Provides ready-to-reproduce pages of lessons, worksheets, and exercises that help teach reading comprehension skills to children with autism spectrum disorders.

For children with autism, the most important comprehension skill to develop is creating visual images. This kit not only aids them in creating visual images but also provides strategies for teaching more difficult comprehension skills. This kit consists of a storybook with CD-ROM (containing reproducible pages from the book in PDF format) for teaching reading skills and a special dictionary accompanied by a set of 578 sight word comprehension cards issued in a blue plastic container.

Students with autism should not have struggle with reading comprehension! Many individuals with autism spectrum disorder may be fluent word callers; indeed, many have advanced ability to recognize words. However, many people with autism spectrum disorder need support when it comes to reading comprehension. Comprehension difficulties in readers with ASD can be subtle and difficult to tease out. As a result, their substantial level of risk for reading comprehension problems is often overlooked or unaddressed, and many students struggle in silence. This is where Drawing a Blank: Improving Comprehension for Readers on the Autism Spectrum is helpful. This practical and well-researched resource provides educational professionals and parents with the tools needed to improve comprehension for good decoders who have reading comprehension difficulties, as well as readers who struggle with both decoding and comprehension. In keeping with current standards, the book emphasizes the importance of using evidence-based and promising practices, based on thorough assessment of students with autism spectrum. This resource helps those with autism spectrum disorder learn how they can become better and more effective readers. Foreword by Brenda Smith Myles, PhD.

Developing Reading Comprehension “In recent years the debate about teaching young children to read has tended to focus upon equipping them with the crucially important knowledge and skills they need to read words accurately in and out of context, that is to say, teaching them how the alphabet works for reading and spelling. While such knowledge and skills are essential, more is required for children to become literate, fluent readers who understand what they read. In short, the goal of reading is comprehension. This book scrupulously examines the obstacles to reading comprehension and exemplifies what can be done to help children overcome them. It is an important and timely contribution to securing high-quality teaching of the range of attributes children need to become fully-fledged readers.” Sir Jim Rose, CBE “The studies by Professors Charles Hulme and Maggie Snowling and their team over two decades based around the Reading Intervention Programme are the most sustained, comprehensive and rigorous research series on reading yet conducted in the UK. Their increasing focus on children who experience the most difficulty in reading is exactly where attention should be directed. This volume summarises the team’s achievements to date, and is most eagerly awaited.” Greg Brooks, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield, Member of European High Level Group of Experts on Literacy “Developing Reading Comprehension presents a landmark study from the top research team in the UK on how to improve reading comprehension. It’s an exemplary masters-level textbook written with undergraduate-level lucidity and approachability.” Colin Harrison, Emeritus Professor of Literacy Studies in Education, University of Nottingham A significant minority of children aged 7–11, despite being able to read fluently and accurately, have difficulty extracting meaning from text. This detailed guide offers three evidence-based intervention programmes, drawn from the cutting edge of educational psychology, for improving the reading skills of children in this group. It includes a definitive introduction to the characteristics of the ‘poor comprehender profile’, and explains how to monitor and assess students’ experiences and learning outcomes. With invaluable strategies for teachers, psychologists and special educational needs coordinators, the book will help professionals to support learners in their efforts to explore the full richness of language and to read with real understanding.

Autistic people often live in a state of anxiety and confusion about the social world, running into misunderstandings and other barriers. This book unlocks the inner workings of neurotypical behavior, which can be mysterious to autistics. Proceeding from root concepts of language and culture through 62 behavior patterns used by neurotypical people, the book reveals how they structure a mental map of the world in symbolic webs of beliefs, how those symbols are used to filter perception, how they build and display their identity, how they compete for power, and how they socialize and develop relationships--

Workbook for teaching reading skills and a special dictionary accompanied by 8 packets of flash cards (stapled but perforated for separating). Issued in blue plastic container.

Develops concept imagery: the ability to create mental representations and integrate them with language. This sensory-cognitive skill underlies language comprehension and higher order thinking for students of all ages.

Reading Comprehension: Assisting Children with Learning Difficulties examines the complex nature of reading comprehension. It introduces a model for classifying reading comprehension based on an expanded Simple View of Reading. Issues related to assessment, diagnosis, and remediation of reading comprehension difficulties are discussed and translated into clear recommendations to inform reading intervention design and practice. It gives an informed understanding as to why reading comprehension is difficult for some children with learning disabilities such as ADHD, autism, language difficulties and dyslexia. From leading literacy research, the book develops a deeper understanding of thinking processes that facilitate comprehension at the word, discourse, and metacognitive levels. Children will benefit from the introduction of evidence-based methods for teaching reading comprehension using structured multiple-strategy frameworks.

This valuable resource provides a methodology that focuses on visual learning, and is especially significant for those students having difficulty learning to read through a traditional auditory, sound based approach; includes explicit direction for the instructional steps to be taken and the kinds of visual materials that can be created and used to build skills; is packed with strength-based strategies and reinforcement activities for the development/acquisition of literacy skills; is designed for students with special learning needs, including ASD and Down Syndrome; and embraces the basic tenets of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Comprehension is the ultimate aim of reading and listening. How do children develop the ability to comprehend written and spoken language, and what can be done to help those who are having difficulties? This book presents cutting-edge research on comprehension problems experienced by children without any formal diagnosis as well as those with specific language impairment, autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, hearing impairment, head injuries, and spina bifida. Providing in-depth information to guide research and practice, chapters describe innovative assessment strategies and identify important implications for intervention and classroom instruction. The book also sheds light on typical development and the key cognitive skills and processes that underlie successful comprehension.