Introducing ThinkBlocks to Students on the Autistic Spectrum

"How best can I communicate with this child so that I can help them to learn?" This is a question often asked by teachers and educators of students on the Autistic Spectrum. Initial exploratory research and field experience is suggestive that ThinkBlocks and the Patterns of Thinking Method may be communicatively compatible with those on the spectrum, due to their processing style and learning profile of strengths and weaknesses. All well and good but how do we approach introducing the Blocks, which are designed to represent any concept at any level, given the potential for rigidity of thought with these students? This issue was highlighted by a special ed teacher who is using the Blocks and Method with some of her students with HFA.

So lets look at one possibility of how to first introduce or indeed to re-introduce the Blocks with these students. Perhaps the first step would be leave the blocks out and let the student play with them. Encourage them to write on them but let them direct this completely. So you are looking at the interaction as: child-active; adult-passive. You provide the student with the resources and materials but the emphasis is on free-play and exploration with the child exercising free unstructured choice. As they play with the blocks, wipe some scribbles, words or drawings off and put other ones on they may begin to make the connection that these blocks are what they want them to be in that moment. If the student is high-functioning then we can hypothesise that this connection will occour. With time you can then move from: child-active; adult-passive to child-active; adult-active where you are encouraging them to explore and experiment and where the learning becomes interactive and you being to scaffold the learning.

Knowing each student's profile of individual strengths and difficulties may enable these suggestions to be expanded, developed and perhaps changed altogether. Leaving the Blocks out for free-play and exploration and watching what unfolds may not only provide you with the clues needed to know how to best establish how you can more effectively communicate with your student but also how to create a system or space whereby the student can more effectively communicate their 'content' to you.