What is ASD Unlocking Language and what can it accomplish? ASD Unlocking Language is a program designed to teach effective language and communication to children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental conditions that affect language. Upon successful completion of the program, children are able to understand and talk about: past, present, and future events in their home life, such as eating, playing, bathing, and dressing past, present, and future events in the outside world, such as visits to the supermarket, a trip to the zoo, and activities at school simple stories and other early literacy skills Mastery of these skills enables children to become more active participants in the world around them. The program may be implemented by a parent, teacher, therapist, or other dedicated adult. Who is the program for? The program is for children who meet the following criteria: In language—the ability to say at least two words in sequence, either spontaneously or through imitation, such as “go home,” “bye bye,” “want cookie.” While behaviors like these are fragmentary, they are significant indicators that the child has the perceptual and motor base required for spoken language. In behavior—the willingness to respond effectively to adult guidance. To benefit from language instruction, a child must be able to cooperate in the teaching process. If a foundation of cooperation is not yet present, it can be established through the behavioral program outlined in Spectacular Bond: Reaching the Child with Autism by Dr. Marion Blank, Dr. Suzanne Goh, and Susan Deland. It is advisable to postpone ASD Unlocking Language until the Spectacular Bond program has been completed. How is the program organized? ASD Unlocking Language is organized into short daily sessions lasting about 20 to 30 minutes each. Sessions take place once per day, four or five days per week. Skills taught in the lessons are also practiced outside the session in real-world settings. Depending on the child’s skill and rate of progress, the full program takes from 6 to 18 months to complete. There are two components to the program: Pre-Language Skills and Language Skills.

ASD Unlocking Language: A Program to Teach Language and Communication for Children on the Spectrum

Education & Teaching

Blank, Dr. Marion

Goh, Dr. Suzanne

Schools & Teaching

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

ASD Pre-Speaking Program is designed to teach a range of cognitive and linguistic skills to non-verbal children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental conditions that interfere with language development. (Note: The term “non-verbal” is often misleading since many of the children can comprehend and incorporate language. A more accurate term would be “non-speaking.”) Upon successful completion of the program, children are able to attend to directions, guidance, and input from adults; sustain attention to cognitive demands for periods up to 15 to 20 minutes; gain the ability to retain increasingly complex sequences of visual information; comprehend and respond to increasingly complex language-based demands. ASD Pre-Speaking may be implemented by a parent, teacher, therapist, or other dedicated adult. ASD Pre-Speaking is organized into short daily sessions lasting about 15 to 20 minutes each. Sessions take place once per day, four or fi ve days per week. Skills taught in the lessons are also practiced outside the session in real-world settings. Depending on the child’s skill and rate of progress, the full program takes from 2 to 6 months to complete. Four activities are used, with each aimed at fostering attention, sequencing, memory and language. Each activity starts with processing “one piece” of information (e.g., matching one picture to another) and then moves steadily so that the child is incorporating, reviewing, and acting upon “four pieces” of information (e.g. having seen four pictures that are no longer in view, the child selects, via memory, four pictures that match the originals.) NOTE: This program is also included as part of ASD Unlocking Language.

ASD Pre-Speaking Program: A Program to Teach the Foundations of Language to Nonverbal Children

Music has amazing appeal for children on the autism spectrum as well as those with other neurodevelopmental disorders. Many also display remarkable abilities to play musical instruments. Music not only provides a source of great pleasure, it also provides a route for building skills to foster a range of cognitive abilities, including attention, memory and sequencing. The activities in ASD Piano Play teach children some basic skills in this domain by having them produce musical sequences by playing notes on a keyboard.

ASD Piano Play: A Program to Teach Early Music

ASD Speaking Sounds is a program designed to teach the foundation underlying the production of meaningful speech in children with ASD and other developmental conditions that interfere with speech production. Central to the program is the issue of sequencing. A basic fact of language life is that single words do not represent a meaningful language system. “Real” messages, even simple ones such as “want cookie, dog eats, no walk,” etc. require that sounds be chained together to form combinations of words. That, in turn, requires complex, intricate mouth movements that can be extremely challenging. The problems are akin to the fi ne motor diffi culties that the children display in activities such as handwriting and pulling up zippers. While the fi ne motor diffi culties in those areas have been well recognized, the importance of comparable fi ne motor movements of the mouth, lips and tongue in the production of speech has often received insuffi cient attention. Nevertheless, the area is critical. It’s why the children’s ability and willingness to produce two sequenced sounds are such important indicators of their ability to benefi t from the program. In producing two sounds in succession, they are showing that they have achieved the necessary base for “interweaving” sounds and moving onto increasingly complex speech production. Using sounds that the children can produce (so the input is adapted to the abilities of the individual child), the program starts by requesting one sound at a time (e.g., say “bah”). The lessons then expand to include increasing numbers of sounds—so that by the end of the program, the children are producing sequences of four speech sounds such as “mee, bah, koo, koo”. As indicated by the examples, the program focuses on speech sounds but not on actual words— although occasionally word-like sounds appear. The sounds are always ones that can be used in words but they themselves are rarely words. This technique serves to simplify the situation for the child. With meaning “out of the way,” the child learns to focus on the production of the sounds themselves and on the movements in the mouth area needed to create the sounds. With the attainment of four sequenced speech sounds, the child can then transition to ASD Unlocking Language which teaches the skills of actual language including expressing ideas, answering questions, summarizing observations, etc. ASD Speaking Sounds may be implemented by a parent, teacher, therapist, or other adult.

ASD Speaking Sounds: A Program to Foster the Sounds of Language

ASD Typing is a program that teaches children, within a few weeks, to become proficient with the keyboard so that they have a route for producing expressive language. Typing is an ideal route to expressive language for children with oral-motor apraxia, auditory processing disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and a range of other conditions.

ASD Typing: A Program to Build Language Through Typing

High-tech devices have incredible potential for enhancing the learning of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). In the world of computers, tablets, and smart phones, however, one device has received little attention: it is the calculator. Compared to newer devices, this instrument may seem nearly obsolete. However, mastery of the calculator has the potential to enrich a child’s life both in school and in the community. For example, in school, use of the calculator can aid a child in solving the math word problems offered in the curriculum. With these skills, many of the children can go on to enter mainstream math classes. In the community, mastery of the calculator can enable a child to be proficient in important daily life skills such as shopping (e.g., keeping track of the price of purchases, selecting items to fi t available funds, and calculating the change expected from a cashier). Such skills play a key role in achieving independence in daily life. This program aims to teach children how to recognize, use, and understand the buttons on a calculator. It contains five levels. The first level teaches the child to handle single numbers. Each level becomes progressively more complex so that by Level 5, the children can work with three digit numbers as well as symbols on the calculator such as plus (+), minus (-), and equals (=). Upon completion of this program, the child is ready to move on to applying these new skills to math problems. This program may be implemented by a parent, teacher, therapist, or other adult.

ASD Calculator Basics: A Program to Teach Calculator Skills for Math Mastery

ASD Basic Math is a program to that teaches the foundations of math to children with autism spectrum disorders. The program teaches children to recognize, count, and understand the meaning of numbers up to 10; to calculate the number of objects in a group; to understand that a particular number of objects has a fixed value despite the size or nature of those objects; to understand geometric shapes and be able to sort objects by shape, to follow a sequence of commands involving math concepts.

ASD Basic Math: A program to that teaches the foundations of math to children with autism spectrum disorders

Computers & Technology

Programming

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