Top 3 Benefits of Visual Support For Improving Learning Outcomes of Students with Autism
13th August 2024
Mostly, Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have strong visual skills rather than their auditory skills. Also, we can witness in the below image, that children with ASD tend to communicate majorly from their body language compared to speaking or using words.
Luckily, there are plenty of visual supports or you can be more crafty for your autistic children and create some visual support aids of your own, with which they can share their feelings, thoughts, and needs.
Want to know more about how visual supports can help your children with autism in every aspect of their life?
Then, we have got you covered.
In this blog post, we will be sharing some of the major benefits of using visual support for your autistic children in the classroom and at the end, how you can create your own visual support as well.
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So, without any further delay, let’s get started.
What is Visual Support?
Visual support is one of the useful tools that helps children with ASD to communicate how they feel, think, and what they need. It also helps them to make sense of the world in which they are living.
Generally, non-verbal children communicate through the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) to share with others what are they feeling or if they need anything.
3 Major Benefits of Visual Support For Children with Autism
Let’s get to know how visual support can prove to be beneficial for children with autism:
Visual Support Promotes Predictability & Accountability
Children with ASD, have a hard time following any routine and schedule. As a responsible special needs educator, you can consider creating a well-structured visual support timetable for your little autistic students. This will help them to gain control over-
- New Classroom routine
- Upcoming events
- What to expect throughout the day
- Help to transition from one class activity to another
2. Visual Support Promotes Executive Functioning & Improve Engagement Rate
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) need to know-
- How to initiate any activities?
- What are the following steps they should follow?
- When the particular task or activities will be completed?
- What they should do after completing their task or activity?
As a responsible special needs educator, you can support your children with ASD to develop their executive functioning and processing skills through visual checklists or sequences of pictures that show how to complete a task completely. This will not only help autistic children transition from one task to another but also improve their engagement rate to complete their tasks.
3. Visual Support Improves Social Skills
You might not know that with the help of visual supports like- pictures, words, prompt cards checklists, etc., you can significantly improve the social skills of your children with ASD.
You might be wondering how?
Let’s take a look at an example:
You can show a prompt- like a picture of a dog to remind your little autistic child about the neighbourhood dog that he likes the most and he can share about it with their friend.
How You Can Create Your Own Visual Supports?
Whenever you are beginning to prepare for your own visual support, always remember that it depends on your student’s level of symbolic understanding. Let’s get to know what are the requirements for creating your own visual support:
- Your own few pictures
- You can create some creative video shots from your phone’s camera
- Miniature of various real-life objects
- Various coloured pictures
- Coloured cards in square size
- Line drawings
- Symbols
Additionally, there are plenty of online websites like- Visuals2Go, where you can get help for creating effective visual support.
Visual Support Improves Overall Well-Being For Autistic Children
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have a really hard time expressing their thoughts, feelings, and what they need not just in the classroom but everywhere. However, visual support can be the right aid to improve learning engagement, outcome, and overall well-being of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
If you want to learn more effective and helpful strategies to help your autistic children thrive in every aspect of life. Then, consider pursuing courses like Autism Courses for Teachers, where you will get assistance from top expert trainers.
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