Graphic Organizers

"Graphic organizers" is a popular buzz phrase in education.  It is a new name given to many old and familiar tools.  Graphic organizers are pictures, graphs, tables or other visual representations of concepts, schedules, plans or other abstractions.  Because I have been teaching children who have autism, graphic organizers have been a part of my world for a long time.  

Children who have autism are greatly helped by seeing what is being discussed. If the picture provided has fewer words, all the better.  In an effort to stimulate the children to write more we have been using a graphic organizer, or a table, to generate phrases composed of an adjective and a noun.  For some reason the children are very enthusiastic about naming adjectives and nouns.

The children have not yet mastered the concepts of nouns and adjectives but they are making progress.

Graphic organizers have always been used in our classroom in the form of TEAACH schedule boards. In addition graphic organizers are used to show math concepts. Addition of fractions, in problems having common denominators, also use graphic organizers. The following graphic organizer is part of a PowerPoint Show in which blue fractional pieces are animated. The blue rectangular pieces move to the spots above the numbers on the number line as they are counted or added.



Collaboration with other specialists can be streamlined through the use of graphic organizers. Recently the topics for discssion at a student's IEP meeting were summarized in a table format (another graphic organizer). This helped the team to see at a glance what needed to be accomplished. In our classroom a graphic organizer in the form of a diagram of our classroom was used to assign aides to students during written academic work. There are many uses for graphic organizers in special education.

Assistive Technology (AT): What and When

Students having autism are precocious computer users but fledgling communicators. While they are whizzes with cell phones and iPods they are unable to tell their teacher ”I already did that assignment.” Children with autism appear to follow, for the most part, what they hear but they have difficulty responding. For some reason they are unable to organize what they want to say, retrieve the needed words and then speak. Assistive technological (AT) devices can help.

As a child communicates his brain develops and he establishes habits of being and thinking. During this time of development, the more language the better. AT devices can speed up a child's ability to communicate and in so doing improve his intellectual development too.

But what AT devices should be used and how? How do we determine this? Fortunately help is available through the use of Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative (WATI) forms. In particular these are the WATI forms that I would use:
o WATI Assistive Technology Consideration Guide
o Referral/Question Identification Guide
o Pertinent WATI Student Information Guides
o Environmental Observation Guide
o Environmental Observation Summary
o WATI Assistive Technology Assessment Technology Checklist
o WATI Assistive Technology Trial Use Guide
o WATI Assistive Technology Trial Use Summary

These forms are available from Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative (WATI)

The WATI Assistive Technology Assessment Technology Checklist, sixth on the above list, will always be in a state of flux as more and more technology is developed.

Socially Competent Students

The children in my class are in grades three, four and five. They are sweet, intelligent and interesting children who have a significant amount of autism.

There is a great deal I can do to make the students in my classroom socially competent. Eventually they will use the behaviors they practice while at school when they are at home and other places too. My aides and I have a significant amount of influence. The children's ways of interacting with us will become the way they interact with their parents, siblings and others.

The students' behaviors will be an outgrowth of the activities and interactions that take place at school. These comings and goings are designed to be necessary, genuine, natural, and pleasant.

When working with my students it is important to remember that they are aware of many, if not most, of the same things we are. This makes it critically important that school experiences be genuine and natural. Countless times I have been advised to "sabotage" an activity in order to force a communication from a student. For example, it has been suggested that we give a child everything he needs to paint a picture except a paint brush. We are told to set up a child like this and then wait for him to ask for the paint brush. I feel very sorry for children in these circumstances. They know that the grown-up intentionally did not give them a paint brush and they understandably sit there mute. These situations breed confusion and mistrust.

As much as possible school should make sense to students. The adults must strive for greater empathy for the children framing what they say and ask to aide the children's understanding. This doesn't mean that the students need to understand the 'why' of school tasks. As long as the undertaking is reasonable, the students will accept it. For example, it is perfectly reasonable to teach students that every week they will compose sentences for spelling words. If the work load is reasonable and praise is provided when the assignment is completed, this becomes a part of the student's world, making him a little more typical and adding to his day a reasonable language activity.

Even though my students have a significant amount of autism, it has been possible to establish procedures and activities that offer opportunities for communication and interactions. For example the format of the last slide of their morning PowerPoint Show is a thematic picture with the words 'the end'. Immediately after the PPT show there is a quiz called the PowerPoint Show Quiz in which the children are asked what picture was shown with the words, "the end". When my students were much younger the quiz was multiple choice, using pictures. Over the months we have graduated to a quiz that looks like the attached image. Please note that the class is also thinking about state capitals.



In addition every day the children ask an adult for a penny which they put in a plastic zippered bag kept in their three-ring binder. After they have ten pennies, they trade them for a dime. This is a fairly reasonable activity that allows for comments such as, "How much money do you have now?" "Please put the pennies in one pile and the dimes in another". "Please get out your three-ring binder." "Please take all the money out of your plastic bag."

Most Fridays the children write and mail a letter to their parents. This offers a host of opportunities for communication. For example: Did you remember to bring a stamp from home? Please bring a stamp to school this week. There isn't enough time to go to the mailbox today because of the assembly.

Teaching aids having interesting mechanical parts also help to foster communication. The number-column board, in which numbers on Masonite slide down into the ones, tens, hundreds and thousands columns is one example. The adult can ask "What column are you going to put that number in?" "You'd better empty the tens column it is getting full." "Oh look, the same digit is in the ones and the tens columns."

Lessons and activities designed to support IEP goals and objectives also reinforce language development. There is no reason to use fabricated and confusing situations. Just teaching the children to ask for a pencil or eraser when one is needed is good therapy for communication.

Despite the fact that there are ample opportunities to teach students social competence, there are habits one can fall into that retard progress in this area. It is infinitely easier to give a student something that you know he is going to need than it is to wait for him to ask for it. Often we can anticipate what is going to happen and we have the urge to be proactive. Normally this attitude in our work is productive. Teaching social competence to children who have autism is fundamentally different.

We need to be natural and genuine and avoid the obvious setups recommended in the past, establish routines that offer many opportunities for our students to comment or ask, and then we have to keep ourselves in check, holding ourselves back from automatically handling the entire communication ourselves. We are skilled and quick communicators and we need to help the children to become more like this. We need to clamp down on that helpful maternal instinct that says, "Here, let me do that for you because I like you so very much." Instead we need to control ourselves and let our students practice telling us what the date is today, what the weather looks like, what the Word of the Week is, What the Addition Fact of the Week is, what the Morning Message says, how many synonyms there are in the thesaurus for today's word, and so one. At the grade school level there are tons of opportunities for students to interact or report something. We only need to set up the expectations and routines and then control ourselves and watch the children become more and more communicative.


In addition to communications and interactions based on school assignments and activities we work directly on the children's social skills. However this is much more difficult to facilitate albeit equally or more important. It is also a subject for a separate blog.

My Influence

Good or bad, many teachers leave an imprint on their students. Since my students are usually with me for four years it would seem that my influence would be considerable. However since all of my students have autism, the impact I have on their lives isn't necessarily what one would expect. My students' autism has a direct effect on their awareness of people and what people say and do to them in particular. Sometimes my students are even unaware of the names of their classmates, even though they have been with them for years. This year one student did not return to my class and a new student was added to my class. These two students look somewhat alike. Another one of my students calls the new student by the old student's name. It seems that unless a person greatly exaggerates their feelings or intentions my students don't notice. Therefore subtle slights or acts of favoritism might not be observed.

When my students were first placed in my class they were oblivious to typical grade school expectations. Behaviors that should have been automatic were completely absent. Even though the children were very sweet and interesting, they knew nothing about promptly coming to circle time, sitting quietly and listening during circle time, and staying in circle time until they were excused. They were similarly unaware of most school expectations.

I am deliberately leaving my mark on my students. My students obviously need to learn and practice a school attitude and I have been giving it to them. After being with me for a little more than three years they promptly come to circle time when signaled to do so, listen to the teacher during whole group activities, learn new information at school, and know that the reading, math and language lessons they do at school are important and fun. In fact, they have learned that school is a good place to be; a place that is interesting, comfortable and enjoyable. They are learning what school is and that they like school. The parents of my students have shared with me that their child likes to come to school. My aides and I have all noticed the progress the children make.