Alex Is Reading!
March 18, 2009 by Jill Cornfield
Filed under Health
Okay, Alex was actually looking at his foot when I snapped this. But you get the idea. Jeff and Alex were on the couch, both reading. Ned was at the dining room table. I was taking this photo before sitting down to read. The house was quiet. It was heaven.
“Teaching autistic children reading can be challenging and time-consuming,” according to the subject’s primer on Lovetoknow, “but worth the effort and very rewarding.” Books with pictures, audio books,
and touch-and-feel books reportedly work well.
The Ezine article “Tips for Teaching Autistic Children Reading Skills”recommends use of music and games, and a base of “reality” in the stories, steering clear sometimes of fantasy stories and sticking more to stories of children simply going through their day.
A list of titles recommended for autistic children includes works by authors Bill Martin and Eric Carle, among many others Alex himself has enjoyed and echoed. We have to give a shout-out to Dr. Seuss, whose many titles include several (”Green Eggs and Ham,” “The Sneetches and Other Stories,” and “Horton Hatches the Egg”) that are still favorites.
Chris is hyperlexic- he loves identifying single words and short phrases, but hates reading anything long. His reading level is around the 2nd grade level- although he has trouble with “boring” words like and, or, the, is, etc- he’s 4, so I’m assuming that will come. He’s basically taught himself how to read, with the assistance of TV shows like Super Why and Word World (for about a year he insisted on watching both daily). He seems to not do well with phonics, although he does know his letter sounds, he seems to learn words in whole pieces.
Story time at school they let him play with a bucket full of letters, because otherwise he will wander around the classroom or scream if they try to make him sit in the circle. He’ll spell out words from the story, so they know he’s listening!