Miss M Teaches Again

photo courtesy of artbrothers.wordpress.com

Teaching young children often means a lot of play and even more time spent justifying why this time is so important. This week was a powerful week in terms of the spontaneous play time I allowed in the classroom.

I have a child, M, with autism. He does have some interactions with myself and my teacher assistant (and we are working on increasing the latter), but has next to no interactions with his peers. This week our goal was to have him exchange something with one of his classmates once a day (often times he will take something from them and then give it to one of the adults and seek reinforcement from us). We successfully completed this task minimally throughout the week and then he brought in several toy cars from home. I had no intention of having a free play time that day, but I diverted from the plan because I was curious to see what would happen.

M ended up giving his classmates cars to play with for at least 20 minutes, including putting it in their hands, making eye contact and seeking a smile. He spontaneously signed “bus” as he gave it to a friend and was copying them when they signed “thank you.” I had prompted him and his peers to sign “please” when they wanted the cars, but he ignored my request. Later, however, he began prompting his peers to sign “please” before he gave them the cars. My assistant and I were so pleased with the progress and even more amazed when V, a classmate, went to sit next to M at lunch independently. They didn’t communicate with one another at lunch, but I will do everything  I can this year to facilitate a friendship between these two boys.

As a result of this play time, I am now working on a thematic unit involving transportation for next week (including exploring ramps in science, which I never got to in the science curriculum last year). I can only hope that next week’s planned play time elicits some of the same successes we experienced last week and hopefully even more!