Simple adaptations for young people who might be autistic but don’t have a formal diagnosis in the classroom to support attention & listening and to help finish curriculum tasks.
- Give students enough time to process and understand what you said. Auditory processing differences mean that many autistic people need more time to process language, when there is too much language, they can become overwhelmed and unable to remember and understand what the teacher said.
- You do not have to talk unnaturally slowly but be aware of your rate of speech and avoid talking too quickly.
- Pause before you add more information so that students have time to process what you said before you say more.
- Use visual support to help remember information and understand what to do, e.g., key words on the board, write the steps that students have to do to complete the task, pictures.
- Repeat key information or check instructions to give students another chance to hear what they have to do.
2. Fiddle toys. Some autistic students find it hard to focus and listen unless they are doing something else, e.g., fiddling with a pen, fiddling with some blu tack or with a hair band, tapping their pen on the table, tapping their foot. This can give the impression that they are not listening, but it is often to help them listen. Talking about this with students to find out what helps them listen can help you think about what support you can put in place in the classroom.
Research shows that physical activity — even a little foot-tapping or gum chewing — increases levels of the neurotransmitters in the brain that control focus and attention
Additude, 2021
- It might be helpful to do some whole class work on neurodiversity to raise their awareness of the fact that we are all different and our brains work in different ways; “Neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways; there is no one “right” way of thinking, learning, and behaving, and differences are not viewed as deficits.”
- Some autistic students use their clothes and body as fiddle toys to help them focus and listen, e.g., playing with their hair, tapping their fingers on their arm or leg, twisting their fingers. Find out if your students do this and reassure them that if you see them doing this, you will not think that they are not listening as you now know that this helps them listen.
- This is a great sensory resource; it is a textured bookmark
3. Reduce distractions. This sounds obvious but might be harder than you think. For example, processing differences mean that that autistic students often have sensory differences that make them more or less receptive to sensory stimuli, such as light, smell, touch, sounds, and they often hear sounds all at once, at the same volume, which makes it hard to focus on one and filter out the rest. Processing is invisible, we cannot see differences, which makes it harder to reduce distractions as we do not know what is distracting. Talking to students is vital in order to find out about their experiences and to plan support.
Teachers often have a wide range of different needs in the classroom, which can be challenging and in these times of cuts to services, support often falls on their shoulders, which must be daunting.
The adaptations that I am thinking about to support young people who might be autistic are ones that do not take up a lot of time, they are likely to help other students, too and they are strategies to use in the classroom to promote inclusion.
For example:
- Making a quiet area in the class that students can go to if they feel overwhelmed
- Workstations where students can work in a quiet space if they are finding working near others difficult
- Noise cancelling headphones/earbuds that can be worn when students are finding the noise difficult to manage and when they need to concentrate and are finding it difficult to filter out background noise
- Thinking about the lighting in the classroom and asking students you think might be autistic if they find it too bright, and the visual displays. The quiet area and workstations could be areas with no visual displays if students find them overwhelming.
- Developing a sensory tray of resources that help students regulate incoming sensory information, e.g., fiddle toys, chewelry (sensory resources to chew).
- Seating, e.g., sitting in quieter areas of the classroom, sitting at the front, near quiet peers, sitting next to the wall so that they are not in between two peers.
4. Asking for help. Many autistic young people feel very self-conscious, and do not want to draw attention to themselves, which can make it hard for them to let others know when they do not understand and when they need help. They often worry about what others will think, e.g., they worry that their peers will laugh at them or think they are stupid if they ask for help or say that they do not understand. This can make it hard to know how much autistic students understand and how much they are accessing the curriculum. I have met young people who showed no signs of struggling in school but told their parents that they did not understand what they were learning, and they found this very stressful.
It is great to have posters to encourage students to ask for help, and to model asking for help and saying that you do not understand, e.g., the teaching assistant asking the teacher for help and telling the teacher that they do not understand.
Stories provide students with opportunities to hear situations that are similar to their own, e.g., finding it hard to ask for help, which normalises this and they are a way to teach strategies for difficult situations without drawing attention to the student that is finding this hard. For example, a story about a young person who finds it hard to ask for help and say when they do not understand, and their mum tells the teacher, who talks to the student and tells them that they used to find this very hard and their teacher helped them by putting instructions on the board so that they could read them, which helped them to understand what they had to do, and the teaching assistant used to go to each table and show them what to do.
Stories can be a way to introduce strategies into the classroom, e.g., the teacher can tell the class that they think it might be helpful if they use strategies from a story in the class.
It might be helpful to talk about situations where asking for help was difficult but made a big difference to normalise this and to show the value of helping each other, not just on a personal level but in situations such as crowdfunding.
It is important to check strategies with the young person that you are trying to help as they might be fantastic ideas for students who are not autistic, but they might not be as effective for students who are or who might be autistic.
For example, I have met autistic young people who have been told that they can put a certain colour Lego block on their table or put their pencil in a certain place which will let the teacher know that they need help. Students felt that this drew attention to them, and it made them feel as self-conscious as asking for help. It is always better to come up with ideas for support with the young person as then you know it will work as they contributed to what you decide to do.