Accommodations in the Classroom: Creating a Successful School Day for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Accommodations in the Classroom

Creating a Successful School Day for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Maureen Bennie

This is the second in a two-part series about Autism Spectrum Disorder by Maureen Bennie. The first article, outlining how to recognize a child with ASD, is available online at CanadianTeacherMagazine.com (Fall 2006.)

Success in the school setting for students with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is dependent upon accommodations made in the classroom. These accommodations should be based on the student’s sensory issues, learning styles and personal preferences. Appropriate accommodations will decrease difficult behaviours which can stem from anxiety, sensory overload and frustration. Difficult behaviour is often interpreted as a student’s wish to be uncooperative or manipulative in order to get what he/she wants and this is not the case. Difficult behaviour is a form of communication and it can be minimized with some simple strategies in the classroom. Here are some ideas to create a successful and positive learning experience for students with ASD.

Physical Space
• The location of a desk should be based on a student’s sensory sensitivities. Consider placing a desk away from a door or a high movement area such as the art centre to minimize distractions
• The student might prefer to face a wall or window so they don’t notice other students as much.
• Have a quiet place of retreat—a study carrel, bean bag chair in a corner of the room, or a table in the library when things get too chaotic in the classroom. Have a code for the child to tell you when they are on overload without having to draw attention to himself. This could be placing an object like a red ruler on the right hand corner of their desk to signify overload and a break is needed.
• If the moving of chairs is very noisy, consider putting old tennis balls on the chair legs to minimize noise.
• Allow the student to enter the school early or leave early to avoided crowded hallways. I discovered my 7-year-old daughter with ASD put the “gone to the bathroom” disc on her desk as recess was ending and stood in a bathroom stall until the hallways cleared.
• Place a basket underneath the student’s desk and have them place what they need in there for small blocks of time. Trying to find items in an overcrowded desk can be frustrating.

Organization of the School Day
• Have a visual organizer of the day. Visual aids and ideas for use of visuals can be found on www.do2learn.com or use Boardmaker® software to create your own visuals if your school has a copy.
• Visuals can also be photos. Some students find photos of real people and places they know more meaningful than picture symbols.
• Some students will want to know the schedule for the whole day, others may only be able to cope with seeing part of the day at a time, and some will need to see one activity at a time with a breakdown of the parts. Get to know your students’ preferences. Knowing the entire daily schedule at once may be overwhelming for some students and cause anxiety. For others it will alleviate anxiety.
• Put the daily schedule on a Velcro strip and remove activities as they are completed into a pocket marked “finished.” Students with autism like to know there is a beginning and an end to activities.
• For the older student, tape the schedule inside a binder.
• Warn well in advance about changes to the daily schedule such as a guest speaker or an assembly.
• Only post necessary information around the classroom (i.e., calendar, classroom expectations, schedule of the day) to avoid confusion and overload.
• Consider colour coding shelves for topics (Red = Language Arts, Green = Social Studies) and have the student’s binder colour correspond to these topics.
• Consider using a Time Timer for an activity if the student needs visual support for timing. If you want to control the units of time, put Velcro on the back of a poker chip, use a horizontal strip, and then place the poker chips on the strip as sections of time go by. At the end of the strip, there can be a reward such as 10 minutes of computer time.

Curriculum Instruction
• Keep your teaching visually interesting. Use diagrams or models, write on the blackboard.
• Avoid using figurative speech and idiomatic language when instructing. Most students with ASD won’t understand this language and neither will English as a Second Language students.
• During class discussions, consider using an object such as a ball or stick that is passed around the classroom to signify it is that person’s turn to talk.
• Ask the student to repeat your instructions to you once the other students have begun working. Be prepared to repeat your instructions several times and support them with visuals in order to facilitate understanding.
• For note taking, have a strong student with good handwriting take the notes on carbon copy paper, then you can simply tear off the bottom copy and give it to the ASD student.

Learning Styles and Options
• Make learning relevant. Many students with ASD have special interests, so use those to teach concepts. If a math class is using manipulatives to teach addition, let the student use dinosaurs, his special interest, instead of popsicle sticks.
• Take the pencil out of the process. Many students find handwriting difficult because of motor planning issues. Make use of computer technology and allow the student to type.
• Leslie Broun, the former Autism Inclusion Coordinator for the Peel County Board of Education in Ontario states, “In the writing or composition process, intellectual or cognitive processing takes a backseat to the difficulty and effort involved in the physical processing that must go on in order to put pencil to paper. Thus, the student’s quality and quantity of response is reduced. How one prints or writes is completely irrelevant to learning and intelligence.”
• When students have too many options to choose from, they can get overwhelmed. Provide choices on a choice board. Have them pick from 2 or 3 things.
• Allow learning to be demonstrated in a variety of ways. Verbal testing, arranging plastic letters on a magnetic board for the spelling test rather than having to print letters, and physical demonstrations of concepts (e.g., Which of these objects are magnetic?) are some alternatives to traditional pen to paper methods.
• For spare time or calming activities, consider allowing the student to start a scrapbook of their special interests. Save old calendars, greeting cards, dollar store or library discard books, and magazines. The student can work on the scrapbook if they are finished a task early or need a break.
• Homework may be too much for the ASD student who has had to cope with so many other issues throughout the school day. Talk to the parents and ask about their feelings around assigning homework and how much the student can handle, if any.

It is essential for the classroom teacher to have regular communication with the parents of the ASD student. A consistent approach to learning, use of visuals, and similar expectations both at home and at school will make it easier for the students to generalize from one setting to another. Using these strategies and classroom accommodations will lay the foundation for successful learning and keep the school experience a positive one.

Recommended Reading
Eckenrode, L., Fennell, P. and Hearsay, K. Tasks Galore, 2003, Tasks Galore, Raleigh, NC
Hodgdon, L. Visual Strategies for Improving Communication, 1995, Quirk Roberts Publishing, MI
Leicester City Council and Leicestershire County Council Asperger syndrome – practical strategies for the classroom, 1998, Autism Aspergers Publishing Co, Shawnee Mission, KS
Winter, M. Asperger Syndrome: What Teachers Need to Know, 2003, Jessica Kingsley Press, London, UK

Maureen Bennie is the director of Autism Awareness Centre (www.autismawarenesscentre.com) in Alberta. The Centre organizes conferences throughout Canada and the UK and has an extensive on-line bookstore. She is the author of over 100 articles and book reviews featured in magazines, newsletters and websites. She was a teacher with Calgary Separate School Board for 13 years. Maureen lives in Calgary with her two children who have autism – Marc (9) and Julia (7) and husband Ron, a professional pianist.