Engineering Environments with Visual Strategies for Student Success: Working with Autism and Related Disorders

Most students with Autism, Asperger's Syndrome and many with related communication challenges are visual learners! This observation has tremendous implications. Capitalizing on their strengths, the visual strategies alters many social, communication, behavior and educational challenges.

Current thinking suggests that communication impairments transcend all aspects of the life of these students. While it is common for educational programming to focus on the development of communication skills. that focus tends to be directed toward developing the student's expressive communication skills. Comparatively little attention is directed toward increasing the student's ability to understand the communication in his life.

For these children, their struggle with communication is far more complicated that just the development of verbal language. Understanding the communication of others, trying to figure out what is happening or not happening, handling changes and transitions, and interpreting cues and signals in the environment can all be areas of difficulty that result in frustration and behavior that is seen as disruptive.

At the same time, research demonstrates that most of these students display a relative strength in visual skills compared to their auditory abilities. Visual strategies capitalize on that strength. using visual strategies to support communication helps students organize their lives, significantly reduces behavior problems and increases functional communication. This is accomplished in part by developing a system of visual tools and aids to increase comprehension. Schedules, aids to give directions, aids to give information, and aids to establish and communicate rules are some of the tools designed to increase the student's understanding of what's happening around him.

Classrooms that are engineered with visual tools and supports become environments where effective communication and learning occur. Visual strategies are not magic. They won't fix every problem that students have, but they will provide a valuable framework to support their lives. Implementing a system of visual tools and supports significantly reduces various behavior problems and increases effective participation for most students.

The principle of visually supported communication is simple; the impact on the functioning of most students with autism spectrum disorders and others with communication and behavior challenges. however, is profound. While many people use a few visual tools in their homes and education environments, few use this medium of communication support nearly as much as would benefit these students.

This program will demonstrate how and why to expand your use of visual strategies and explore a number of strategies for use at school and home. The use of visual strategies is effective across skill levels, for students from early childhood through adult. Visual strategies work for verbal and nonverbal students. Children with high and low skills benefit from visual supports designed to match their capacity. Numerous systems and strategies will be presented that have significantly improved both receptive and expressive communication, social interaction, educational participation and overall behavior.

For more information about Linda Hodgdon, please visit her website.