Jen, a former autism teacher, demonstrates three adaptive books that work for self-contained classrooms: Where Is the Present teaches prepositions with Velcro, Let's Build a Gingerbread House supports multi-step directions, and Arctic Animal I Spy builds vocabulary. She shows how to adjust complexity for different learners and points to Autism Helpers' collection for more options.
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Let's talk about ways we can build strong readers in the autism and special ed classroom. I am Jen, and I am a former K-12 self-contained autism teacher, and prior to that, I taught general education. I myself have a huge love of reading, and when I came from general education into special education, especially in the self-contained setting, I struggled because I couldn't show share my love of reading in the same way that I was used to in general education. Reading to students is so important, and it's an integral piece of the general education curriculum. So I wanted to find a way that I could carry that into the self-contained setting. Now, if you teach self-contained like I did, or if you teach students with high needs who are learning to learn and they are functional skilled learners, or even students who just struggle with comprehension, I've got a tool for you, adaptive books. This is a way that you can bring literacy into your classroom and you can make it functional and fun and hands-on. Students stay engaged, but you are still introducing core concepts and literacy. It's a win-win. I wanna share 3 of my favorites for the holiday season so you can bring a little bit of fun into your classroom. I pulled 3 of my favorite adaptive books for the holidays to share with you. Some of them are specifically holiday themed, some of them are not. This one is Where Is the Present? and it's great for any student working on prepositions. I could read this or I could have the students read this. I've got visual cues to be able to help them with that, but I have a picture of a gift a present, and the student is going to find the present that matches. Now you could stop right there. You could just have the student find the match and then you could put it where it belongs if the student isn't yet ready for prepositions. But let's say that the student is ready to work on prepositions. If I wanted to make it errorless, I could just put one piece of Velcro. Now the student knows exactly where it goes. This is under, it's going to go here. If I wanna make it more complex, increase that complexity for the learner, then I could add a couple pieces of Velcro. Here I've got a couple pieces, and so the present is going to go under the tree. And you can see that this repeats itself in every page of the book. So here I'm gonna match this present, and here they're going to put it above the train. This is such a fun, engaging book for students. It is bright, it is colorful, and it's holiday themed. The next book I have for you is Let's Build a Gingerbread House. This is an all-time favorite in my classroom. There are lots of moving pieces to this one, so this is a fun one to do in a small group. Um, I use adaptive books in small group learning all of the time, and this is so fun because it's got multiple step directions. So I've got put 3 purple hearts on the house, and so students will then have to find the purple hearts and then place them on the house. And you can see it takes a lot of visual discrimination to be able to look through these and find those. So if you need to make it easier, something that you could do is take all of the pieces that you need and put them on this blank page over here. So now instead of choosing from this giant field, you could lower that field on the opposite side of the page and make it a little bit more accessible for learners who are gaining these skills and not yet independent in them. And so you can see that we've got multiple ways that we are going to build that gingerbread house, and the directions change every time. Again, super fun, super engaging, students love it. One of my favorite things to teach in winter is Arctic animals. I just love it, and if you can't teach holidays or you can't use any holiday-themed things, highly recommend this series. This Arctic Animal I Spy book is so much fun. So, we are going to help find the missing animals, and so I give the attribute. I can read that aloud to my students, or they could read it to me, and then they can find the matching animal. Now, I loved to do this in a group, so I would have a student who would sit up and hold the book up front with me in the small group, and then I would have them call on their friends to be able to find the animal, and then the person that found the animal would then take the place and read the next page. And so this is a way that you could use one book in a whole group setting, or you could do this individually, or, you know, in pairs, however you want to do this. But how cool is this that we were working on attributes, your I Spy, familiar language and attributes that students are working on, plus all of this great vocabulary for Arctic animals? Truly a gem of a book. Chances are, no matter the skill or how old your learner is, we will be able to find an adaptive book within the Autism Helpers, a large repertoire of adaptive books that will work for your learners. Everything from prepositions to I Spy to simply following directions, we have it all. And it's really a great tool to be able to bring in some of that literacy into your classroom and share those special moments with your students.
