Literacy challenges in Autism - assistive technology/recommended programmes?

[fishface1979]

Hi, My son is 8 and in mainstream school. He is autistic and struggles to form coherent narrative sometimes verbally and especially in 'creative writing'. He tends to shut down in these lessons despite being taken out and having 1:1 each week. He has excellent spelling and knowledge of grammar and can form a cursive script, even though he is hypermobile. Beyond touchtyping, does anyone have any experience with software/assistive tech that has helped their autistic kids? He has a very high IQ but his receptive language despite being in the 91st percentile is in stark contrast to his expressive use of language - 1st percentile according to recent CELF assessment. It's hugely frustrating for him as he says he cannot 'get started' - so probably executive function related too... has anyone had anything similar and do they know how to help? This literacy challenge does really affect all lessons and not just English, especially as he moves into Key stage 2. Thanks for any tips/pointers... maybe there is a literacy specialist tutor with expert knowledge of ASD somewhere in or around London?!

I think Clicker is commonly used in schools, do you know if he uses this? Do literary prompts help him get started?

How accommodating are his school? Are they helping him develop from where he is now rather than expecting him to be more advanced here than he is?

Inspiration 10 and TextHELP Read & Write might help.

If you do look at touch typing Kaz Neurodiverse Typing Tutor is good or speech to text software (such as Dragon) may help with the times DS can communicate verbally. Even when handwriting is OK sometimes DC find when they don’t have to think about the physical act of writing the content is easier and improves.

Pretty similar situation here. I'm not going to pretend we've solved things - in fact I'm hoping to get some more tips here - but some things have helped.

1. Usborne do a good set of creative writing books. We started with the 'my first story writing book'. usborne.com/gb/books/browse-by-category/english/creative-writing

2. Talking about the structure of stories really really helped. 5 act structure or story mountain - beginning/build up/problem/resolution/end. Then we did lots of looking for that structure in stories.

3)Story cubes and story games helped too - but only once that structure was in place.

The key thing for us is that he does better starting with theory. He can't look at a story and instinctively figure out what its spine is. He can understand very well and very quickly the idea of a theoretical structure of a story is and then apply it to a text. It's a perfectly reasonable approach - it's just not the way things are usually taught.

Hope that helps.