Teaching Reading and Spelling to Children with Autism

You’re welcome, Lizet.

Great to hear, Shelly!

Thank you, Katharine.

Thank you, Amanda!

Wonderful to hear, Kimberly! I’m so glad it has made a difference for your son.

You’re welcome, Anita.

Pati,
All About Reading does satisfy homeschooling requirements for reading and phonics instruction in all states of the US.

However, it’s hard to say whether All About Reading would work for him right now. Ideally, for the reading program, you really need to be able to hear him read in order to understand and help him with the mistakes he’s making.

For example, an activity like pointing out “which word is SNOW” isn’t as difficult for a student as reading the word SNOW. So unfortunately it isn’t sufficient to have him identify the word; he does need to be able to sound it out and read it.

I wonder if his speech therapist would have any ideas for how to know if he is able to read the words, even if he doesn’t say the words aloud?

If he was a bit older and writing letters well, I’d be tempted to try All About Spelling, because then he could write words instead of having to read them. Sometimes older students who are non-verbal find that the spelling program is a key for unlocking reading for them as a “back-door” kind of approach. It’s hard to say whether that program might work for your son now though. In the spelling program, your son would be focusing on building words with tiles or writing words rather than reading out loud to you. It’s possible that would be easier to modify for him (and if your son can spell the word, he has the phonics skills to be able to read those same words.) See Tara’s comment in the Green Box in this article. Most of the time, we don’t recommend teaching spelling before a student completes All About Reading 1, but again, it might be worth considering in your son’s case if he is already writing letters well.

I also wonder whether Pre-reading might be a better fit for him. The Ziggy puppet often motivates kids to speak or to repeat after the puppet. Many children respond to the puppet when they wouldn’t necessarily respond to an adult. Also, the games and activities in the Language Exploration section can help students develop some of their social skills. For young children with any disability, teaching time woven into playful activities is very motivational. One of Marie Rippel’s main goals with our Pre-reading program is to motivate children to want to learn to read, and playful activities are a big part of that.

A few years ago, we heard from the mom of an 8-year-old who was on the autism spectrum use All About Reading Pre-reading and the mom said it was very helpful for him, so it’s worth considering. Have you seen this article on the Big Five Skills? That discusses the skills that Pre-reading teaches and could help you decide whether he would be ready for a reading program like All About Reading level 1, or if he might benefit from the activities in Pre-reading.

Have you looked at the online samples? That might also help you decide whether Pre-reading would be beneficial. Take a look especially at the Language Exploration sections in the Teacher’s Manual sample, and see what you think.

All About Reading level 1 starts right off with reviewing the sounds of 4 letters at a time, having the student blend and read words using those letters, and reading a story by the third lesson. So, it really assumes the student has mastered all of the concepts from Pre-reading (as shown through the readiness checklist) and is ready to start reading.

Here’s a Pre-reading checklist that can help you decide if he would be ready to start that level. Also, the checklist may also give you some additional ideas of activities to do with your son. For students who are only able to parrot language, you may find some of the exercises are out of the child’s reach or that you will need to do lots of modeling and have the student repeat. It may depend on how profound your son’s autism difficulties are.

If your son is completely non-verbal and not parroting yet, you would only be able to model what to do with Pre-reading, and I’m not sure if that would be helpful at this stage. It may be more beneficial when he’s a bit older and is at least able to parrot.

I wish I could give you a definitive answer! But hopefully, this gives you some things to consider as you decide how to proceed.

If you do decide to try one of our programs, we would love to hear how it goes for you. Also, do know that we have a “Go Ahead and Use It” One-Year Guarantee. If you find that the curriculum does not meet your needs, simply return the materials at any time within one year of purchase for a full refund of your purchase price, excluding shipping.

I’m sorry your son is having such difficulties, Ramyasri.

Start with teaching him phonograms. Once he has the sounds of the letters down, and a few other phonograms like SH, TH, CH, CK, NG, and Nk, move on to helping him sound out words. Learning phonograms and sounding out words works much more effectively for many learners than memorizing words.

I hope this helps some.