Some students with autism simply do not have the communication skills to be able to answer the question, others don’t know how to communicate the information they do have, and still others don’t understand enough about the story to respond.

Reading comprehension is often a concern for the teachers and caretaker of children with autism. Many are telling that their children with autism can read but that “they don’t understand anything.” It is always tricky to respond to such statements as many children with autism do understand what they read but cannot effectively express what they know. Because children with autism have movement and communication differences, they may struggle to answer questions and express ideas in traditional ways. Some children might be unable to “find” the words needed to answer comprehension questions (or any question for that matter). Others may know the words but be unable to answer questions when directly asked to do so. It may be hard for some parents to understand that a child could fluently read a text, know exactly what it means, and be unable to communicate that information. And those who do understand these gaps may be stumped at how to engineer other ways to help the child show what she knows.

The following comprehension strategies may help some students gain comprehension skills and improve their ability to read and communicate about written material.

Build background knowledge

Presenting background information related to the focus topic can help students better understand the text. For example, teachers might show students a movie related to the text, tell the learner a story related to the text, or help the student create connections between his or her experiences and the topic of the text. The teacher might also:

• brainstorm with the learner and write ideas on chart paper
• share personal stories on the topic
• ask questions about the topic
• make connections between the topic and a student’s special interests
• share other books related to the text

Perhaps the most significant support that can be offered is to include the student in the typical routines and activities of school life. Students will build “background knowledge” daily when they are included in the social life (e.g., recess, art class, locker routines) and the academic life of the school (e.g., math class, orchestra, academic clubs) and when their instruction is provided alongside their same-age peers.

Think aloud

To boost comprehension, teachers or can help students monitor their own understanding as they read. One common strategy teachers often use in a whole-class format is the think-aloud (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000). A think-aloud involves the teacher reading a text to the class and modeling his or her own comprehension strategies such as asking questions, making inferences, determining importance, and making connections to personal background knowledge.

A teacher might start reading a book by saying, “The title of the book is Running for Class Presidentso I think it will be about kids being involved in student council or some kind of student government. When I look at the picture on the cover, I think maybe the main characters will be a boy and a girl. The cover has a picture of a classroom, so I think a lot of this book will take place in a school.”

Teachers may even write their thoughts on chart paper so students can see and hear the process.

Drama

This technique is often used in lower grades, but it can be very effective in both middle school and high school classrooms as well. When students with autism study literature in the upper grade levels, they may have some difficulty understanding the motivations of characters in a story. This problem occurs because some of these learners have difficulty identifying and articulating emotions in certain contexts. Watching peers act out scenes from literature can help students with autism and others pair dialogue with appropriate facial expressions and voice tone. These scenes, therefore, can help learners better understand the meaning of the story.

Teachers may choose to use different types of drama for different lessons. Pantomime (Keefe, 1996), dramatic reading, and full-story performance are all types of drama that can be used in the classroom to enhance student comprehension and enjoyment.

Reciprocal teaching

Students can also be asked to help each other understand text. Some teachers ask learners to engage in “reciprocal teaching” (Palinscar & Brown, 1984). Reciprocal teaching is essentially a dialogue that takes place between teachers and students. The dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue.

Once students are comfortable with the strategies, they are invited to become “the teacher” and conduct reciprocal teaching dialogues with new material. At this point the teacher’s role shifts from providing direct instruction to facilitating student interaction, monitoring progress, and providing feedback. As students become more skilled with the strategy, they can work in pairs or small groups to coach one another, ask questions, summarize, predict, clarify, and think aloud about what they are reading.

All students, but particularly those with autism, may need to see this strategy modeled more than once. Since students with autism are typically quite visual, the teacher may consider videotaping a reciprocal teaching lesson and allowing individual students to take the tape home for viewing.

Retelling

Some learners may “fail” comprehension assessments because, in part, they are uncomfortable with the direct nature of question/answer interactions. For this reason, some students may respond well to the retelling strategy. Retelling is a comprehension strategy as well as a tool for assessment.

A retelling is done by the reader after he or she has read or heard a story. The student is asked to “tell everything” he or she can about story or text. Retelling reinforces story structure and the language and imagery used in the text and provides more information about a reader’s understanding than comprehension questions or other traditional assessments. By repeating the story with one’s own words, a student can learn to attend to the story elements during the initial reading and gain strategies for organizing his or her own thinking.

To help struggling readers engage in retelling the teacher might:

• model the strategy
• have other students model the strategy
• allow the student to doodle or draw part of the retelling
• give the student illustrations or photographs to use in the retelling
• give the student specific strategies to use in retelling
• encourage the student to take notes or draw pictures during the initial storytelling
• allow the student to type or write the retelling if this is easier
• allow small groups of students to retell a story together
• have the student retell the story by completing a story map or other graphic organizer