Teaching Children With High-Functioning Autism: Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom

by Claire Hughes

Teaching Children With High-Functioning Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom is designed to provide practical ideas and support to teachers who have students with high-functioning autism in their classroom. Children with high-functioning autism have been identified as having autism, but are capable of learning content material at or even above grade level. The book provides realistic descriptions of autism in the classroom, ideas for working with a wide range of professionals and integrating the various therapies within a classroom, suggestions for assessing students' learning, and a range of teaching ideas from behavioral interventions to content-area instruction. With ideas for writing a very strong, helpful IEP as well as ways to accommodate and manage the social, language, and anxiety-related issues children with high-functioning autism face in a general education setting, this guidebook is sure to help all teachers serve their students with autism in the inclusive classroom!

Genres: Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Nonfiction, Education

207 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2011

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to win the extremely valuable Teaching Children With High-Functioning Autism: Strategies for the Inclusive Classroom by Dr. Claire Hughes-Lynch from LibraryThing. It is a highly accessible resource for teachers working to include students with HFA in their classes. These students present special challenges to a teacher-as well as the other students-and Dr. Hughes-Lynch offers a variety of strategies delivered in a format that is easy to read as well as useful. Not all of her strategies will apply for all students, naturally, but she offers enough variety in both strategies and student needs to make this book of value to any teacher working to include these special needs' students in their general education classrooms.
As a teacher working with students with high functioning autism who are still in self-contained classrooms, I found this book to be particularly helpful in two ways. 1) The strategies that Dr. Hughes-Lynch offers are now added to my own repertoire to help general education teachers who receive one of my students making the transition into general education and, 2) I am using a number of the strategies to help prepare my students so that they will be better able to function in a general education classroom. I found Dr. Hughes-Lynch's suggestions to be workable within my self-contained room as well as for general education.
I found the resources at the end of the book to be extremely helpful and up-to-date and by themselves worth the price of the book.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an incredibly well-written, accessible, useful and, often, amusing look into the world of teaching students with autism. [return]It gives you just enough background history on autism diagnoses, legislation, and educational strategy and technique to guide the reader without boring them. It offers valuable insights into the world of autistic children and their parents that are useful at any age level. Too many books focus on autism as a "childhood" disorder (I even had a doctor tell me only children had autism!!!), but this gives techniques, strategies and anecdotes for all grade levels (and even some post-educational information).[return]The wealth of resources and useable tables to aide instructors is wonderful (some I'll be using for myself!).[return]I really liked this book. It didn't talk down to the readers but, at the same time, did not assume any prior knowledge on the subject; much like a teacher introducing a new concept!

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this through Good Reads First Reads.

This is a good book for a general ed teacher who has little to no experience working with and teaching a child with high functioning autism as it gives a background on autism, how it may affect the child and teaching strategies.

[Dianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable!