Archive for October, 2011

By: Angela Nelson

Labeling and Requesting are the most basic of all full sentence activities, and provide a basis for your student to understand that communication requires more than single word utterances. The following list of activities offers just a few examples of the many lessons you can use to help build full sentences and a more complete system of communication with your child.

Adjectives

You can use picture cards to discuss adjectives or descriptive words. Some adjectives are clear from the pictures, such as “the apple is round” or “the frog is green.” Other adjectives draw more on a child’s real-world experience, like “the bunny is soft” or “the banana is sweet.” To teach adjectives, you can start with a receptive task. Place cards in front of your child and ask them to “find something green” or “point to something that is round.” This receptive language activity will allow your student to hear some of the adjectives you use, before trying to come up with their own descriptive words when you start to build sentences with them.

To transition this activity to expressive language, you can hold up a picture and ask your student, “What color is the frog?” You will need to prompt your student at first either verbally or using a cue card method as described above.

Wh question

Use a picture of a common item to teach adjectives and WH questions.

Picture cards provide a great opportunity to practice “Wh” questions. You can show your student a picture and ask him or her to answer questions such as “What color is the frog?” “Where would you find a plate?”  “When do you use a pillow?” “Why do you use soap?”

To start, some of these questions will fall easily out of the adjectives lessons you have already practiced, such as “What color is it?” Other questions will provide a new challenge for your student.

Tell me about

Use pictures with which your student is already familiar. The best pictures will be the ones you have practiced extensively on the Adjectives and Wh Questions. Show your student a picture and ask him or her to tell you about the item in the picture.

The first things that your student should be able to tell you about the pictures are the responses that they learned in Adjectives and Wh Questions. The difference with this drill is that you student has to generate the content themselves rather than respond to your question. When you ask your student “What color is it?” they know color is the relevant detail. In the Tell Me About lesson, students have to decide for themselves that color is a relevant thing to tell you about the picture.

You can start with scripted responses, using the picture to cue your student. Then you can progress to more creative responses that might not be so obvious from the picture. For example, show your student a picture of a duck. Ask your student, “Can you tell me about a duck?” By looking at the picture, your student can get some basic answers. “A Duck has feathers.” “A duck has webbed feet.” “A duck has a bill.” As your student becomes more familiar with this activity, you may progress to things about a duck that are not readily apparent from the picture. “A duck can swim.’ “A duck says ‘quack quack,’” “A duck lays eggs.”

The Tell Me about Lesson also gives you the opportunity to increase the length of your student’s verbal activity. Start by requiring the student to tell you only one detail about the picture. Then move up to two, or three or more details. Of course, if you ask your student to tell you three things about the picture, you may have difficulty if they haven’t mastered counting skills. Here’s a trick: hand your student three blocks and have them toss a block into a bucket with every detail they tell you. This is a great way to help your student count their answers, and it makes it fun for them!

Storytelling

The next step in this language building series is Storytelling. Again, this activity builds on the previous lessons. Show your student a familiar picture card and ask your student to “Tell you a story” about the picture. The first elements of the story will likely be familiar from the Tell Me About lesson. For example:

“Tell me a story about a duck.”

“There was a duck, it had webbed feet, feathers, and a bill. The duck went for a swim in the pond, then it laid some eggs and said ‘quack quack’”

As your student’s language skills grow, so will the creativity of the stories!

Generalization

The setting in which you begin to teach language skills is very structured and formal. However these new skills will become more valuable as they generalize across time and setting, and with various communication partners. To help promote generalization, you can start by moving your therapy session to different places – starting even with different rooms in the house.

Next, it is important that the skills your child has learned in the formal therapy session be practiced throughout other aspects of the child’s life, such as during family time and at school. Make sure to bring the cards (or have second sets) to dinner, to the store, to school, etc. Whenever you communicate with your child, require the same full sentences that are expected during therapy. Stop and take the time to use the prompt cards if necessary.

Finally, keep good records and good communication channels open with all of the other professionals and family members in your child’s life. You should send a notebook back and forth to school, or perhaps start an electronic communication log to make sure teachers are requiring the same sentences, using the same words, and bringing in the same prompts as you are at home and in therapy. Consistency is a major key to building and generalizing successful language skills to help your child interact with the world around them.

Angela Nelson received her BA and JD from UCLA where she studied and practiced behavior psychology under Dr. Ivar Lovaas. As Founder and CEO of Stages Learning Materials, Angela has created autism and special needs curriculum products since 1997.

By: Bonnie Arnwine

Halloween is coming and for most children both on and off the autism spectrum this is one of the most highly anticipated days of the year.  Here are a few simple tips to help your family have a Happy Halloween.

Trick or Treating Tips

• Trick or treating is exciting no kid wants to stop getting free candy.  Create a schedule ahead of time for your autistic child.  Decide how long you will go trick or treating and when you will stop.
• Have something positive to go home to, perhaps a favorite snack or surprise gift to celebrate the end of the night.
• If you have a child with special diet concerns or severe behavioral issues talk to your neighbors ahead of time.  You will be surprised how often neighbors want to help.  Give them the treats your child can eat ahead of time so that your child can go trick or treating.  Let them know about any sensory issues or concerns.

Prepare for a Meltdown
Remember exciting events can easily cause an autistic child to become over whelmed.  This is sad for the parents and for the child so be prepared for it.  Talk to your child ahead of time and see if they have any ideas on how to calm down. Here are a few ideas:

• As soon as you see that your child needs to take a break give them one.
• Keep with you a favorite calming item, like a vibrating pillow, small massager or toy.
• Take along a piece of hard candy to suck on while watching a liquid timer.
• Maybe wear noise reduction ear muffs to minimize unexpected noises from other children.

All About the Pumpkin
Carving a pumpkin can be a fun Halloween activity.  For children with fine motor or sensory issues here are a few alternatives to using a knife:

• Poke holes in the pumpkin and let your child decorate it using Mr. Potato Head pieces.  This is fun and can allow your child to change the way the pumpkin looks several times leading up to Halloween.
• Paint your pumpkin.  For children with fine motor challenges you can draw a mouth, nose and eyes and let your child paint on the details.
• Decorate your pumpkin by gluing on pieces of felt, construction paper, feathers, cotton balls or whatever else you and your child can think of.

The Costume
For those children who have a favorite character they enjoy dressing up as, it’s easy let them wear their favorite costume.  For other children you may need to take into account sensory issues.  Remember the face is a very sensitive area of our body.  Many children with sensory challenges can not tolerate face paint, wigs or masks.  Remember to cut off tags and be sure to let your child feel the material and approve it before purchasing a costume.

Simple Sensory Friendly Costume Ideas

• A soft t-shirt with the words: “This is my costume”
• Let your child dress up as a “Smartie Pants” using a favorite pair of pants with “Smarties” candies taped all over them.
• Dog Catcher – Let your child wear their favorite shirt with a name tag that says “Dog Catcher” then place a small stuffed dog with his head peeking out of their trick or treat bag.

Prepare for the Night
Schedules can reduce anxiety and help your child transition through the evening.  Decide when the child will get dressed, when they will eat dinner, when they will go to a party or trick or treat.  Write out the schedule and keep it handy so that your child can refer to it as needed.

Create a simple social script your child can follow.  It can be as simple as this:

• Ring the doorbell.
• Say Trick or Treat, or hold up your Trick or Treat sign.
• Let the neighbor put candy in your bag.
• Say or sign “thank you”.

Know and follow the safety rules.
Create a few safety rules that are important for your child and review them ahead of time before the big night.  Some safety rules in our house are:

• Hold hands while crossing the street.
• No running in your costume.
• Always wear your glow necklace.
• No candy until we go home.

Bonnie Arnwine is the founder of National Autism Resources, an author and national speaker.

By: Angela Nelson

We talked in the last post about building vocabulary, now it’s time to teach your child with autism how to speak in simple sentences. Last post we talked about the importance of using a set of realistic photos as visual prompts to help students learn various nouns, occupations, and emotions. This stage of language development can feel repetitive and basic, focusing only on learning single-word responses. However, when a child with autism begins to gain expressive language skills, it’s an exciting time to watch language emerge and leads the way for speaking simple sentences.

Labeling Sentences

After a child can say several single words when presented with a picture, the next step is to take these single word answers and turn them into complete sentences.

To develop sentences the key is to start simple. As a first step teach the child to use an article along with the word. For example, when showing the child a picture card move toward an answer of “an apple” or “a car.” Once the child has mastered this step it’s time to teach them “It is an apple” or “It is a car.”

As you begin to teach your child to use  full sentences, you will need to use prompts in the beginning. The most common method is verbal modeling.  But it is important to fade the verbal prompt as soon as possible. To help your child answer in full sentences without using a verbal prompt, you can make some simple visual cues.

Teaching simple sentences with the Language Builder Cards

Written cue cards are a great method to remind your student to use full sentences. For example, if you show your child a picture of a car, and ask “What is it?” your child is likely to answer “car.” To prompt your child to use the article “a” with the word car, you can start by putting a cue card in front of the picture with the word “a” on it. Have your child touch each card (the “a” card and then the picture card) as they say the words “a car.” The next step would be to add cue cards for “It is a car.” When your child starts to grasp the concept of speaking multi-word sentences, you can begin to fade the visual cue card prompts.

Requesting Sentences

Another important type of sentence that your child will need to learn to use is a Requesting Sentence. When your child learns to use communication to make requests and get their needs met, it will reduce their frustration level, which will in turn reduce the frequency of tantrums and outbursts.

To teach this skill begin by sorting through your picture cards to find pictures of items your child likes and that you have available to give to them. Food items are often the most successful to start with. For example: Cheese, Raisins, Juice, Popcorn, and Apple. Stick a magnet to the back of each picture and place the pictures on the refrigerator. Write the word “I” on one index card and the word “want” on another and place those on the refrigerator also. When you know your child wants a specific food (as most parents often do), pull the corresponding picture down into the “I want” sentence. Use the visual cues as a prompt to help your child remember to use the full sentence to request their desired food. As always, you should fade the prompts as your student begins to master this full sentence activity

Using cue cards to teach simple sentences.

A Note on Using Cue Cards to Prompt

You may think: Why am I using written words to prompt my child? He can’t speak well, so what makes anyone think he can read?

The cards are not meant for your child to read. They are merely place markers. It makes as much sense to use the words as anything else. However, you could also use something as simple and nondescript such as blocks or blank cards for your child to touch as they say the words. The idea is to give your child a visual reminder to speak the extra words. In fact there are schools of thought suggesting that if you tie spoken words to physical activity that it creates more neural pathways for the words to attach to. Regardless, you can choose to use the word cards, or to use a more neutral object. Decide what works best for your child.

Angela Nelson received her BA and JD from UCLA where she studied and practiced behavior psychology under Dr. Ivar Lovaas. As Founder and CEO of Stages Learning Materials, Angela has created autism and special needs curriculum products since 1997.

By Angela Nelson

Building Expressive Vocabulary
Expressive language is the step where your child learns to actually say words out loud. All of the tasks we talked about in Part 1 come into play when building your child’s expressive vocabulary. Picture cards are a useful tool again, because it just isn’t feasible to bring every object directly to your child. We certainly want them to learn the words bus and airplane, but it’s difficult to get those items into your living room!

The basic idea for building expressive vocabulary using picture cards is just to hold the card up and ask your child “what is it?” The intricacy comes in knowing how to prompt your child and how to fade that prompt. We talked in Part 1 about the importance of your child being able to imitate the words that you say. Imitation is the basis for the prompts you will use to build your child’s expressive vocabulary.

The first several times you ask your child the name of a new picture, you will likely have to model the word for him or her. For example, you ask your child “What is it?” If you do not get a response, you say “apple.” Ideally your child repeats the word “apple.” After a few tries, you can shorten your prompt to “app….” And then to “aaaa…….” And then perhaps to just opening your mouth as if to say “aaaa…” but not making a sound.

Building Vocabulary Using the Language Builder Card Set

A Comprehensive Picture Card Library
It is a good idea to have a large selection of pictures ready to go when you start to teach the lessons we just described. Here are a few tips to help you choose or take appropriate pictures:

• Start with words that are familiar to your child. Words like apple, cup and cookies may be better than saxophone or stethoscope.
• Start with pictures on a plain white, or a distraction free background.
• Make sure to have duplicates available for the matching tasks when you first start out.
• Consider taking multiple pictures of the same item (6 different apples for example) to help your child generalize their newly learned words.
• As your child becomes more comfortable learning new words move to more natural settings for your pictures.
• Have a broad range of pictures, across multiple categories, ready for when your child is ready to move forward!
• If you take the pictures yourself, consider having them laminated for durability.

If you would like to purchase a set of photo cards to meet the needs of your new language program we recommend the  350-Card Set of photo flash cards called the Language Builder Picture Card Set, developed by Stages Learning Materials which is specifically tailored to meet the needs of an early language vocabulary building program.  This set is currently on sale at the National Autism Resources autism store.

Angela Nelson received her BA and JD from UCLA where she studied and practiced behavior psychology under Dr. Ivar Lovaas. As Founder and CEO of Stages Learning Materials, Angela has created autism and special needs curriculum products since 1997.