Strategies to Help Students with Asperger Syndrome in School

For most students with Asperger Syndrome (AS), school demands tax many of the areas in which they have difficulty. Therefore, the majority of students with AS are anxious. Initial supports typically focus on making certain accommodations for the student in an effort to keep his/her anxiety level manageable. The following strategies may be helpful for individuals with AS to succeed in school.

Managing the Environment

Students with AS often do not have the organizational and planning skills that help them navigate through their day successfully. They don’t inherently understand routines, how to handle changes in their environment or predict what can happen next. This inability or difficulty in managing their environment causes stress and anxiety, which results in lower academic and social performance, decreased attention to task and potential increases in behavior problems. To help them manage, educators should establish and teach students routines for all activities that occur consistently in school. For example, the student needs to know when and how he can sharpen his pencil, where to turn in homework, how his books should be arranged in a desk or locker, what books should be taken to which class and when to go to his locker, etc.

Routines that Need to be Directly Taught to Students with AS:

• How to ask for help
• When and what to throw away and where
• How to ask to go to the bathroom
• How to obtain school supplies when they forget to bring them to class
• How and when to hand in homework
• How to make up missed work due to absences or related reasons
• How to line up for lunch and recess
• What to do during free time
• How to navigate lunchtime

Preparing for Change

The student with AS has to continually sort through, process and integrate what he is to do each day even if there are no schedule changes. Therefore, any changes, in particular unexpected changes, no matter how small they seem to others, can increase anxiety. When possible, the teacher should provide consistency in the schedule and avoid sudden changes.

When a change is going to occur, the teacher should prepare the child by discussing it in advance; creating a social narrative, such as a Social StoryTM (Gray, 2000) on the change; or showing a picture of the change. For example, it is unwise to rearrange classroom furniture or change seating assignments without introducing it ahead of time to the child with AS. The introduction may include reviewing a picture of what the rearranged classroom will look like.

A visual schedule (see below) that incorporates the student’s activities is also helpful. At the bottom of the schedule, an icon can be included with the words “Sometimes the Schedule Changes.”  This may be used to introduce a specific change.

 In addition, the student should be reminded daily that changes can occur and that they can be managed. This may be done by using a “change in routine card” as follows.