adjustments

Over the past few weeks, I've seen the need to make some adjustments in how we're doing things. Our last Adventure Circle was producing too much of what you can see in this photo -- J participating in the activities while Zoo Boy watched from his "watching chair" (the designated chair he can choose to sit in rather that participate -- he has two choices, participate, or sit in the "watching chair", so that he at least is not disrupting J's participation). While utilizing the "watching chair" is good for management, my goal is for him to want to participate in at least enough of the circle activities for him to be getting some sensory benefit. And our last circle there wasn't enough he was willing to partake of.

I also think the circle was too long (took about 45 minutes), and didn't have enough proprioceptive activities to meet my kiddos needs. Hence, I stayed up late one night at the beginning of this week and wrote a new adventure circle (which I posted yesterday), about 20 minutes long and chock-full of proprioception, to try to better meet the kids' needs. Given that Zoo Boy said "Can we do this adventure circle forever?" after doing it the first time, I'd say it was a success.

I also changed the perspective of the story -- I made it a 3rd person tale (starting with the familiar "Once Upon a Time" from their Fairy Tales) rather than 1st person. That is something that I remember being recommended in our Enki Education Guides, but initially my kids seemed to respond better to a more direct first-person approach. Even with the 3rd person approach, J quickly identified Zoo Boy and himself as the "two boys" in the story, but it seemed like an exciting discovery for him, and I like the effect.

I also implemented another adjustment that I had been toying with the idea of, but was actually pushed along by the kids themselves. When I sat down to read them our story this week, Zoo Boy said "I liked it when you used the pictures to tell the story that we didn't understand, " referring to the retelling of The Evil Giant when the boys didn't "get" the story after the original telling, at which point I used silk scarves and a few dollhouse dolls to illustrated the tale as I retold it. At the time The Boy has commented "it's like I can see pictures!", and it occurred to me that this might augment comprehension for both of the boys, but there is a danger in "helping" too much with the comprehension -- after all, what we're striving for is developing their ability to create their own "pictures" in their head from hearing the story.

However, once Zoo Boy requested it, I decided it was time to try it out again, this time with the first telling. So I did. And during recall the next day, Zoo Boy was a very enthusiastic and active participant -- the simple illustrations I provided (and believe me, they were SIMPLE) obviously had a huge effect on his comprehension, which was as I suspected. What I didn't anticipate was the effect it had on J -- not in story recall (which he has been doing just fine with), but with his approach to play after I had read the story. He immediately gathered scarves and dolls and acted out the main themes from the story. Not exactly the way I had told it, more his own version of creating the tale from the base storyline. Which caused a huge light bulb to ignite over my head.

In RDI, we refer to this type of assistance as scaffolding -- providing just enough help for success to be achieved, but not so much that there is no individual development. Clearly, my use of the silks and dolls to aid in telling the story helped J devise his own creative play. And given that creative play is a weak point for many kids with Autism (and J is no exception), sometimes it needs a bit of a "boost".


I've seen this type of play from J before -- in this photo from this past weekend, he is using his stuffed animals to put on the show that the Youth Chorus he sings with is performing at the end of this week. But I've not seen as much in relation to our curriculum stories.

So I'm going to continue to use simple "props" to help tell the stories to the kids. It's scaffolding story comprehension for Zoo Boy (who naturally would have a bit of trouble understanding stories designed to be listened to by 1st graders), and it's scaffolding creative play for J. A win-win situation if I ever saw one! The only thing I need to be careful of is to make sure this is serving a developmental purpose and does not become just entertainment for the kids. As with all scaffolding, my goal will be to fade this type of "aid" as time goes by so that they are eventually processing the stories on their own simply from listening to them.