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Social Thinking and its Impact on Ac . . .
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G=Gestalt Processing/Getting The Big Picture: Information comes in bits and pieces that have to be put together like a puzzle in order to see the whole picture. These children struggle to put the puzzle together and focus instead on individual pieces. Recently I was working on reading comprehension with a student and I asked him to tell me what the story was about. He told me all about the dog in the pictures and what the dog did throughout the book. However, the story had been about a boy whose mom would go out of town and the good things he would get to do and the things he missed while she was gone. This student focused on the dog and missed the whole meaning of the story. The dog had never been mentioned; it was just in the pictures. This is also where organizational skills become involved. You have to be able to collect information and organize it into a whole. Children within the autism spectrum find it very difficult to organizing their writing. They will write a sentence, then think of a new fact or idea and write it down, and continue on to create a written piece that makes no sense. For example I had one student who, when asked to write a story wrote, "I like basketball. I love my mom. My sister goes, Ahhh! I love my dad. Pizza is good."
H= Humor and Human Relatedness: This can be represented in several ways. Some are so anxious about schoolwork and social interactions that they require perfection of themselves. They are very serious, they do not laugh and when they make even a small mistake they have a melt down. Others really want to fit in and will try to use humor at school but are unsuccessful. My daughter was once told a joke that went like this. "Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 (ate) 9." She laughed hysterically and it was obvious that her laugh was forced. I later talked to her to see if she understood the joke and she hadn't. She just wanted to fit in so she laughed because she knew that is what you do when someone tells a joke. Most of my students have a great sense of humor (even if sometimes I don't understand them) and allow others to make mistakes. They enjoy pointing out my errors and have humor with me as I laugh it off and fix the issue. However, the humor stops when they make the mistake in their own schoolwork. All of a sudden they become agitated and refuse to believe that I might be right when I mention that they forgot to add a period at the end of a sentence. Which then leads to a refusal to do their work.
As we have seen, an understanding of the ILAUGH model helps us to understand why children within the autism spectrum struggle so much with academic challenges. Social interaction is not just important when they play with others, but in varying degrees it impacts every moment of the day and is a key factor in the academic success of a child.
I have found that the best way to help children in the autism spectrum achieve academic success is to focus on the development of social thinking skills. There are many things that can be done both at home and in a classroom setting. When reading a story talk about how the characters are feeling, make predictions as to what will happen next, point out the direction of the eyes to help the child make "smart" guesses about what is going on and who is thinking of who. Work on sequencing skills to help them learn to organize the information they got from reading. For writing graphic organizers are key. Model writing and create interactive writing pieces together so the child can start to learn what information is needed. Work on specific social-cognitive skills such as learning what emotions are, what it means to think of others, learning to make "smart" guesses and create structured learning social environments. These techniques and many others can help the children learn social thinking.
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