How do I teach an autistic preschool child?
When including autistic children in a preschool classroom, educators must utilize different strategies to integrate all the children together and help them communicate so that none of them feels left out. According to a program at the Alice H. Hayden Preschool at the University of Washington’s Experimental Education Unit, using the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is imperative so that non-verbal children can still communicate with pictures and symbols and state their needs.Using PromptsUse the PECS program in your preschool classroom, teaching non-verbal children how to put pictures of what they want on their board in response to the question “Show me what you want.” Generally, autistic children learn the PECS program, so you can ask them to form complete sentence with their requests. For example if Bobby and Josh are working in the art center, and Bobby, who’s autistic, wants the red play dough, he will form ” I want red play dough,” on his board and show it to Josh. Sinc
