New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline - Ministry of Health

Part 3: Education for learners with ASD
Part 3
Students can be helped by being specifically
taught problem solving and thinking skills,
including:
• explicit teaching in recognising and
discarding irrelevant information
• memorising and retrieving information
• collecting ideas
• examining pros and cons
• highlighting key concepts
• checklists
• personalised plans of the school
• devising personal routines
• use of written and visual, rather than verbal
information
• increasing structure around exam time 255 .
Transitions
Secondary schools frequently require students
to make many transitions during their day.
These include transitions between different
teaching areas, teachers, groups of peers and
subjects as well as changes of activities within
classes. Students will benefit from withinactivity
schedules as well as daily and weekly
timetables to prepare them for these changes. In
some cases, tasks may not be finished within a
lesson and this may make the transition from a
particular class even more stressful. Some young
people may need tasks to be broken into chunks
to allow for a sense of completion in each class 221
(Recommendation 3.3.1).
Curriculum for transitioning to adult life
and work
The curriculum for students as they near the
end of compulsory schooling requires careful
planning and thought with input from both
family and school staff. The emphasis should
be on critical skills for adult functioning.
Assessment of the young person’s current
skills in the community, work and leisure may
help identify priority skills. Observation and
information from teachers and family should
inform the assessment. The student’s preferences
for work, leisure and domestic activities should
also inform the planning (Recommendation 3.3.2).
All students will need goals around
communication. For some students, these will
emphasise functional communication skills
to cope in a wider range of adult community
settings. Other students will require attention
to pragmatic skills relating to communicating
in the work place. It is important that functional
academic skills and problem solving are also
included. At this stage, however, it is important
that there is an emphasis on the young person’s
particular interests and strengths in developing
his/her curriculum 212 (for further discussion see
section 5.1: After secondary school).
It may be particularly important to provide the
student with a quiet place to take a break from
the busy environment of the secondary school
(Good Practice Point 3.3.3) (for further discussion
about transitions see section: 3.4, Education sector
organisation and management).
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New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline