Invitations to literacy: A case study of a child with autism

This work was a year long study of a child with severe autism and how he acquired literacy within a resource classroom for children with mild learning disabilities guided by whole language and social constructivist beliefs. The author explains the educational and philosophical beliefs and how she as teacher and researcher reflected them in her classroom. She explains how Cambourn's conditions of optimal language learning were employed during the study and provides examples of how these conditions aided the case study child with his acquisition of literacy. A key feature of the child's learning involved children with learning disabilities serving as video buddy readers. The videos not only facilitated the literacy learning of the child with autism but also aided in his interaction with peers, first with the buddy readers, then other classmates in the classroom. In addition to emergent reading, the student also developed emergent writing for meaningful purposes such as requests and refusals. He also increased his communication from three functional words and signs to a functional vocabulary of fifty-five words and signs. In addition to sign language and oral communication, the child used picture exchange to express needs and wants. Implications include the need for a holistic approach to teaching children with autism literacy skills and the benefits of including children who have more severe disabilities in learning environments with less disabled peers.