Learning to read, speech delay and the visual learner.

[TotalChaos]

You may all think I'm nuts, but I'm interested in trying to do some early literacy stuff with DS (3.11), as I think having severely delayed language is going to make his life difficult enough as it is when he starts reception. I've found that he can recognise some letters - but only in "Ay/Bee/Cee" terms - when I tried teaching him the phonic letter sounds, they all seem to blend into one generic "muh" sound. I am wondering whether visual learners might do better with whole word recognition rather than phonics. Anyone got any views/advice/slaps with a wet fish to offer?

Ds is finding Phonics incredibly difficult to.
i try not to work with him at home as i know the schoola re really trying so very hard to percevere with the phonics stuff..but when i do read with him and try the letters, he seems to pick it up easier.

Thanks welove, you may be right that DS just isn't ready to go beyond the learning some letters stage, I don't intend to massively push it, honest guv

Have a look at Marion Blank. She teaches severely autistic children to read. We're teaching ds1 to read and write (well use a letterboard).

How do you know your son is a visual learner (just asking as there's an idea gaining some acceptance that many children who remain non-verbal are actually auditory learners rather than visual).

I've written a short piece about reading and writing

here

private SALT (who is experienced with kids with ASD/LDs and AAC) has told me she reckons that DS is a visual learner. Thanks for the info about Marion Blank - I had a quick look at that when you first mentioned it a few months back, but had forgotten the name. How is it going with DS1 and the letterboard?

DS is very interested in books (I'm a bit of a bookaholic, so I think that's why). His concentration span has definitely improved in last few months since I dramatically cut his TV watching.

Oh and the visual/auditory stuff is probably a big oversimplification. I'm just saying don't assume visual learning because of autism.

there's a mini-punch-up on the blog here about informative pointing The manual might be worth looking at anyway as it has lots of ideas about teaching reading without using speech (although the main aim of it is to be communicative eventually so not entirely appropriate maybe).

How's it going? Same really. Some days he can spell out whole words without support, other days he's all over the place. He knows lots of first letters and is choosing written words well and consistently- which is really useful (eg what;s wrong ds1 is the CAR or the SCAFFOLDING that's upsetting you- and he'll point to the one he's upset by).

sounds like your DS is getting to grips with the letterboard, hope he continues to progress with it.
Re:visual learner etc - is this the sort of stuff an EP would look into?

Some maybe. But lots of EP's only really know the basics. I think there's a tendency now to say things like 'autistic child-visual learner' - because of temple grandin and other high functioning autis who have a voice. If you read stuff written by people who are non verbal (so there isn't a lot out there) it often seems very different. Their sensory systems are so confused. Lucy Blackman learned a lot by touch (I think ds1 is like this- smell for him as well).

Donna Williams has written a load of stuff about it- lots on her website.

Thanks Yurt, very informative post as ever . Will look that point up on Donna Williams' site.

The children who whizz straight into the letterboards appear to be very auditory (so they're starting to get a voice now the letterboards have been produced). I was hoping ds1 would be auditory, but unfortunately I think not (he's a mix of touch, smell and visual I think).

TC, not nuts at all. You know how people talk about the window of opportunity for learning languages in children, well it seems to me children on the spectrum don't have that window, not even for English, so have to learn like an adult would. Now think about how much an older child or adult learning, say, French, depends on the written word. And suddenly the notion of being able to read before you can talk doesn't seem so far fetched. My son who is hyperlexic as well as HFA started with the alphabet, then whole word recognition - words like "cat", "sun", "car", "frog". Then moved on to letter sounds. Nursery let him loose on all the Jolly Phonics stuff and he lapped it up. We have lots of fridge magnets with words printed on them and a few months later he started taking magnets off the fridge and putting them next to the thing meant (amusing when he put "cat" on a cat's back and it promptly ran off). It soon became apparent that he was learning words from seeing them written down. I remember one occasion when he was in the back of the car and kept shouting "Motors! Motors!" I eventually realised that he wanted his "Maths" book which he couldn't reach and hadn't read properly. Really good books at this sort of stage were things like "Dorling Kindersley First 1000 Words". And also the Cat In The Hat Dictionary, as it has pictures attempting definitions of words like "again" and "always" as well as the usual nouns and verbs.

Now, we do a lot of reading with things like ORT Read At Home which are too easy for him in terms of what he can read, but about right for story comprehension.

I feel really inferior now, I'm ashamed to admit I don't know what type of learner ds2 is.

He has reasonably good verbal & language skills now & can repeat back a phonetic sound but nothing sticks & he has no letter recognition & no concept of numeracy or counting.
He does OK at remembering the phonetic action with the sound but again if you re visit it a couple of days later its gone!

DS1 started to learn his letter names (using a toy) when he was almost 2 and by 2.5 was learning some simple, familiar words on sight. He didn;t start to get phonics until he was almost 3.5 and the Fun With Phonics series was first aired on CBeebies, mind and then he soaked it up like a sponge.

I did manage to snag a book about hyperlexia really cheaply from the Amazon marketplace for ideas to encourage him gently and an idea I liked was to give things he uses frequently labels using Post-it notes. Unfortunately, DS1 just rips them off and lines them up on one wall! It might help your DS, though, specially if you use words with picture symbols.

I'm just relying on what private SALT has said mymatemax, it's yurt that actually understands the fine distinctions! Maybe one of the sites that Yurt has kindly linked to will give you some ideas as to what your DS might respond to better than phonics.

LGS - thanks for the very informative post. Don't think DS is remotely hyperlexic, so suspect it will be a rather lengthier process than with your DS iyswim.

thanks ouryve, cross posted.

Yurt's right about it depending on the individual as to whether they're a visual learner and thus no assumptions can be made. It's pretty clear that Ds1 is a visual learner, or at least he's not an auditory learner. From what my parents have told me I was actually physically saying less at his age than he is (he has a lot of delayed echolalia and labelling objects and now communicating in often rather bizarre ways to tell us things, eg the other day "different chair" meant he wanted something to eat), however, because I had almost perfect understanding most of the time, when I did speak it made sense and ensured that others often put me down as just very shy.
Ds1 loves books (not surprising with me forcefeeding him them from birth :D) and loves numbers and letters, but I know he can only recognise a few familiar words.

The only reason I've come across this is because in the (slightly badly named ) book Strange Son - they go into this in quite a bit of detail. It does seem that a lot of people with HFA are visual learners, but it also seems that some who remain non -verbal and who struggle with PECS etc are actually auditory learners, and very poor at visual tasks but because everyone thinks 'oh all autistic children are visual' they get surrounded by even more symbols and visual prompts etc.

So I've been pondering about ds1. He can be very visual in that he can spot details immediately. But I think he spots too many details so perhaps loses the wood for the trees iyswim.

the donna williams stuff on styles of learning is fascinating, makes me realise the danger of oversimplifying.

One of the Olga Bogdashina books is really good to read on this (can't remember which one- but the jessica kingsley site gives good book descriptions). She really explains the complexity.

If you read anything by severely autistic individuals you begin to see how big an effect the sensory stuff is and how it isn't a simple 'visual style' or whatever. Lucy Blackman for example used to have to touch things before she could see them (I suspect that off vitamin A ds1 is often like this).

I think Donna Williams divides autism along the lines of those who got to grips with sensory stuff and developed language before 5 and those who remain very challenged by these unreliable sensory inputs and therefore are unable to develop language etc. Now that's an oversimplification but it's kind of what she was saying. If I can find her email about it I'll post it on ttr.

I know of one severely autistic woman on another forum who says she is not a visual learner. I can only go a little bit to understanding the sensory stuff myself. For example, I get overwhelmed by too many noises and visual sights, something like clothes shopping is a nightmare because my natural response to looking at things is to look at a very very small area in front of me, focusing on just one aspect, say a number on a bin, or the yellow lines on the road. But, if I have to look for something and expand my horizons then I feel disorientated and if there is a load of stuff crowding round, say clothes on a rack, then things become very difficult, which tends to put me in a foul temper and then makes even talking almost impossible (and often completely impossible). So for someone to look around and not even be able to make out what the things are, for things to blur too much for example, or not be seen in too fragmented a way, is something I think would be a lot more difficult.

Ds1 started reading using whole word recognition. When he started in Reception he could read a lot of words but found phonics quite difficult at first. I think he has similar difficulties to me wrt auditory processing. When he hears a word or sound I think it takes a few seconds for it to filter through.

One thing ds1 loved was his VTech phonics bus. It has the letters of the alphabet on the side and when you push them the irritating voice tells you the name and the sound it makes. Ds2 is less interested though and repeatedly presses B and G to make it say "buh-guh".