How successful parent and teacher relationships impact children with autism and how to ensure the relationship is effective, from a parent and teacher perspective. Parent Perspective Written by Harshita Patel, parent and author of ‘Autism in the City’ It’s Good to Talk! The moment a child with special needs comes into Read more…
Using Widget symbols to support teaching I recently wrote an article for Widgit, all about ‘Using symbols to support ASD Teaching‘. Widgit is a symbol set containing more than 17,000 symbols. Widgit symbols are clear, simple, colourful and display a single concept in a concise way, aimed to be understood Read more…
Using A Keyboard If a child can match colours, then they can learn to play a melody on the keyboard! I love teaching music, and teaching how to play the keyboard is really fun. I cannot think of a single child who I have taught, that didn’t enjoy touching and Read more…
Sensory Resources As a teacher, I have used a range of sensory equipment in the classroom to support individual sensory needs. An Occupational Therapist (OT) is the professional who can support you to assess the sensory needs of a child in order to direct you to appropriate equipment to meet Read more…
Emotional Regulation is a Key Area of Development. Being able to regulate emotions means being able to effectively identify and respond to an emotional experience. For children with autism, understanding their emotion and knowing how to appropriately respond to help themselves regulate, can be very challenging. This, therefore, needs to be Read more…
Engaging Learning You will have probably noticed that autistic children can find attending to and concentrating during activities that they are not particularly interested in, very challenging! With developmental delay in the areas of joint attention, language, communication and social skills being core features of the diagnostic criteria for Autistic Read more…
Changes during the Christmas season The Christmas season can sometimes be a very challenging time of the year for autistic children. There are all sorts of unpredictable changes to usual daily life in the lead up to Christmas and the school holidays such as: changes to the environment at home, Read more…
Role play shopping game Roleplay shopping can be a really fun way of learning about coins as well as practising counting, all with the inclusion of motivating toys and items! Items Needed: Firstly, find some toys or items that the child will be really motivated by, anything from bubbles, to Read more…
The Garden School The Garden School is a highly specialist school for children aged 4 – 16 years with autism as well as severe learning difficulties, located in the London borough of Hackney in the U.K. The Garden uses a child-centred approach to teaching and learning. A wide range of evidence Read more…
Written by Jamie Barnes Recent data shows that approximately 1% of the world’s population are on the autism spectrum. This is a twenty-fold increase from studies conducted more than two decades ago, though the rise in prevalence of ASD may be due to changes in the diagnostic criteria. Technology can play Read more…