By Aiza Dela Cruz
In my last article, I have shared my own experiences about how I helped my son to read. I have to say that my son mostly taught himself to read and I am proud of his accomplishments.
After learning to read independently, my next challenge for my son was to build his reading comprehension. Reading is easy, but he needs to learn to process and understand the information as a whole and not per word to be able to answer questions properly. This is important to prepare him to integrate in the mainstream school.
Here are some strategies the Special Education teacher and I used:
Active Reading
My husband and I always read with our son. Although it is only our son who reads, we are there beside him to correct him if he reads a word wrong or if he mispronounces them.
We are his active audience. We would stop at a page or a sentence and we would describe the pictures, or ask him questions. We take considerable time in reading, especially if the story interests him since he is the one who turns the page.
Asking our son questions helps us determine if he really understood what he is reading.
Reading with Pointing Finger
My son still reads using his pointing finger. He stills needs to use his finger because he sometimes skips a word or jumps to the next line. It also helps him to read the words correctly and try his best to read words that are unfamiliar to him. This also helps us follow what he reads and gives us an opportunity to teach him about a new word.
Read Aloud
My son can read with his eyes but we still ask him to read aloud. We don’t let him read silently. This is to practice reading aloud. It is also to listen to his pronunciation and how he tries to read unfamiliar words.
This is also good practice in learning about punctuations. Before he would read without any care for punctuations. Now, he has learned to stop at periods.
Scaffolding
The most recent strategy we used is scaffolding. My son’s teacher taught me this. My son would read the given questions first then he would read the story.
He would read the first question then read the story. If he has found the answer to the first question, he would stop reading to answer the question. Then he would proceed to the second question and read the story. He would keep repeating this process until he answered all the given questions.
This was proven effective for my son and he now answers his own comprehension tests by himself with no help from the teacher. His comprehension tests now would only ask for a specific detail, so he can still manage. Soon, we will have to progress to more complex questions to build his reading comprehension more.
For a visual learner like my son, we had to go through many challenges before he could become an independent reader and a reader who comprehends what he read. Patience is a virtue. Don’t be afraid to use trial and error to find out what will interest your child to read.
I enjoin everyone to have more compassion and understanding for all children with different abilities.
I would also like to hear the experiences of other parents who have children on the autism spectrum. You may email me on genevieveaiza.delacruz@gmail.com. I am a member of the Autism Society Philippines (ASP), a national non-profit organization dedicated to the well-being of persons on the autism spectrum disorder.
