Support participation and build confidence
Suggestion for implementing the strategy ‘Classroom strategies years 7-13 ’
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Provide a structured environment
Provide a structured environment
A predictable environment can reduce anxiety and increase access to learning for students with ASD.
Demonstrate you value diversity
Demonstrate you value diversity
Consider how you value uniqueness and diversity in your classroom.
Closed Captions
Encourage sustained participation
Encourage sustained participation
Discuss with students what will support their participation and motivation.
Build these suggestions into your teaching practice.
- Establish clear classroom routines.
- Teach strategies to help students them when they get stuck.
- Break work into short manageable chunks.
- Give positive, timely feedback.
- Brief students about changes to routine.
- When changing classroom layout, provide a plan of new layout and when it will happen.
- Provide easy access to quiet spaces for working or winding down.
- Schedule brain breaks.
- Notice avoidance tactics or increasing anxiety, implement supports quickly.
- Offer leadership opportunities based on knowledge of student's expertise and interests.
- Connect learning to student's interests.
- Foster tuakana-teina relationships where students support each other.
Support transitions to anything new
Support transitions to anything new
- Assess the new context or environment.
- Consider possible sensory issues and ways to lessen their impact.
- Discuss the transition with the student. Connect to prior knowledge and experience. Support with visuals if possible.
- Plan and collaborate.
- Incorporate language, structures and systems that are familiar to the student.
- Make connections to the student's strengths, skills, and interests as part of the transition.
- Share information about the transition with whānau and ask their advice.
Harness strengths
Harness strengths
Students with ASD may demonstrate strengths that can be harnessed in the classroom.
These include:
- strong visual-spatial skills, which help literacy
- non-verbal problem-solving skills, which help when structuring tasks in ways that motivate students
- auditory memory, which helps when learning socially-appropriate phrases for specific situations
- strong visual memory which supports skills such as spelling.
Next steps
More suggestions for implementing the strategy “Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13 ”:
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Identify needs and how to provide supportShow suggestions for Identify needs and how to provide support
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Key areas to supportShow suggestions for Key areas to support
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Helpful classroom strategies years 1-8Show suggestions for Helpful classroom strategies years 1-8
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Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13Show suggestions for Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13
- Support participation and build confidence
- Present information in different ways
- Support processing and organisation
- Provide options to create, learn, and share