Why or how do students with ASD tend to For each topic, choose one digital tool (medium or
experience difficulties in this area? How is this high tech) that is discussed in the readings. The
commensurate with how you see students with
ASD struggling in your classroom? Provide a
specific example of a way you have seen a student
in your classroom struggle in this area.
Text Comprehension Text comprehension can be a very
difficult skill for students with ASD,
specifically fictional texts. Many students
with ASD are literal thinkers, therefore
they struggle to understand and
comprehend make-believe or far-fetched
stories. Many stories that we read in
elementary school are fictional stories,
which poses great difficulties for our
students with ASD. The one student I
have in my classroom really enjoys
listening to fictional stories but is often
unable to answer questions about the
text after listening to it. She often
requires an adult to go through specific
sections of the story with her prior to
each question. She also utilizes the
pictures to help her further understand
the story.
Handwriting Many students with ASD struggle with
fine motor control and sensory aversions
which can cause them to struggle greatly
with handwriting. My one student with
ASD has major handwriting difficulties.
Not only does she struggle to form
letters, she often struggles to hold the
pencil with an effective grip. She requires
hand over hand assistance or an adult to
write first with highlighter so that she
may trace it. She also requires the use of
a pencil grip to help her effectively grip
the pencil.
tool that you choose should be new to you and not
one that you use currently. Do some additional
online research by visiting websites, trialing the
tool online, downloading accessible versions of the
tool, or watching video demonstrations online.
Provide us with a brief, one-paragraph description
of what this tool can do and how you believe it
could support one or more of your students with
students with ASD in the classroom.
One of the resources mentioned in the
reading is Boardmaker. This is a program
that I use in my classroom on a daily
basis. Recently I have further explored
Boardmaker Online and it really is a game
changer. Using Boardmaker Online, you
are able to create paper, interactive, and
online activities for students. You can
create these activities to do as a whole
class or even send specific activities to
individual students. There is also an
extensive online library of activities that
have already been created by other
educators (and they can be edited!). This
resource is great for all my students but
specifically my student with ASD. This
provides me with a way to modify
fictional stories to make it more
accessible for her. Adding common
symbols to our stories help her further
process the meanings of words on the
page, which in turn, helps her further
understand the meaning behind the
story.
One of the tools mentioned in the
readings that is so simple but didn’t occur
to me is the use of a simple recording
device. Students that struggle with
handwriting often have the ideas in their
hand but are unable to get it written
down on paper. Using a recording device,
my student with ASD could easily speak
her thoughts instead of writing. This
would be a great way for me to assess
her knowledge on a topic, not her ability
to write it down. I also this she could use
her student device and use speech-to-
text software for lengthy assignments, to
completely eliminate the need for writing
(and a human scribe). OneNote offers a
dictate function that she could easily use
to share her answers with me directly
without the frustration of typing or
writing.