family, the Hedley-five has lived coast to coast in Canada. Teresa also lived outside Canada for a number of years, teaching and providing teacher training in Japan, Greece, Spain and Germany.
From 2012-2018, Teresa and her son Erik collaborated and wrote a 20-article series for Autism Matters magazine, a publication of Autism Ontario. The mother-son series aims to build resilience in children with autism and in parents supporting children with autism.
Teresa is working with The Family Education Centre first and foremost from a mother’s perspective. She also shares from a teacher’s point of view, and most importantly, from the shoes of autism – her son Erik’s perspective.
Teresa’s memoir, What’s Not Allowed? A Family Journey with Autism, was released in 2020 and tells the tale of Erik from womb to emerging adult. What’s Not Allowed? is being reviewed in consideration for the Governor General’s Literary Award, non-fiction, 2021.
To find out more about the book and about Teresa’s advocacy, please see https://teresahedley.ca/ On her website, you will discover reviews, how tos, podcasts, interviews, sound bites, presentations, videos, articles and an ongoing conversation with readers via a blog, West Coast Greetings.