According to the National Center for Education Statistics, students with autism can receive education through the public school system thanks to the Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act (or IDEA).
A recent report stated that more than seven million students received special education services in the 2019-2020 school year. 11% of them suffered from autism spectrum disorder or ASD. It’s truly a valiant effort.
Unfortunately, there is still much that our educational system can improve on. Every student deserves the support of their parents to reinforce lessons at home, but none need it more than children with ASD. Hence, we’ll share autism teaching strategies with you along with one of our favorite learning programs, Brain Retrain.
The Challenges of Teaching Children With Autism
Teaching a typically developed child is already difficult as it is. Teaching a child with autism? It is on an entirely different level altogether.
Thus, before we answer “What are some teaching strategies for autism?“, below are just some of the most common challenges of teaching children with autism, just to give you an idea of what you can expect.
Communication Issues
One of the biggest challenges of teaching children with ASD is their decreased communication ability. This has been made even more problematic by their limited perception, especially when reading facial expressions and vocal tones. All of these aspects contribute to effective communication, after all.
It’s tough to impart lessons without effective communication backing you up. Even experienced teachers will recognize the difficulty of this feat.
Poor Working Memory
Here’s another major hurdle. According to an article published by the American Psychological Association, children with autism tend to have poor working memory. This is the type of memory we use when we’re accomplishing daily tasks. For instance, it helps us remember if we’ve already put salt in our stew while cooking.
Unfortunately, memory is closely involved when we learn new things before our brain transfers this information to our long-term memory.
Slower Pace of Learning
Even if autism isn’t a learning disability, it doesn’t mean that the condition can’t slow down the learning process. Children with autism take a lot of time before they learn new things. Expect your patience to be tested even during the best of times.
Remember to forgive yourself as well. It is only human to feel frustrated. Don’t beat yourself too much. Your child will feel such emotions, even if their disability hinders them from understanding it fully.
What Are Instructional Approaches for Teaching Students With ASD?
Fortunately, there are various instructional approaches that experts recommend for students with ASD. You’re asking what are some teaching strategies for autism? Well, here they are:
Visual Approaches
Visual learning is probably the most recommended instructional strategies for students with autism.
According to an article published by Spectrum, people with autism have superior visual skills. Thus, visual stimuli remain one of the best methods in helping a child with autism learn and remember new things.
There are different materials that you can use for this approach, from flashcards to posters. Film and computer programs with rich and colorful graphics also count.
Task Analysis
Another efficient method is task analysis. This technique breaks down complex lessons into simpler steps.
Suppose you’re teaching your child how to wash their hands. You can break down this skill further into simpler sub-skills: turning on the faucet, wetting your hand, putting on soap, and rinsing.
Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is effective as an instructional method since it provides more encouragement and builds confidence.
Individualized Learning
Students with severe learning challenges will benefit from an individualized approach instead of a traditional classroom experience. Like the visual method, this is also one of the most instructional strategies for students with autism.
Autism Teaching Strategies
Since we’re already comparing individualized versus group learning, we can share even more teaching strategies with autism spectrum disorder.
How Do You Teach a Child With Autism in the Classroom?
Some of the effective ways to teach a child with autism are as follows:
- Stick To a Regular Class Routine
Children with ASD thrive best when there’s structure. It provides them with feelings of stability. It can significantly lower levels of anxiety.
On the other hand, frequently changing schedules and activities can confuse them. Keep this in mind if you’re a teacher planning to teach a class with a student with autism.
- Make the Classroom a Safe Space
The experience of learning with many people whose facial expressions and actions fail your understanding can already be a tough experience in itself. At the very least, you can make sure that your classroom remains a safe space for all your students. Strictly no bullying and intolerance allowed as much as possible.
- Give Your Students a Lot of Flexibility
Allow as many breaks as your student needs. Be more patient with them and let them learn at their own pace.
We understand that these things are not always a privilege, especially within the public school system. Are we wondering how do you teach a child with autism in the classroom? Simply trying your best to be more understanding of your student’s condition is enough.

How Do You Teach a Child With Autism at Home?
We find homeschooling more ideal for students with autism compared to the traditional setup. It allows the teacher to adjust the pace and methods according to the specific needs of the learner.
We acknowledge how costly it can be, though, especially if you’re planning to hire the services of a tutor who specializes in autism. Hence, here are some tips that you can keep in mind in case you want to attempt to teach your child on your own:
- Create a Designated Study Space
As mentioned, students with autism do best when there’s structure. After all, performing repetitive actions is one of the behaviors that mark people with autism.
Turn this weakness into an advantage by looking at it from a different perspective. View it as the semblance of order and structure.
You can employ this in your home learning pursuits by creating a designated study space. That can also help your student get into the mindset of studying that can be difficult to achieve when homeschooling.
- Minimize Distractions
The home can present many distractions, from toys to digital devices, from siblings to pets. Make sure that all of these are out of your learner’s way before you start your lessons.
- Supplement Your Lessons With Various Educational Tools
Finally, don’t hesitate to support your lessons with various educational tools and materials. For example, many mobile apps offer gamified lessons on particular subjects for free. Choose learning materials that will appeal the most to the interests and skills of your learner.
Let’s Talk About Structured Teaching
We also recommend looking into structured teaching strategies for students with autism spectrum disorder. It is a set of teaching techniques characterized by four elements.
Physical Structure
This aspect of structured learning refers to how the learning environment is physically set up. If your learning in a classroom, this will refer to the layout of the different areas within the room. On the other hand, this will refer to your study corner if you’re doing all your learning at home.
Visual Structure
The next element is visual structure. That means all the visual images you can find within your physical structure have something to do with the lessons that you are currently tackling.
Routines
The third element refers to your fixed daily schedule. Avoid switching your routines as much as you can. If you must make changes, then try to keep other things tightly scheduled.
For instance, you can change the days of your lessons however you see fit. You can opt to study Reading on a Monday instead of a Tuesday.
However, keep your learning hours the same. Sing songs at the beginning and end of your lessons, just like any other day. Take two breaks in between subjects and more.
Work Systems
Lastly, develop good studying habits in your students by creating work systems for them. For example, are there any activities you expect them to do upon arriving in your classroom?
Or how about organizational tasks that you want your child to perform before leaving his desk? What these habits are will be entirely up to you.
Brain Retrain
In the meantime, we can now talk about Brain Retrain. It is a learning program developed by two institutes that are experts on ASD: The DreamWeaver House and SFK Media Corp.
It is a series of movies designed to look like books through Action Caption technology. Apparently, this helps in increasing the literacy skills of a student with autism.
Brain Retrain also uses frequency brainwaves that can trigger the natural healing mechanisms of the human brain. That can help improve their behavior, social interactions, perception, and other autism-related brain processes.
What Are Some Teaching Strategies for Autism?
Don’t allow your child’s learning to be limited just because they have ASD. There are several autism teaching strategies for students with autism spectrum disorder that you can employ in a traditional classroom or homeschool setting.
Your young one’s path to learning isn’t going to be easy, but with patience, understanding, and keeping the tips we have shared above, we are confident that your students will meet their learning goals in no time.
Incorporating various educational methods and materials like Structured Teaching and Brain Retrain into your learning system is also highly recommended.