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Blog on Special Educational Needs - Asian College of Teachers

Structuring the Writing Skills of the Children with Autism by Including These Teaching Strategies

13th January 2021

The aptitude to write is significant to everyday life! Although, autism is not a learning disability but it can and does affect immensely how children learn. For students with autism, writing can be a difficult matter because of structural problems, motor or coordination complications, and so on. People with autism usually have problems with fine motor skills as well as visual-motor speed, which impact handwriting or word processing. But, as a 21st-century teacher of special education with online autism courses for teachers, you need to possess certain teaching skills through which you can help them. Autism is a special need categorized by discrepancies in socialization and controlled repetitive patterns of behavior or activities.

Well, we are sure you have noticed the following things with your learner who has autism:
 

  • Sensory problems with writing implements
  • Disordered handwriting
  • Problems in writing properly
  • Hyper-focus on the specifics of writing
  • Trouble in translating what he/she wants to say into writing

And so on! You may be wondering how to teach a child with autism to write. Here are some of the effective teaching suggestions that will help you out.

Pre-writing Strategies

The best way to teach writing to autistic kids is the pre-writing and brainstorming approaches which appeal to their forte and style of learning. You perhaps know that autistic kids tend to learn better visually. We recommend you deliver them different opportunities to brainstorm their ideas through pictures and drawings. However, as these children frequently struggle with their fine motor skills, we suggest you use a word processor on a computer or work with a transcriber.

Try to teach them using pencil grips for handwriting, to avoid or decrease the sensory issues. Also, the graphic charts and organizers are very useful too. Try to integrate effective vocabulary directions into your writing sessions. Let your students use the assistive technology such as word prediction software, and word banks, etc.

Hand Therapy

Emphasizing on developing the fine motor skills can really help to boost the handwriting skills of a child with autism. Here, the hand therapy can be exclusively advantageous to children with autism as it shapes up the muscle tone. This eventually led to improving their fine motor skills. If you wish, you can also include hand therapy into your classroom routine.

Well, simple things can help advance muscle tone in their wrists. You may include games like tug-of-war by using a large rubber band, play dough and stress balls, etc. This is not just fun, but can also aid your students to build up muscle strength in their wrists and arms. Just remember, try to let the learners start with something softer, and then advance to hard materials gradually if you perceive an improvement in their strength.

proper pencil grasp for writing with kids

Respond and Overcome the Issues

Well, it can be a fight to write during class spontaneously for students with autism. Therefore, always prepare to respond with suitable teaching methods. Children with autism need to be reinvigorated to express their thoughts. You can prompt by using illustrations or pictures and then ask them important questions. You may include writing examples along with the stimuli too.

People with autism need a sense of uniformity in their daily lives, so integrating consistent and ungraded writing tasks along with activities can make the learning process less intimidating. Your lessons should be multisensory and you need to work with a variety of learning styles. Also, remember the children with autism have a tendency to learn quickly if they are being taught in small stages. Hence, you need to think cautiously about every stage while teaching them how to write. If your student is stressed, consider slowing down your speed.

Hand Muscle Building Exercises

Try different squeeze exercises to help them to build hand and finger muscle. Provide the child with squeeze objects such as a stress ball or play-dough, etc. to build finger strength. We would recommend of starting with soft objects and slowly work go for the harder ones as the child gets stronger. Allow the child to work with the supplies without any pressure to complete the task.

Vocabulary Directions

We understand the fact that teaching vocabulary is serious for any student. However, for pupils with autism, this can be particularly significant. So, make sure to break down your vocabulary lessons into different groupings. Just try to keep in your mind, while incorporating vocabulary instructions in your writing lessons, focus on those vocabulary that your learners already use in their daily language. Gradually, you can then expand from there, as long as you keep the lessons simple at first. Well, make it a part of your classroom routine!

To conclude, we would like to suggest create new learning opportunities in a safe, supportive environment. Teaching the autistic children is not an easy task, it requires training with online autism courses for teachers and will-power with patience. Obviously, there will be certain challenges in your way but those can be solved with proper teaching techniques.

Students with autism can actually become good writers with appropriate provisions. Teachers should provide the apt variations necessary for accomplishment. Utilizing the strengths of students with autism can help them become confident writers.

Best of luck!
 

Written By : Angira Mitra

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