Three Armstrong School District educators appeared this summer at the National Autism Conference at Penn State to deliver a presentation on autistic support classrooms.
Leslie Moore teaches life skills and autistic support to seventh and eighth graders at Armstrong Jr.-Sr. High School said the presentation showcased different teaching and organizational strategies she uses in her classroom. She was joined by paraprofessionals Madison Goldinger and Carrie Burtt, who worked in Moore's classroom last year.
Moore's thematic-based system centers on various life skill areas that help ground and focus everything she teaches. The first marking period of the school year focuses on hygiene skills, like applying deodorant and teeth brushing. The second marking period focuses on cleaning skills like vacuuming and dishwashing. The third marking period is spent working on basic cooking skills, like making sandwiches and using the microwave. The final period focuses on safety tasks like crossing the street.
"In combination with all of these things, we also work on social skills as well as academics," Moore said. "By sharing this organizational strategy, I hoped other teachers would be inspired to do something similar since it has been such a success for me."
Moore said building and maintaining language skills is vital for student success, such as labeling objects and actions, labeling sounds, adjectives, and prepositions, and categorizing items by class or by parts, features, or function. These tasks help students develop a larger vocabulary, which improves conversational abilities.
"Knowing all of the language related to the activities of daily living we work on allows the students to understand and master the concept truly. It also teaches them how to problem-solve," she said.
Moore's presentation also addressed objects-based IT, or intensive teaching, a teaching strategy for new language skills. Students typically start this type of language programming in elementary school with picture cards. As they get older, teachers help them generalize their skills to real-life objects.
"Basically, we use the objects to teach them about various common objects they will encounter," Moore said. For example, she uses bins of hygiene items like shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and deodorant to teach the language components through intensive teaching.
The effort has produced impressive results
"Through the use of this system, I've seen incredible improvements from students in terms of their verbal behavior as well as their ability to complete tasks independently," she said. "Being more independent allows the students to feel more confident. This confidence then trickles over into their academics and social skills as well."
Moore's presentation was such a success that she was invited to present on a topic of her choosing at next year's National Autism Conference.