Overview of Typical Effective Teaching Strategies - Childhood Through Young Adulthood
Children with autism are individuals, first and foremost. Each one of them comes to us with an array of cognitive abilities, learning styles, sensory irritants and impairments, need for routine, visual or auditory preferences, movement disturbances, varied and intense communication disturbances, and difficulties with social interactions. One or more commingling conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder, hyperactivity, opposition defiance disorder, psychosis, acute anxiety, post traumatic stress syndrome - the list goes on-may also exist. No one program will best meet the needs of all children. Intuition, flexibility and a willingness to use a variety of approaches will best insure progress of each individual child. A teacher or parent may choose to use a combination of incidental teaching, child-directed activities, and discrete trial format. Errorless teaching, prompting where necessary to keep the child from floundering keeps the child engaged and comfor...