Teaching reading & typing. All ideas welcomed (especially think outside the box ones). (Long sorry)

[gess]

OK, DS1 is 8 years old. He has severe learning difficulties, severe autism and is non-verbal. Suspend disbelief for a moment though please and believe me when I say he is 'smart' (otherwise you are going to think the rest of this post is cuckoo ).

I'd really like to teach ds1 to type. This is for a few reasons. Firstly I think he's highly unlikely to speak. He wants to speak, he;s always tried to speak, he has lots of sounds that he uses as words, but for some reason he cannot produce recognisable words. I don't think that will change.

He uses PECS very well. I love PECS, but I also think he's ready to move on. Also the problem with PECS is that the symbol he needs and is shouting for is always in someones back pocket, or in the pocket of the jeans in the washing machine etc etc. He now has some signs, but he has trouble forming them properly and his signs end up bastardized, Which is fine at home. We understand them, but others will not.

If taught to type he could use a letterboard out and about. Far easier than carrying a PECS board. And less frustrating for him. He would be able to ask for anyting, not just stuff in his PECS book.

And finally a few people with autism that appears very like his (big problems with motor planning, better receptive than expressive language, highly compulsive, non verbal) have eneded up being able to write bloody books once taught to type. I don't know whether that is remotely a possibility and to be honest have no feelings either way, except that I think I need to explore the area as a possibility.

OK so that's that's the background. So we've been exploring how much he can read already. He can match some words/pictures and that's expanding. We can work on that quite easily.

I've also dug out a letter board. And a few times he has pointed to the initial letter of a word quite carefully ('s' to indicate 'sing' whilst simultaneosly using his sign for sing; b for bus, and the initial letter of his name to indicate that he wanted to look at photos of himself for example_. He has also used the board to answer questions such as 'how old are you?'. But I have a feeling that because he's used PECS for so long that he kind of thinks that one letter, one 'thing' represents one word.

So I need ideas on how to move from word/picture matching to building up words himself. We have magnetic letters and I've shown him his favourite word (broken) spelt out.

I think all thins mght be confusing though as I'm not sure that conceptually moving hands over a keyboard/letterboard is the same as building up words with magenetic letters.

He loves photos. I've thought of perhaps photo/wprd matching (so present a [photo tell him to give me the word), then moving onto getting him to type the word. Fully prompted at first. Starting with very few words for 5 mins a day then increasing.

Any other ideas. Also if anyone knows of any books with simple (perhaps single) words plus photos rather than pictures please let me know. We have the PM readers.

I don't think phonics will be appropriate as I'm not even sure how he hears word sounds. But his visual memory is exceptional.

we've been doing jigsaw match words and pics which he can do perfectly but I can't tell whether he's matching the words/pics or the puzzle piece shapes iyswim! He'll do it with his tutor as well and she can't work it out either.

hi you have had some great ideas here. For the reading, if he calms down near computers at any point you might like to take a look at Starfall and see if you think it is appropriate. It does use a phonics approach but there are lots of pictures, photos and animations and I think it builds up the knowledge in a lovely way.

Starfall is great.
Regarding the typing, have a look at Dance mat typing
My kids love it.

Thank you.

He is obsessed with screaming at ds2 on Club Penguin at the moment. Poor ds2 he shouts and screams and makes him march his penguin all over the place until I come and 5 4 3 2 1 turn it off

oooh will have a browse in ToysRus tomorrow (have to go to buy ds2's classmate a present). Cpaitals are fine- ds1 learned his letters from countdown before he was 2

Gess, if you look in toysRus and think the phonics writing desk would be appropriate I have 2 kicking about that are no good to DS (too young) I have been trying to sell one but if it would be of use to your son then I am happy to let you have if for free. (Not charity in case you're offended just friendliness)

gess, I know nothing about this (as you well know) but your idea of teaching each word as if it was a Chinese character instinctively makes sense. We have a big tub of small magnetic (but slightly chunky so easy to handle) words if they would be any use to you?

gess - just had a sudden thought. You said your son was matching words and pictures in a jigsaw but you didn't know if he was matching the puzzle shape or the word/picture. If you made four cards - two of the objects in the puzzles with their corresponding words - and see if he will put them together correctly it would indicate if he's associating the object/word without the jigsaw shape. You could then add the others. It may be he already knows those words which would give you a flying start.

oooh yes please tamum. And thanks for all these ideas. I'm off to look at ToysRUs. Thanks ever so much celia and Bewilderbeast as welll. I'll check them out - you're really kind (don't want to take anything that would be more useful to someone else).

I sat down with him on the sofa this morning with the alphasmart and asked him to write his name. He hit the first letter straight away, then we did the rest together although he got a bit jabby towards the end (compulsive hitting the keyboard- it;s been written about a lot by others who have done this).

He can match some words and pictures without puzzle pieces and tends to get either 100% or 0%. It seems to make a difference as to whether he actually looks at the words before matching . So if I say "look at the word" first we have a better success rate. Other times he just randomly slaps his hand down as if he's doing the physical movement that's needed but not the cognition. That's autism for you!

Gess - I was thinking about this at around 3am this morning....in my half asleep state I had this idea about the shape of words being important in helping your ds1 to recognise them rather than the letters themselves.......

DIdn't get any further than that thought but that is sleep deprived thinking for you

another thing - not sure if it would suit him or not.....

Sand and rice.
Get an old baking tray. FIll it with about 2cm of rice. Put some food colouring on to colour the rice. Leave it for a few days to dry out then you/ds1 can use it to draw letter. Same with sand (but I have a feeling he doesn't cope well with sand if I remember correctly....).

What I was meaning earlier about shape of words. For example, the word bed looks like a bed if you concentrated on the shape (ie draw around the word).

Does that make any sense?

oh that's partly how I learned some Japanese popsycal (shapes looking like things).

I don't know about whether to try writing, or just stick to typing. I'm not sure whether he'll see the link. I probably should try from as many angles as possible so wil give somethng like that a go (he's fine with sand now- also loves shaving foam.... that might work).

multi sensory approach to typing

not sure how relevant though

again not sure hwow releavnt

Thanks Popsycal - that looks interesting.

sorry if this has been said already, but this is great. www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

OK an update (more in case someone reads this thread for info at some stage).

I've gone back to (have looked into this before) the rapid prompting method as a starting point. The aim with this is to progress onto letterboards/keyboards and independent typing eventually. We're in quite a good place to start this now having done half a year of ABA/VB as ds1's attention and ability to work/answer questiuons is so much better (looked at this before but couldn't keep his attention). He's also good at pointing now which helps as lot.

The videos are interesting, esp the 11 year old boy as he's the same sort of age as ds1 and non-verbal as well.

SOunds excellent.
Do keep us up to date with his progress

I did some RPM (rapid prompting method) today. Just trying to suss out the technique. So asked him what came next (then counted, then wrote out 2 choices - and gave him a pencil to chose one- he got that right). Then he began to lose interest and wanted to draw on the pieces of paper.

Watched a video of a 15 year old, non verbal, spelling out words using a letterboard (that was following 2 years RPM).

We have a long way to go, but I'm going to draw up a programme. I'll try to do 30 mins a day or something initially. He refuses to go to bed so I have some time when they younger 2 have gone up.

How's it going, gess?