Understanding the sensory aspect of books for children with ASD

It can be frustrating to get kids engaged in reading and even harder for children on the spectrum. As a children’s author, here’s my best tips: Don’t attempt to read books at bedtime when they’re tired and cranky. Find a time that works best for them. Choose sensory friendly books with lots of white space and engaging stories or subjects they’re familiar with. Getting them to look at the pictures first before reading will foster discussion and interaction. Allow fidgety behaviour and if they can’t sit still, walk around while reading. Let them touch the book before you start and be slow and deliberate when turning pages. Keep your voice low and calm, adding facial expressions and repetitive head movements as you read the same book again the next day. This process may have to be repeated many times but don’t give up. The reward is well worth the effort.

Engaging Children Through Reading to be Critical Thinkers

Engagement through reading occurs when caregivers can help children by using interpretive tools to select, connect and organise information int he text to construct real meaningful interpretations of their own lives. The context of reading and the culture of literacy on a family and social level can also influence engagement. Reading with your child, not to your child, is important on a cognitive, metacognitive and motivational level. Children who have been engaged in reading from a young age do better academically and are more attentive students. During organic engagement, attention and mental processes are focused on the book and the learner is completely absorbed in the task of reading and in a state of flow. Although a child may be looking directly at the pages in a book and may appear to be engaged, they may only be going through the motions. Engaging your child during reading means sustained and personal commitment to create understanding.

 

Children are more likely to be engaged in reading when they believe they are capable of understanding, when it is interesting and when they feel it is important to them. This is why, as I have mentioned before in my previous blogs, that engaging children with reading books must come after they have a firm grasp of the relevance of words and communication in their day to day lives. This will help them to self regulate their attention and effort, relate new information to existing knowledge and monitor their own comprehension, making them more likely to have the physical and mental ability to hold their attention long enough to be successful readers.  It also makes it easier for them to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, link familiar knowledge to incoming information and organise sequences from the story, making them critical and creative thinkers.

 

In order for engagement in reading to occur, caregivers must provide instructional conditions that support it. A family culture that provides for child interaction and caregiver modelling of cognitive processes promotes the notion of reading as a transactional process where meaning occurs as the child’s expectations and experiences are in transaction and content of the text. Reading should be viewed as an interpretive process rather than as an exercise in listening and sitting still. Children should be encouraged to use strategic comprehension processes such as predicting, relating to prior knowledge and asking questions about the text in a reader-response collaborative discussion.

 

Too often, children’s experience of human interaction emerges as an unpredictable negotiation between being an individual and being asked to fit in with the expectations of others. They are asked to be passive participants in their learning. To engage children in reading, a more active stance is required. Children should be encouraged to use their own individual interactions with the text as they attempt to make sense of it so they can craft their own interpretations. As caregivers model interpretive tools, children become accustomed to seeing them used to derive a meaning from the text and develops an inherent reflexivity in its use as a tool to nurture engagement.

If you have any other ideas on why you agree that reading is an integral part of developing critical and creative thinkers, I would love you to contact me or comment below.

www.michelleworthington.com

Top 5 Tips for Building your Child's Vocabulary

Vocabulary is extremely important to a child's literacy development. especially if they struggle to communicate. Having a broader range and understanding of what words mean and do can help even the most reluctant reader and speaker into exploring the benefits of a wide knowledge of language. Most people make the mistake of thinking that reading to them and getting them to read aloud is the first place to start, but this is in fact the end goal. When children see the purpose and priority behind where words fit in their day to day lives, they are more responsive to engaging with literacy activities that foster a love of reading.

1. Use Rich Oral Language

Children learn to speak through listening to and engaging in talk. Young children whose parents use high level, rich, meaningful conversations when not only speaking to their children, but also speaking to each other, will give the best chance of absorbing a higher vocabulary and reading achievement.

2. Use Broader Concept Words

When talking about a particular subject, instead of trying to teach words individually, use groups of words in sets that are conceptually related. For example, when speaking about a farm, use words related to life on farm, different families of animals and how those concepts relate to their day to day life.

3. Introduce New Words

By relating new words to words that children already know helps to not only expand the word in context, but helps them find congruent ways to figure out the meaning of words. Use the word they already know, like 'funny' and then add a different word in the same sentence like 'hilarious' to introduce a new word. When this is encountered repeatedly and diversely through meaningful activities, conversations and texts, the new words become part of the child's world.

4. Make It Relatable

There are so many fun and engaging ways to draw attention to the words all around us. Playing with words through songs, humour and raising consciousness can be empowering for children. They can feel like they are developing a sense of understanding and power over the part of themselves that communicates with others which can be incredibly powerful.

5. Have Fun With Words

Words should be cherished, nurtured, celebrated and loved. If children can see how much fun you have playing around with words, they will be more motivated to take the initiative and seek out opportunities to engage with them throughout the day. When children are self motivated, they learn faster and foster a life long love of reading. Reading to them and having them reading aloud is most beneficial when they have achieved this level of understanding. Then the real fun begins...forming a lasting bond with your child through sensory storytelling and amazing, empowering, encouraging picture books.

If you have any other tips you would like to share, please don't hesitate to contact me.

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