Garima,
I’m sorry your son is struggling with reading and writing like this. It sounds like he possibly needs to go back to some foundational skills. Take a look at our All About Reading level 1 placement test. Are there any areas in it that he isn’t skilled in? If so, then he isn’t ready to begin joining letters into words yet. He would need the Pre-reading level to build the foundational skills necessary for reading.

The good news is that All About Reading makes use of short, focused lessons with various types of activities that include movement and fun. This is often all that is needed to keep distracted children’s focused on task. And by working on the beginning skills he needs, he will be able to have more success and will have less anxiety and stress.

Let me know what you think about the placement test and any questions you have.

Rosechelles,
Teaching a non-verbal student is definitely a challenge. You don’t mention your student’s age or ability level to respond or communicate without words.

For the All About Reading program, you really need to be able to hear your student read in order to understand and help her with the mistakes she may make.

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 her identify a word; she will need to be able to sound it out and read it.

Does she ever act out things she hears? I wonder if she would sometimes be able to act out what she reads. I have heard of non-verbal autistic students being able to communicate by acting and gesturing. It might give you a clue into what she understands, though I’m not sure how clear of an indicator this would be.

Is she seeing a speech therapist? The therapist may have ideas for how to know if your student is able to read words even if she does not say them aloud. Unfortunately, knowing what to do in cases like this is beyond our expertise. It may be that the multisensory methods of All About Reading would encourage her to be a bit more verbal and try saying the words as she touches the tiles. However, it may not. It’s hard to say.

If she is older and writing letters well, I’d be tempted to suggest All About Spelling with her as a back-door approach because then she could write words instead of having to read them. (Read the comment from the mom of a 13-year-old non-verbal student in the green “Notes from Parents of Autistic Children” on this blog post.)

I am sorry I can’t provide more concrete help. However, if you have further questions please let me know.

Shirley,
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Annie,
I can see how this is frustrating to you, the teaching, and the student!

From what you write, I get the impression that it is only with the journal that he is this difficult on an ongoing basis. It is possible that writing is physically difficult for him and he avoids it for that reason. Having a strong aversion to writing along with very messy writing are symptoms of dysgraphia. Dysgraphia can coexist with other learning disabilities, including autism. Our blog post Dysgraphia: How can I help my child? describes this disability and thing that can be done to help those that have it.

Since writing in his journal is such a problem for both him and for the class at large, he may need his IEP updated. It could be as simple as having him dictate to you what he wants to be written in his journal and you write it. Or, maybe he could do the homework by typing his journal entry or using speech-to-text software. Removing the creative act of writing (coming up with the words) from the physical act may go a long way to solving this problem. Occupational therapy can help students build the fine motor skills necessary to find writing not so difficult, so that would possibly be helpful as well.

I hope you can find a way to help this student. I hope this helps some.

Renna,
I’m so sorry your little one is struggling! Poor guy. It’s enough to break any mother’s heart.

It may be that the way reading is being taught in his school isn’t orderly enough for him. Many programs teach words that are high frequency, meaning they appear often in children’s books, but are not chosen for having common patterns. This makes reading seem very random and illogical to young learners.

Such learners almost always do better with an approach that focuses on the patterns and orderliness of English. Does he know phonograms and how to sound words out? If not, I recommend beginning there.

And All About Reading has a great success rate with helping struggling learners, autistic or not, to not only succeed with reading but to enjoy it as well.

I hope this helps some, but please let me know if you have further questions or need anything.

Genoveva,
I’m happy to help! Is your child reading at all? If he is not, please look at our placement test for All About Reading 1. How does he do with the skills covered in the placement test? If he struggles with a lot of them, he would benefit from doing our Pre-reading level first. If he does well with all or almost all of the skills in the placement test, he will be ready to begin All About Reading 1.

If he is already reading, even a little, look at the placement tests for All About Reading to help you decide which level would be best. Also, we recommend having him read the sample stories from the previous level as a further confirmation. You want him to be reading fluently with good comprehension before going to a higher level. (Links to the sample stories are found below the placement tests.)

Evaluate (without correcting your child) for the following…
His ability to decode the words in the story.
His ability to comprehend the story.
Could he fluently read the story with expression?
Did he understand the words from a vocabulary standpoint?

Let me know how your child does with the placement tests and with the sample stories if he is already reading. Also, let me know if you have further questions or need anything.

Therese,
I’m happy that this blog post was helpful to you as you help this adult! Let me know if you need anything or have any questions as you begin.

Sirgute,
I’m sorry your daughter is struggling in this way. We don’t have any resources for encouraging speaking on our blog, but this article from another website may be helpful. Seven Ways to Help Your Nonverbal Child Speak.

Lisa,
I’m sorry I missed this previously.

Many just-turned-5-year-olds aren’t ready for formal academics. Most children that have turned 5 after the 1st of September won’t be starting kindergarten until next year. Also, a lot of learning, even academic learning, can happen without sitting. If he is ready, he could learn letters, rhyming, counting, even reading, addition and subtraction, and spelling all while standing and moving around. My youngest child was a highly active 5-year-old and the only subject she sat for was handwriting, and that was only for 5 minutes a day. I have great photos of her doing math in a blanket fort under the table, learning to count syllables by jumping, listening to me read aloud to her while she cuddled with a dog or cat, and otherwise moving all over our home while learning.

First, as this blog post details, All About Reading and All About Spelling are wonderful for active learners as they are multisensory. Each lesson involves students eyes, ears, and hands.

Second, there are many ways you can add movement and activity to learning. Our blog post on Kinesthetic Learning is full of ideas on how to take something that is traditionally learned while seated and turn it into a fun, active learning experience.

Lastly, we have many blog posts that help you teach active young learners foundational skills in a fun, hands-on way. Check out our Fun Ways to Develop Phonological Awareness, our “Feed the Puppy” game for practicing letters, words, or even math facts, our numerous Letter Knowledge activities, and our Picture Book Review archive for learning about the world around us.

I hope this helps. Please let us know if you have further questions. Most of all, have fun!

Ashley,
Thank you for taking the time to detail how All About Reading has helped your children to succeed with reading. I especially like that you allow your children time to let new concepts sink in. You are a great teacher.

Cheryl,
There are many math curriculum options available for students that struggle with math. However, we do not produce one.

Reading comprehension issues can happen for a variety of reasons. For example:

1. gaps in phonogram knowledge
2. fluency issues – Students can sound out what they read but can’t read it fluently–if they are focusing on the work of reading, they won’t be able to focus on understanding what they read.
3. word guessing issues – Students rely on word-guessing strategies, and incorrect guesses lead to a lack of comprehension. Some also skip small words.

4. reading too fast – Sometimes the opposite of fluency issues is the case. Students think that a “good reader” reads very quickly. Students who do this tend not to have time to think about the meaning of text. See our blog post on reading too fast for more information.

5. vocabulary issues – Students may have the phonics skills to sound out and read words that they don’t know the meaning of yet. This can happen especially with young, advanced readers. For example, think of a simple word like “milkman.” How many 21st century kids would have any idea what a milkman is?!

6. lack of life experience – Students can’t relate to what they are reading, again usually because of young age. It doesn’t matter if a 10-year-old can read every word easily in the book Rules of the Road, they aren’t going to be able to get the subtleties of the metaphors in the book because they have never driven a car.

7. they do understand but feel overwhelmed when asked to put what they know into words. If this is the case for your son, you might notice similar issues with listening comprehension.

A student may need more specific prompts to share what he knows. Sometimes reading a passage and expecting the child to explain it back in his own words will overwhelm elementary school-aged children. They don’t know where to start and just can’t do it. In that case, you probably would be more successful if you gave your son prompts.

Marie uses this example: Find out something that he is really interested in, such as “raising turtles.” Get a book and read a section aloud to him, such as the section on “what kinds of food should you feed your turtle.” Then start a discussion with the child, and incorporate some of the new info that you just read in the book. “I never knew that you could feed lettuce to turtles! What else can you feed turtles?” Then read the part on habitats of box turtles. Start a discussion on that. “If you were to set up a tank for a box turtle, what kinds of things should you include in it?”

These types of conversations will show the child’s level of listening comprehension much better than the traditional way for a couple of reasons:
1. The child is more likely to be engaged in the topic.(Oftentimes, kids’ attention wanders during typical reading comprehension passages or books that they aren’t interested in.)
2. The child doesn’t “freeze up” and therefore can relay more info (just being asked to repeat what was read can be a scary or uncomfortable moment for a child).

Back to reading comprehension, if the measure of comprehension is written, he may feel bored (it’s busy work) or overwhelmed by the task of writing, or the questions asked may be overly picky (focusing on aspects of the story that were unimportant, for example).

Do you have your son read aloud to you daily? If not, this is a really good way for you to be able to assess what’s going on and why he is struggling with comprehension. It’s hard to catch problems without hearing the student read. If the materials are beyond your son’s vocabulary or life experience, he will need more help to understand what he is reading, for example. Sometimes, parents choose materials on the edge of a child’s reading ability; the child is capable of reading the words, but because the child has to work at reading the child doesn’t have brain power left for comprehension. You might assess whether that is happening. Materials need to be easy enough for students to focus on reading to learn, instead of focusing on the act of reading. Here’s an article that specifically addresses how we teach Reading Comprehension.

You might take a look at some of the sample AAR lessons for ideas too. The comprehension exercises are in the Teacher’s Manuals, and gradually get more involved with each successive level. So, look at several levels to see the progression.

I hope this helps some. Please let me know if you have further questions or need more help.

Diana,
Motivation goes a long way! Thanks for sharing what motivated your son.

Kate,
Thank you for sharing this.

You brought up a great point. One of the things that Marie noticed when she was researching reading programs is that few programs have enough review built in for kids who struggle to gain fluency. That is why AAR has fluency sheets or a story to be read with every lesson, so children can practice reading smoothly with expression and confidence.