I have had time to work with Andrew again. He has PDD.NOS which is a confusing form of Autism. His language skills are very low and he gets frustrated very easily because it seems that he understands exactly what you are saying to him but he has no idea how to respond. Math is very difficult for him, he figures out the addition problems on his fingers says the answer than immediately forgets what he says. He usually ends up tearing up his paper and screaming. So we have started writing math facts on Popsicle sticks. He pulls a stick out of the container, reads the problem, solves the answer and doesn't have to write it down. We got through 20 math problems today in about 5 minutes, I remember it used to take over an hour for him to write the answer to just one problem. The best solution for him is no worksheets. We then played number games with a giant number grid and he actually had fun with math instead of throwing a tantrum.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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2 comments:
Hi,
PDD-NOS is the largest branch of autism. The research repeatedly shows that it makes up about 75% of the spectrum.
Think of these students as having as having many, but not all the behaviors that lead to a diagnosis of Autistic Disorder.
The popsicle stick strategy you are using is viable. See how it goes. If the student continues to have trouble reduce the amount of problems the student has to do before s/he earns a break. Nothing says that the work has to be done in right at one time. And sometimes frequent short breaks are more helpful than long single breaks.
That is good advice. He can do 20 before he needs a break.
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