AUTISM AWARENESS
From mealtime supervisors, to teaching assistants, to classroom
teachers, to senior leadership teams, everyone is working to create
more autism-friendly schools throughout the country. They attend
after-school training, create specialized and tailored plans, and
regularly work with specialist consultants, who guide them in
creating the structure that children with autism need to feel
a part of the class.
asks her to play kickball, but Julia isn’t keen. Abby
ponders how to play with Julia and finally realizes
it’s best to find a game they can both enjoy doing,
which is flapping their arms and pretending to be
butterflies. Both of the children enjoy the same ac-
tivity, which plays to both of their strengths. But, of
course, unlike on Sesame Street, this doesn’t happen
without careful planning and input from school staff.
From mealtime supervisors, to teaching assistants,
to classroom teachers, to senior leadership teams,
everyone is working to create more autism-friend-
ly schools throughout the country. They attend af-
ter-school training, create specialized and tailored
plans, and regularly work with specialist consultants,
who guide them in creating the structure that chil-
dren with autism need to feel a part of the class.
A fantastic example of providing structure for chil-
dren with autism who may struggle with free play is
the creation of Zoned Playgrounds. These are play-
grounds divided into different activity zones, in-
cluding ballgames, a Lego table, a drawing area, or
simply a chatting area. A child with autism can then
be supported to choose an arranged activity, rather
than having to devise one. More organically, some
Key Stage 2 classes have chosen novels with autis-
tic protagonists, such as The Spaghetti Detectives and
The London Eye Mystery, as their class readers. This
includes everyone. The class learns more about au-
tism, and autistic children can read about someone
just like them.
School staff also work hard to adapt the school en-
vironment to suit the needs of their students with
autism. They allow children to leave the classroom
during the noisiest times of day (e.g. tidy up time),
to avoid noisy hand-dryers and use paper towels
26 | Autism Parenting Magazine | Issue 65
instead, to go to lunch 10 minutes before everyone
else to avoid the noisy crowds, or to sit on a chair
instead of on the ground during Carpet Time and fid-
get with a fiddle toy.
Another highly-effective way of highlighting autism
as a ‘hidden disability’ is through a planned series
of Autism Peer Awareness (APA) sessions. In fact,
research has shown that children are more under-
standing and accepting of their peers with disabili-
ties when they are equipped with knowledge about
those disabilities and have some personal experi-
ences with them (Lindsay and Edwards, 2013).
Autism Peer Awareness lesson plans can include the
following topics:
− How we are all different
− Visible and hidden disabilities
− Learning to use Makaton and the Picture Ex-
change Communication System (PECS)
− Reading a case-study or a book about a simi-
lar-aged student with autism
− Celebrating the strengths of people with au-
tism
− Highlighting well-known people with autism
− Visiting a special school for children with au-
tism
− Presenting a whole-school assembly about au-
tism
Jan Greenman, author and mother of a son named
Luke Dicker with autism, has said that at school, ‘One
person can make all the difference.’ Indeed, there are
individuals throughout the UK quietly working to
improve the lives of their students with autism. They