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1. Create a Routine: Creating a routine will help to make transitions easier for your autistic student(s), it can also help your general students as well! (Everybody needs a little structure.) Try this: establish a pattern of greeting the class in the morning, followed by a special activity—such as a warm up, and then lead into transitions for the first lesson. Mirror this strategy at the end of the day in your closing procedures.
2. Predatory Commands: Transitions can be especially difficult for autistic students. Leading with a cue that helps to foreshadow the forthcoming action can help with transitions. Try this: “When I say move, we will...”
3. Give Fewer Choices: Students with Autism can get easily overwhelmed when too many choices are provided. Try this: provide your student with only two choices. This will help to lessen their anxiety and give them an easier time to focus on the tasks at hand.
4. “Their Thing”: Find what your student’s passion is! What’s the one thing that really peaks there interest? What do they like to read or talk about? I.e. are they into rockets? Geology? Math? Try This: find ways in which you can incorporate “their thing” into your differentiated lesson plans, or if its something that can peak the interest of the entire class, even better!

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Autism is a developmental disability that is identified in childhood and accompanies a person for the rest of their life. Autism comes with many challenges for the individual as well as for the individual’s parents, family, friends, and community. Autism is unique to each person and therefore challenges can manifest themselves in different ways, providing a variety of abilities in functionality (I.e. low to high functioning). Common challenges that individuals face include: impairments with social interaction, delays in cognitive skills, and challenges with communication. However, although Autistic children face many challenges in their daily lives, they are also very often blessed with extremely special and amazing abilities that one would not have without ASD. It is important to support and love these abilities as well as the challenges.

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This PDF is about accommodating children with Autism with an inclusive setting. It touches on the most common challenges that impact students’ abilities to learn in a mainstream classroom and provides suggestions on how to help these students cope in the classroom as well as tips for teachers.

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This website provides many links to additional resources for supporting a child with ASD. However, the main reason why I chose this website was because it was one of the only websites that provided information/resources on how to support an Autistic child over the age of 18, including college options and information about joining the workforce.

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Helpful Websites For Parents And Caregivers

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Accredited Online Colleges This site is a database of every online college education program offered by an accredited college in the United States. The database is a thorough list of institutions and degree programs, with in-depth information including the specific accreditations of each institution.

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A video provided by the National Autism Center, The Autism Manual for Parents, explains how to support one’s autistic child in various everyday settings such as work, school, and home. The manual, accompanied by the video, explains practices and steps that can be done daily to help ensure that one’s child has the tools they need to confidently participate in the world around them and cope with daily challenges.

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Autism Manual for Parents by the National Autism Center

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Caring 4 Our Kids lays out 5 classroom accommodations for children with Autism such as transitions, additional media, and more. This is also a good resource because the organization recognizes and provides additional information on various other health conditions that can sometimes accompany Autism Spectrum Disorder.

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Since autism spectrum disorder cause a wide range of learning disabilities that are unique to each child, classrooms must remain equipped to help every student work around those difficulties. Each individual's executive function level and sensory processing difficulties play a role in the resulting learning disability types and severity. With 1 in 68 kids diagnosed on the autism spectrum, with many high functioning individuals, teachers at all grade levels must remain prepared to provide accommodations designed to mitigate those learning difficulties. With the right classroom accommodations, it is possible to overcome barriers to learning and help children with autism tackle schoolwork with confidence.

Daily Outlines

Difficulties with transitions between tasks and activities is common through the full range of the autism spectrum. Therefore, a daily class schedule detailing the broad activity categories for the day is a must. A detailed daily schedule will greatly assist with the transitions related to moving between the classroom, lunchroom, schoolyard and other destinations throughout the day.

It does not, however, have the power to assist with lesson micromanagement. Students with autism perform best when they know how to break up their time between each tasks required to complete the exercise or project in front of them. Teachers can provide an outline for each assignment to help students transition between the required tasks.

Alternate Media

Kids on the autism spectrum often have difficulties with visual or auditory learning styles. Teachers should provide multiple media options to suit each child's specific learning style. For visual learners, a combination of literature, videos, pictures and charts relays the lesson information best. Auditory learners, on the other hand, often require an audio tape or recording of the written information for the lesson.

For children exhibiting difficulties with both visual or auditory learning styles, it is possible to provide tactile tools to convey the information provided with each lesson. Tactile tools may include flashcards, board games, pads for notetaking, computer games and craft projects. Although it can be beneficial for the students to try the other types of media from time to time, the best progress will be made with the child's preferred learning style. It's important to remember that not all autistic children are the same. Whilst one may experience trouble hearing, another may not. That's why it's important to be able to facilitate both. Those children who do experience trouble hearing may need some earphones, similar to tv ears, to better understand and participate in learning. If the class is watching a video, these earphones can be connected to the computer or TV to allow autistic children to hear too. There are a number of different devices out there to help people with autism, be sure to find out what each child struggles with.

Sensory Tools

Up to 95% of autistic children have difficulties regulating their sensory system, which is often referred to as sensory processing disorder. Therefore, sensory tools, or fidgets, can help relieve the resulting stress and improve focus for autistic children as they attempt to learn in a busy classroom environment. The fidgets allow these kids to self-regulate their emotions and keep themselves on task when distractions compete for their attention. Many kids who are prone to repetitive behavior can keep their typical motions under control with a fidget in hand or under foot.

There are many different types of sensory tools suitable for classrooms, including stress balls, pencil toppers, tangle puzzles, clay, wiggle cushions, weighted lap pads, chair bands and foot rollers. Since fidgets are fun, yet low key, they are a nice tool to have available to all of the students to avoid having anyone feeling singled out or left out.

Quiet Corner

Classrooms are full of distractions that students with autism frequently find difficult to drown out. The screech of chairs moving across the floor, other students walking around, intercom announcements, flickering lights and school bells are all bothersome distractions that are near impossible for children with autism to ignore. Even strong smells can overpower the senses and dominate the mind of students sensitive to that type of stimuli. These distractions often become incredibly overwhelming to the sensory system, especially as the day goes on, which can lead to a meltdown.

To prevent sensory overload, teachers can provide their students with a place to escape the constant barrage of noise and visual stimulus by creating a quiet corner in a low traffic area of the classroom. The corner should have somewhere for the students to comfortably rest and allow their sensory system to calm down. Noise canceling headphones or ear plugs, sleep masks and weighted blankets can all help the student overcome sensory overload and prepare to begin the learning process anew. Plus, nowadays they are all easily purchasable online, from weighted blanket uk vendors on Amazon to more specialized stores.

Extra Breaks

Teachers can help the school day go much smoother by building breaks into the schedule. A single five minute break every hour provides much needed time to transition between tasks and recover from the demands of the classroom environment.

Breaks should also be available on an as-needed basis to allow students with autism to learn how to respond to internal cues and take the actions required to regulate their being. Without an adequate number of breaks each day, students may be prone to meltdowns from sensory overload and fatigue from constantly attempting to regulate themselves.

Kids with autism tend to return from the break reorganized and ready to focus on the task at hand. Teachers may want to suggest extra breaks at first to help kids become mindful of their feelings. Guided breaks also give kids a chance to see which break time activities provide the biggest benefits. Kids who seek stimulus may prefer to listen to music, while overwhelmed students may benefit from quietly working on a puzzle.

Playing It By Ear

There are always going to be opportunities for teachers to further customize the classroom in an effort to mitigate the challenges autistic children face in school. Each child with autism provides a chance to observe the classroom accommodations that provide the biggest benefits and identify discrepancies in the learning environment. As teachers navigate the process of providing support for all students, it is important to utilize all of the available resources to create a learning environment friendly to all.

Additional Resources
Accommodating Children With Autism Within An Inclusive Setting
https://www.superduperinc.com/handouts/pdf/134_AutismintheClassroom.pdf
Technology Tools For Students With Autism
http://archive.brookespublishing.com/documents/boser-technology-tools.pdf
Autism Preparation Kit For Teachers
https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Special-Education-Services/Documents/Eligibility%20Areas/Autism/autismpreparationkitforteacherspdf.pdf
Autism Speaks Family Services School Community Tool Kit
https://www.autismspeaks.org/sites/default/files/school_community_tool_kit.pdf
A Comprehensive Guide To Finding The Right Toy For Your Child With Special Needs
http://www.redwoodnky.org/assets/redwood/files/$cms$/100/1434.pdf

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5 Important Classroom Accommodations For Children With Autism

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Since autism spectrum disorder cause a wide range of learning disabilities that are unique to each child, classrooms must remain equipped to help every student work around those difficulties. Each individual's executive function level and sensory processing difficulties play a role in the resulting learning disability types and severity.

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The Foundation Education provides a clear and sensitive description of what Autism is as well as how Teachers can use families as a resource to better know their students unique challenges and characteristics to make the best possible learning environment for their students.

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Supporting a child with autism in the classroom

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Students with autism can present unique challenges for their teachers who need to effectively meet their needs. It is vital that teachers are well-equipped to deal with these challenges and are aware of the best possible ways to support a child with autism in the classroom. What is Autism?

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The authors share tools and methods that are meant to enhance independent learning for Autistic children. The discussion covers options from low to high tech and provides tools meant to reduce and eliminate educational barriers for students with autism spectrum disorder.