Summer Class

For Summer Class I handled a 7-year-old boy with Autism. He has an older brother also with Autism.

He is totally different from his brother his brother has a large frame, he is small. His brother can do most school work but with supervision. He needs a shadow teacher as well. Since they belong to the same class for the summer I was able to handle both.

This boy can write but can't spell nor read yet. I did not get enough time to assess his skills but based on my experience I think and feel he will be better than his brother in time. He has a splinter/savant skill in Math.

At one time the regular teacher asked him to work on the Math worksheet that needed him to do some counting, Addition, and Subtraction. He used blocks to help him in counting. While working on it(he gets distracted easily)we noticed the blocks he has for the answer has one extra block so the teacher told him to "check".When he turned his head, he just removed one block then wrote his answer. The teacher was laughing. She was getting amused by what this boy has done.

I told her that's the way they work. I told her that their display of strengths and weaknesses makes it so challenging to teach them. She was able to see this boy do the "Checking "many times that day and she liked what she saw and was smiling while they were working on the worksheets.

This boy imitates most of what his brother does. And when one of them plays up, the other would follow.

During class discussion, so many times when the older brother was called to answer the younger one would just go in front, stand up straight and look at the teacher waiting for the question so he can answer or do what his brother did.

One time the younger one was called by the teacher to answer a question. He can understand and answer given enough time. The older brother coached him by whispering in his ears the answer(remember they are both autistic). He could not understand what his brother whispered so I stepped in and repeated the question and asked the brother not to coach him. He was able to answer the teacher after a few minutes of repeatedly asking the question and rephrasing the question so he can understand better.

Obviously the older brother learned coaching and its nice to see him helping his brother.