Where it all began

Paul's (not his real name) story was featured in my article for SEN Magazine.

Over the past few years, as I have been delivering training, I have been hearing more and more from parents and practitioners who, after using the free tools on this website, have discovered that their non-speaking child is, indeed, a reader! In the near (ish) future I plan to dedicate a page of the website to such stories, but in the meantime, I got to thinking about Paul.

My story

My first role in a school was that of a lunchtime supervisor. It was the first time I got to work with children with additional learning needs (ALN) and it was the role that inspired me to 'go back to school' and get the qualifications I needed to become a teacher.

Paul was one of the first children I taught after I qualified as a teacher. Paul's success in reading is where I found the motivation I needed to pursue my PhD.

Our work together changed both our lives :)

Paul’s story

“Paul is very disruptive, he breaks everything, he rips everything up.  If you are getting ready for a lesson don’t put anything out beforehand, he’ll just wreck it.”

            About to start my first year of teaching, this was the first piece of information I learned about Paul during handover from his teacher of the previous year.  Paul was six years old, non-speaking, and autistic. He had a great sense of humour, and a fantastic smile. He also had a short attention-span, and although he has once been very successful in using picture exchange to communicate, he had now resorted to chewing up his symbols and communicated his displeasure (often!) through lying on the floor and refusing to participate.

I soon discovered that the teacher was right about how much mess

he liked to make too! 

His favourite pastime was tipping out equipment from any box in which it was stored.  To try to distract Paul from tipping everything, while still giving him something he liked to do, I provided a box of old books which he was encouraged to ‘tip and then tidy’ whenever he felt the urge.

An interesting discovery

Before long, I noticed that rather than just put the books straight back in the box Paul liked to examine the books.  I started to make a point of sitting with Paul during these ‘tip and tidy’ sessions and he would grab my finger and point it to words.

Paul's face would light up with joy every time I read a word aloud. 

Other behaviours, such as being able to find the file names of favourite videos and pictures (without visual images displayed) and pointing to words on poster displays around the school, made me suspect that Paul may be able to read. 

Traditional assessment

Asking the literacy coordinator for advice, I pointed out that Paul wouldn’t be able to read the words aloud on the test she was giving out. 

The suggestion was, that as Paul was non-speaking, his reading ability

would not be assessed.

It was my concern about Paul’s exclusion from the kind of literacy provision his verbal peers were able to experience that inspired a range of research studies aimed at measuring the reading abilities of autistic children who are non-speaking.  The results demonstrated that Paul’s situation was far from unique!

The research

As part of our research, we presented autistic and typically developing children with a standardised reading test which had been adjusted to remove the requirement to verbalise answers. 

Utilising a multiple-choice method would help us to know if children like Paul were able to identify words and understand their meaning.

Reading is a complex set of skills, which when they interact, enable us to translate into words from which we get meaning.  Word recognition and listening comprehension are important elements of the reading process.  Paul’s word recognition skills were beyond what we expected, what’s more, he could demonstrate his understanding of those words.

A new start

Having a new understanding of Paul’s abilities helped us to better understand his behaviours and improve his provision.  Paul had stopped using his symbols because he didn’t want to communicate in pictures when he was able to communicate in words!  We introduced Paul to a device and began supporting him to communicate in words, and later, short phrases.

Success!

            The changes in Paul were obvious and almost instantaneous! As Paul’s frustrations eased, his behaviour improved, and we were able to put things out before lessons without them being destroyed.  The following year, all of Paul’s other assessment scores demonstrated dramatic improvement.  Not just in literacy but even in maths and science!

He can now access books in ways that go far beyond tipping them out of a box and putting them back again!