The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

This workshop will focus on intervention strategies that provide opportunities for children with ASD to understand how and when to initiate, respond and maintain social-communication interactions with adults and peers. We will discuss how to promote advanced communication skills without the partner prompting, directing or “thinking” for the child. The primary purpose of this workshop will be to assist attendees in understanding the interrelationships among communication and learning styles in children with autism spectrum disorders.  Many of the communication successes demonstrated in our classrooms and therapies can be explained, in part, through a) our increased understanding of our children’s unique learning styles, b) our children being able to “look up and around”, and c) our ability to answer the question, “Who is doing the thinking?”

This workshop will provide practical strategies of how to set up and deliver communication intervention for children with autism based the approach and guidelines from the Learning Style Profile for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Rydell, 2012).  The focus will be on how to promote children to “look up and around” in order independently learn from situational cues to assist them with how and when to communicate with social partners. 

To illustrate these learning styles and intervention strategies, we will review The Learning Style Profile for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Rydell, 2012) (LSP) that has been developed by Dr. Patrick J. Rydell and used at Rocky Mountain Autism Center to a) assess the child’s learning style and b) provide specific guidelines for program development and intervention. 

The Learning Style Profile (LSP) address teacher, therapist and parent needs by:

1)      Providing an intervention guideline and protocol that addresses the core challenges of ASD and learning style differences

2)      Prioritizing the learning style differences in children with ASD

3)      Profiling the learning style differences to design effective classrooms, therapy and family-systems programs

4)      Assisting with “how” to set up the classroom, therapy and family-systems programs based on the learning style differences in children with ASD

5)      Addressing “how” to teach a child with ASD based on his or her learning style profile

This workshop will incorporate a combination of lecture, demonstrative teaching, video case examples of teachers, therapists and parents currently implementing the LSP.   IEP goals will be offered based on the LSP approach.

Learning Objectives: