Resources.

1. Are They able to Self-regulate Emotions & Stay Calm?
Learners with autism or other special needs maybe lacking of appropriate coping mechanisms to deal with various stressors. Self-coping/regulating skills help them be more composed and learning effectively.

2. Are They able to Sustain Sitting in Class?
Chair leaving behavior could greatly affect a learner’s focus and listening quality at learning . When a learner learns the habit of staying at designated area, it will greatly improve the learner’s learning qualities in class.

3. Are They Consistently Complying to Instructions?
Once a learner with autism or other special needs developed consistent compliance instead of selectively complying, they will be more receptive to teaching instructions and learn better!

4. Are They able to Sustain Attention in Class?
Learners with autism or other special needs maybe easily distracted by their obsessed interest around them. Teaching them to self-regulate their attention when distractions are present will definitely help develop the attention quality a lot more and start acquiring skills from lessons.

5. Do They Have Sufficient Language Comprehension?
Very often, our learners may not learn effectively because they do not have sufficient language comprehension, i.e., not understanding more complex directions/instructions, not understanding the questions being asked, or etc. Work on this and they will be acquiring teaching content faster.

6. Are They able to wait when told to do so?
Waiting is an abstract concept that a lot of our learners don’t understand, hence resulting in a lot of disruptive behaviors in the class and affect their learning. (e.g., chair leaving, tantrums, playing with materials and etc.). Once they have learnt how to wait, learning will improve.

7. Are They Good at Attention to Details?
This skill tends to be always overlooked. In fact, a lot of our learners with autism or other special needs are not good at looking at the correct details when learning, hence a lot of things don’t make sense to them and hinder their understanding. This deficit would require very systematic breakdown to help them be more sensitive at details during learning.

8. Do They Have Motivation to Learn?
Our students are not the most intrinsically motivated learners, plus lacking of social interest in getting praises or social approvals, hence at the initial learning phases of ‘difficult’ or ‘uninterested’ tasks, we recommend the use of external rewards to increase motivation, and once new habit is formed, external reward can be faded