Learning to Read with a High Functioning Autistic Child

I have been a teacher for approximately 25 years.  I have taught Deaf and Hard of hearing children to read, Dyslexic children, children of various learning disabilities and regular children.  As I watch Michael learn to read, I find I am trying very hard to sort out, "What is a reading miscue?"  and, "Is this a miscue because of his autism?"

When Michael was 2, he was reading already.  He was reading all environmental signs, and he was reading pre-school and beginning readers.  He seemed to memorize the word, the more complex the easier it was for him.  He was reading words like, "chimpanzee, walking, elephant".  It seemed as if he were hyperlexic, a trait not uncommon amongst high functioning autistic children.  He was putting ABC puzzles in order at age 2, and throwing a fit if his twin sister removed any letter.  He would lean out of his crib and play with Leap Frog Learning devices for hours.

When he was in kindergarten he seemed to be in the highest level of reading group.  Now that he is in first grade, he has slipped down to the second reading group. It is not uncommon for children who learn to read at an early age to become more aligned with their classmates.  He is still a pretty good reader for age 7, but his classroom teacher was keeping him at lower reading levels to increase his fluency.

At conference time, Michael's classroom teacher showed us a recent running record.  This is a record of the text he reads and his miscues.  As Chris and I were looking at it, we noticed that many errors were due to 1.  His articulation (Michael has some speech errors...especially the /th/ sound both voiced and voiceless) and 2.  His language/grammar errors.  Michael also speaks more slowly than other children.  He has dysarthria (a speech disorder caused by disturbances of muscular control because of damage to the central or peripheral nervous system), which causes his speech pattern to sound a bit different than most children.  Many of the errors he made were because that was the way he talks.  He did make a lot of verb tense and grammar errors such as saying "childs" for "children", and "come" for "came".  One could argue that he isn't paying attention to the end of the word, or that he isn't paying attention to the vowel sound.  So therefore this must be a "reading error".  Chris was adamant that it was an "autistic" error.  This is the way Michael talks in his everyday conversations.  Chris didn't want the teacher to be "docking" Michael on errors that were mostly beyond his control.  

I brought this to the attention of the other reading specialists I work with at Jaffrey.  The other 5 Title one teachers, including myself have over 150 years of experience all together.  I have high respect for these ladies, and they gave me very good advice.  "Even though these errors might be from Michael's autism, he is still not reading what the author intended.  He would need to fix these errors whether it was a "reading issue" or an "autistic issue".  We keep monitoring his reading and trying to decipher the reasons behind his errors.  Between the Title 1 teacher he works with who is also the program manager for our Title program, the speech teacher and myself we are analyzing these errors. 

Luckily Michael's comprehension of the text he reads is not suffering.  He generally understands what he is reading. I have read to the twins practically everyday from when they were in the womb! Other children  that I have worked with, who are autistic, have a weakness in this area.  I am wondering though, that with time and when the content gets harder, he will start to have some comprehension issues.  The other day he did not understand a question that the teacher asked him about his book about hummingbirds.  She said, "Michael, point to the word that tells what is important about the hummingbird's beak."  Michael pointed to the word "beak".  When he was told he was wrong, he got mad, shoved his chair backward and went storming off.  He then used his strategies, cooled down and came back to the reading group.  A few minutes later, the situation occurred.  "Michael, point to a word that tells what is important about the hummingbird's tongue."  Michael again pointed to the word "tongue".  I believe that Michael wasn't understanding the question.  He was being too literal.  I spoke about this at length with Chris.  Then the next day I talked to his speech teacher about it as well.  We talked about having a visual drawn for him, such as the word "beak" in a circle with lines around it.  (envision a sun)  This graphic organizer would help him see that we don't want the word "beak" it is already there.  We want to add descriptions about the beak on the lines. 

I find this very interesting and would love to hear if anyone else out there has had similar experiences with their high functioning autistic child.  I think I could even see myself doing extensive research on this topic.  Surely someone is studying "Reading and Autism".  This would be a great research project, really worth looking into.