Teaching Nonverbal and Less Verbal People - Adam paints a self portrait

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." 

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Adam writes and draws about our portrait painting class

Adam is an intelligent young adult on the autism spectrum who is less verbal and uses drawing and other art forms for communication. I first met Adam when he was just 3 years old and profoundly nonverbal. My job as a speech-language pathologist was to help him learn to connect and communicate with the world around him. What actually happened over the next couple of decades was more interesting - as much as I taught him, he taught me more. So at this point, I'll say that together Adam and I have discovered some effective ways to get around the barrier of imperfect verbal communication and give voice to the intellect and creative soul within. With Adam's permission, we now share some of what we've learned.


In the Art Studio:

Portrait teaching setup (Adam's easel on the left, my instructional model on the right, iPad photo reference and painting materials in the center)

You need a space that is friendly and comfortable for the student. The art studio we are working in is one that Adam's dad set up for Adam and his mom (who is also learning to paint). We have a generous work surface so that materials can be visually set out in an organized way. There is room for Adam (a tall guy) to step back and move around. Also important to consider lighting (need to see clearly, but not aggravate sensory sensitivies), sound environment (reduce background noise) and air quality (allergies, eg. free from mold & mildew).


Below are links to the two instructional videos that we made from our recent portrait painting sessions (posted on our YouTube channel AUTISMartCOMMUNICATE). These videos highlight and demonstrate some effective teaching strategies when working with less verbal individuals, including:

• use of visual demonstrations
• working from visual models
• effective use of the iPad as a visual tool (takes & displays photos, allows zooming in on specific details)
• verbal language should be clear, slow-paced and match demonstrated actions
• back up verbal language with visual supports (to improve comprehension)
• allow time for processing of verbal questions and instructions
• repetition and rephrasing (of key information) can be helpful
• resist "chattering" (remind yourself to leave quiet spaces)
• SHOW more than TELL
• gentle "hand over hand" can sometimes be useful when teaching a new motor skill
• simplify language without "talking down"
• allow the student to work at their own pace (don't rush)
• student should be mostly calm, relaxed and enjoying the experience
• okay for students to talk to themselves as they work
• specific to portrait painting, be aware that autism can affect the individual's ability to process the human face
• balance direct instruction with developing the student's artistic expression & style
• art activities are a good context for language learning 
• assume competence (and that all of your words are received and understood)

Part 1 (from the first hour-long painting session):

(if the video won't play click this link: Adam paints a self portrait - part 1 )

And Part 2 (from our second one-hour portrait painting session):

(if the video won't play click this link: Adam paints a self portrait - part 2 )

We hope you find these videos helpful and that you try out some of the methods in your own classes and studios. There is a lot of untapped artistic potential in the autism population, and many new artists waiting to learn new ways to express themselves. We would love to hear about your experiences.

We'll end this post by sharing Adam's completed self portrait. He has a bold and expressive artistic style that comes through in all of his art work, and is all his own. I love it:

Self Portrait by the artist, Adam V

Emma learns to sew

Emma is a young adult artist on the autism spectrum. She has a strong sense of fashion, and her visual art style is bold using shapes and blocks of colour. Because of her love of fashion, we thought that sewing was a skill she would enjoy that could open up opportunities in the world of work. Because of her own personal art style, we decided to start our sewing lessons with applique projects.

Our first project (introducing the use of a sewing machine) was a pocket for an apron (Emma also loves cooking, and is quite independent and happy working in the kitchen).

Step 1: Design the applique. Emma drew these design ideas using the iPad app "Drawing with Carl".


Step 2: Under Emma's direction (and following the bird pattern she had drawn), we cut out pieces of coloured material to sew onto the pocket (she selected the material & told me what shape to cut, I handled the very sharp sewing scissors for this initial session).

Step 3: Then we ran the sewing machine together: I threaded the machine, Emma chose the stitch pattern, then Emma ran the peddle (controlling on/off and speed) and I fed/steered the material past the needle. It was a little exciting in spots because we didn't sew slow! But we ended up with a bright bird on the apron pocket (and neither one of us sewn into the design!).





Emma really enjoyed the sewing and was very pleased with having her design turn into something she could wear. (for this first project, I sewed up a simple apron design ahead of time, and Emma sewed the pocket onto the apron so we could have a completed project in a shorter time-frame).

Our second project was a throw pillow.

Step 1: designing the pattern, once again using "Drawing with Carl" iPad app. Emma drew out several design ideas (including a very funky zebra), then decided to go with this bright bird:




Step 2: I cut out the fabric pieces for the design under Emma's very definite verbal directions (great context for language use, she was highly motivated to tell me exactly what she wanted me to do, and also not shy to tell me when I had done it wrong and it needed to be redone - she has always been a woman who knows her own mind, something I really like about her).

Step 3: Emma approached the sewing with more confidence the second time around, and experimented with various types of applique stitches and with the speed control on the machine. Once again I steered the material while she ran everything else (important to go step-wise when working close to sharp objects, like the mechanized needle on a sewing machine).

This time, Emma sewed the whole project. We used a pre-made pillow form (from IKEA) and sewed a pillowcase (one side was Emma's art design, the other was patterned material she chose to match). We used the machine for all the seams, including the one sewing the side closed after the pillow form was in the pillowcase (Emma chose a lovely decorative stitch style, it looked great). Again, the pillow was done in one session:

I love Emma's bold bright design sense. We plan to continue our sewing lessons, and our next project will likely be shoulder/carry bags that can be used for books or iPads or shopping. Stay tuned for updates!

Sheila Bell


Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iLanguage: creative language teaching using the iPad

The visual touch screen interface of the iPad brings many possibilities for creative language teaching - today I'd like to share with you a few of the ideas (and apps) that I've been trying out in recent therapy sessions with ASD individuals:


1. Action verbs:

Concrete nouns are relatively easy to teach using objects and static pictures. But action verbs are more complicated because they (by their nature) involve movement - so it's hard to be certain that what the therapist thinks they're teaching is what the student is actually learning.

Here's a short video showing Adam creating sentences using Word Mover (a creative writing app that works like magnetic fridge poetry). I would give Adam one or two words, he would add more and put a sentence together. Then we used Stop Motion Studio Pro HD (an iPad animation app) and small clay figures to "illustrate" the sentence meaning - because the end product was a film clip, rather than a static picture, it was easier to see what Adam understood and where he might have gaps in his interpretation of the language meaning:

CLICK HERE: Using iPad apps for Language Teaching

Here's another video showing Kevin using Word Mover, traditional pen-paper drawing and FlipBoom Cartoon (a different iPad animation app) to illustrate the meaning of a short story he wrote (using one of the words he had just spelled in Montessori Crossword, another app I really like for the structured way it connects written letter patterns to the word sound patterns):

CLICK HERE: Kevin's Jogging Story

And here's one more video (from Kevin's session today) where I would give Kevin a verb (in Word Mover) and then he would write a complete sentence using that verb. He uses both pen-paper drawing and the FlipBoom Cartoon animation app to illustrate the meaning of the sentences he's written. (note: I am a big fan of grammatical errors - they show me that I'm getting original generative language rather than rote language chunks):

 

CLICK HERE: Kevin Writes & Illustrates

2. Creative Writing:

The Word Mover app is also useful for writing "starters" and inspiration. You write one or more words and then let your student write additional words and arrange the words into a sentence. I'm finding that the "puzzle" nature of the exercise and the ability to modify (add/delete/rewrite) without visible "errors" at the end is encouraging more risk-taking (trying out words that are not well-known, trying to write sentences that are more grammatically complex).

I gave Michael the words "boy" and "horse" - he changed "boy" to "cowboy", and added some more words to make the sentence "A cowboy needs a horse". He drew an illustration by hand (marker on paper) and then he made an entertaining animated short (using FlipBoom Cartoon) of a cowboy unwillingly transforming into a horse. He was calm and focused and expressed a complete (and funny) original idea. Watch the video:

CLICK HERE: Cowboy & Horse by Michael

So go ahead, get creative, use the iPad technology to its best advantage - it is a wonderful direct visual interface that can help you make the world of verbal communication less mysterious and more accessible to your students with autism.

Blending hi-tech and low-tech for optimal learning

The world of technology is developing at the speed of light, and the advent of good touch screens and affordable well-written software that takes advantage of the direct visual interface brings new and wonderful possibilities into classrooms, therapy rooms and family homes. Putting an iPad (or android tablet) into the hands of every child seems like a great idea. But there are challenges: how do you choose good apps? how do you integrate the use of a touch-screen device into your current programming? how do you develop practical aptitude on devices that only existed in the imagination when you were growing up?

Today's post addresses the second challenge: "How do you integrate the use of a touch-screen device into your current programming?" I will give some examples (with illustrations from recent therapy sessions with Kevin and Adam) of how you can use both iPad apps and "real world" tasks together in language learning activities.

First a little background:

Comic Strip stories allow a visual person to create coherent narratives (see blog post ... it's all about stories ). As my students become adept at drawing stories, we use the visual story format as a "scaffold" to teach traditional written language (initially the picture is drawn first and then a sentence is written to go with it, some students have moved on to writing a simple sentence first then adding extra details in the comic illustration).

Scrambled Sentences is another general type of learning activity that I use to teach grammar without the extra challenges of spelling and fine motor (see blog post Scrambled Sentences - using drawing to support language development and teaching video Drawing as Communication - Scrambled Sentences ).

Recently, I broadened both of these learning contexts by adding in some iPad apps.

Comic Strip Story:

Word Wizard is a spelling to speech app by l'Escapadou. On the "movable alphabet" function, you can drag letters to the board and the program will sound out both the individual letters (as you select them) and the letter combinations that you spell. You have the choice of several voices, and you can have the entire phrase/sentence read aloud when you touch the speech bubble icon:

I started Kevin out with the words "mister bean" and he wrote the rest of the sentence (his own words and ideas). Then we switched from high-tech to low-tech, and Kevin drew out the meaning of the sentence to start his Mr. Bean story. Subsequent story events came from sentences spontaneously written by Kevin using the Word Wizard app:

 

 

 

all pictures drawn by Kevin 2013

I'm not concerned about the grammatical errors in Kevin's written sentences, since the point of the activity is for Kevin to express his own ideas using a combination of written language and drawing (I actually like to see grammatical errors - it's an indication that I'm getting novel generative language rather than phrases and sentences copied verbatim from another context)

(and on another note, this looks like a pretty good plan for a post-secondary learning program!)

Scrambled Sentences:

Word Mover is a creative writing app by ReadWriteThink (National Council of Teachers of English). It works on the same premise as magnetic poetry for your fridge. You have the choice of starting with a pre-existing "word bank" that provides you with a collection of words that you can use in your writing, or you can start from a blank screen ("My Own Words"). Additional words are added with the "+" function.

During the same session as Kevin wrote his Mr. Bean story, I set up a traditional "scrambled sentence" using the Word Mover app (I selected and wrote the words, Kevin unscrambled them into a sentence):

 

 

Then Kevin drew out the meaning of the sentence using markers and big paper. (the second sentence "Kevin and Raymond are making an art project" was independently written by Kevin, using the Word Mover app, based on the structure of my initial sentence):

drawn by Kevin 2013

The benefit of adding the apps into both of these language activities was an increased ease and flexibility in the writing process for Kevin. I'm hoping that this will stimulate further development in his functional expressive written language.


Two more quick examples of "Scrambled Sentences" from Adam's recent work:

1. Adam's mom gave him the words "boy", "girl" and "snowball" on a Word Mover screen. Adam added more words and unscrambled the sentence to read "The boy and girl is fighting in the snowball.", then he illustrated his meaning using markers on paper. With the picture making his meaning clear, his mom was able to show him (using Word Mover) some minor changes that made the sentence grammatically correct.

drawn by Adam 2013

2. Adam's mom started him off with the words "baby", "dragon" and "fire" on Word Mover. Adam added more words and created the sentence "The baby this is fire the dragon". With the support of the picture Adam drew to illustrate his intended sentence meaning, his mom was able to help Adam modify his sentence (on the Word Mover screen) so that his written words matched what he meant to say.

drawn by Adam 2013

(love the expression on the baby's face)


Technology is a great tool that can be used to enhance the learning environment - it works best when you use it to augment your current effective techniques, rather than using it to replace traditional play and hands-on learning.