I’m going to try to answer that question by explaining how I think about teaching generally. And then I’m going to show you an example with an ASD student.
This is How I Think bout Teaching
I want to create the best online course or English language GCSE.
To do that, I need to explain everything in the simplest terms possible.
I have to show, not tell - in other words - what students see and read should make everything so explicit that it seems utterly obvious.
It should do that, for every learner, including those with ASD.
This sounds impossible, but I have a hubristic attitude to this.
There can’t be more than a few hundred English teachers with more experience of teaching English than me in the country.
There is no English teacher who has made as many videos teaching English.
There is no English teacher who has written as many guides to literature texts, English exams and writing.
So, I ought to be able to create the best course available. But, and this is the bit which is most difficult, will it actually work in the way that I hubristically hope?
I Question Everything
So, although I have evidence above to suggest I ought to be very good at what I’m doing, I also know that the only thing which matters is impact.
My response is genuinely unusual - I go looking for proof that I am wrong.
One way to do this is to launch my course to a maximum of 20 students. This limit is because of my insane offer - unlimited marking of exam practice for 30 days.
This means that I get to see what they can and can’t do based on my teaching.
This is an Email From a Tutor, and Why I’m Writing This Post
I appreciate that you are probably up to your eyes in essays from your guinea pigs at the moment but wanted to send you this information that might be helpful to you and also ask for possible help from you.
This list will hopefully give you some idea of the challenges of the English Language GCSE for ASD students and hopefully spark some ideas that will help you with your course etc.
My question is: By the time young people come to me they are usually traumatised and have missed most of KS3 and I have two years or less to get them the best future they can possibly have by teaching them GCSE English and Maths.
Do you have any suggestions for helping them to learn to analyse language on a more granular level; particularly when the texts don’t have really obvious features - I’m thinking about the paper 2 about surfing, as an example. The students you aim your videos at have had at least three years of KS3 to even be able to see where to start. I’m wondering where you might start if they didn’t.
The students I work with are so wonderful but have had a really shitty deal - I’d appreciate any insight you could pass on that could help me to help them even more.
Many thanks,
Challenges for autistic students in English GCSE exams
She included this link. It doesn’t work. More on that later.
My interpretation of this might be wrong, but the world of autism is a clusterbucket of language becoming jargon and idea-fudging.
Face to face, I’ve always had brilliant results from autistic students. We had conversations about their gifts and limitations which I can sum up like this:
You have Aspergers, or you are Aspergers. You have excellent powers of concentration and brilliant insights. But you often miss things which other students find obvious. Let’s find out all the ways that you learn brilliantly. Let’s identify the teaching techniques which help you, and the ones which don’t.
It was actually an Asperger’s student who taught me this. She laminated these, with the ‘ways I learn best’ on one side ‘and the ways I don’t learn’ on the other. She introduced herself to me at the beginning of year 10, and told me what she needed from me. She also called herself an Aspy.
An Aspy is special. They are not a special need. Names matter. They change reality.
She placed her laminated sheet on the her desk, and I would check in a few times a lesson to see how I was doing.
Asperger was a nazi - so this very useful label went. I loved this label because it said:
‘this is a highly intelligent person who, despite the difficulties in the way their brain processes information, and despite any sensory need, and despite any compulsive behaviours, still manages to navigate school life and noisy lesson. This student is exceptional. Help them to reach their potential.’
Now we have to recognise that every autistic student is different, they are on a spectrum. It is not a gift, it is a disorder.
That may be true, but it is not useful information. It is, for a teacher like me, a very short step from saying, ‘great, here is another mystery I can’t solve, another set of problems I don’t have time to fix’.
I don’t think that is just me. SEND is everywhere and people who think they are helping tell us that so many conditions have comorbidity, and everything is on a spectrum isn’t it; and so, like a shopper faced with too much choice, we just give up. We are defeated before we start.
If we can’t name a problem, we can’t solve it.
That is what I see in the classroom all the time. That is why teachers struggle with ASD. The language we use shapes the reality - and although it is meant well, it exacerbates the problem. Impact, as I keep saying, is everything.
And that is why the link doesn’t work. Someone at the Autism Education Trust has thought - oh no, that expert advice we’ve been giving is now completely wrong.
It won’t be because new evidence has come to light. It will all be to do with language, inclusion, virtue signalling.
“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.” Confucius
This is what the tutor quoted from it:
Challenges for autistic students in English GCSE exams
According to Wiltshire County Council’s Secondary Teacher’s Toolkit, the challenges for autistic students in English GCSE exams can include:
• Resolution of semantic ambiguity found in the use of idiomatic language, metaphors, interpretation of jokes, understanding similes, colloquialism and homophones
• Difficulty following themes and sorting events into sequences
• Difficulty drawing inference and detecting inconsistencies in texts
• Poor working memory
• Difficulty inferring an experience of life and recognising the significance of the use of particular words and a lack of intuitive understanding of things from different points of view
• Difficulties with dialogue including literal interpretation of idiomatic language in dialogue, difficulty understanding figures of speech, ambiguity and literal interpretation of these, homonyms
• Tendency to focus on details
• Narrow range of interests, fixed and rigid thought structures
• Literal interpretation of words and failure to understand differences between fact and fiction, fact and opinion
• Fluent de-coding but have challenges gaining meaning from what they have read (hyperlexia)
• Difficulty understanding concepts of time, changes over time and therefore understanding texts set in the past, future or in other cultures
Only an idiot would get rid of this list.
Use it with the student. Work out which ones apply to them, and which don’t. Get them to add to the list. Then work out some solutions and trial them.
Iterate. The student will show you, through their work, what works, and what doesn’t. Don’t give in to the thought police. This is an Asperger’s student. They deserve to excel.
How Have I Approached it In My Course?
My Reply
Hi M,
My wife, who is a special school specialist, delights in telling me that autism is a spectrum, and no two autistic students are the same.
I take this advice and simplify it for myself this way:
All autistic students are the same in that they view the world through what they perceive to be a logical perspective.
They are all different in that their perception of logical rules might differ from mine or each other.
I am not concerned with their sensory needs unless I become aware of them interfering with learning.
To put that in context, I teach the language analysis, like everything else, in the simplest way possible.
In the context of question 2 paper 1, and question 3 paper 2, it is write the same number of explanations as there are marks. This also holds true for all the other reading paper questions.
The autistic student is likely to interpret explanations differently. For example, they are likely to make no distinction between a general explanation, and a specific one. So, I teach them that it has to be about what it makes us think, feel or predict.
When I read their responses, they are often still too general:
“we predict something bad will happen” which is correct, but likely to score no marks, vs
the specific bad thing we are led to predict, which then proves it is a perceptive comment worth a mark.
So, I then model that difference.
Here is a typical piece of work in response to a Q3 Paper 1.
Improved Version
The writer uses structural features to interest the reader as follows:
1. A shift of focus from paragraph 1, which describes the weather and the boat, to paragraph 2 and the crew and the description of them may be trying to show how miserable the crew look / are and creating a sense of intrigue. They seem as miserable as their captain, who is “an emaciated, sharp-boned man”. 1 mark
2. A zoom in to Hardstop’s knuckles at the start of the third paragraph creates a sense of how long they have been working, as his “White knuckles” which are “glowing in the orange glow in the cabin” and smell of old fish guts indicate he has been constantly working for a long while, and makes us wonder what they have caught that day. 1 mark
3. Appearance of dialogue at the beginning of paragraph / section 4 allows the characters to express themselves, as well as revealing that they had caught a shark, and subsequently dropped it, surprises the reader about the sudden mention of the shark, which came with the dialogue. 1 mark
4. A shift of focus to the rigging making “no sound over the sea and the winds” creates a sense of how loud and unpleasant the weather is, making the reader wonder why they are out in such terrible weather. 1 mark
5. The lack of dialogue for 3 paragraphs after and including paragraph 6 creates a sense of loneliness and contrasts with the large chunk of dialogue just before and after. This makes the reader feel that the ocean is a lonely and isolated place. The absence of dialogue is not enough for this, but the contrast with the dialogue before is what earns this mark. 1 mark.
6. In paragraph 8, the contrast of the sudden appearance of colour contrasts with the darkness and dullness of the last 2 paragraphs, further reinforcing the feeling of loneliness on the sea. I can see what you are getting at, but for this to work you would need to quote the bits with colour to show that they reveal companionship, a contrast with dullness or loneliness. No mark.
7. The circular structure of “he watched the orange glow of the cabin gradually disappear”, and a few paragraphs later, “he saw the orange glow of the cabin once more”, which presumably, the crew always return to the trawler for more, and makes the reader wonder whether albert will return or go missing in the dinghy, and creates makes the reader scared that something bad may happen. Much more specific (apart from something bad – give a suggestion which is specific and plausible). Probably 1 mark.
8. Hardstop yells at his crew at both the start, “Suddenly Hardstop let out a yell”, and end, “Hardstop suddenly yelled at him”, of the extract. This second circular structure shows Hardstop’s nature, and how commanding and powerful over the rest of the crew he is. 1 mark.
6/7 marks
This is the best news.
I teach all my students this way, because Autistic students are logical. I believe in logic.
Excellent post. Very helpful. Thank you.