Focus on one

At my last visit, I decided to focus on one specific student. Since I have a small class, focusing on one student would not very difficult.

This day, I chose to focus on Carson. He is a very quite student, whim rarely speaks out unless spoken to. The first thing I noticed was his different repetitive actions. These actions vary between students with autism and I always like to see what different students do. Their motions really reflect upon them. For instance, Carson is very quiet and timid. When he is sitting at his desk, he tends to rub his hands together or shake his foot. Sometimes he alternates between the two and he switches often. He also plays with a writing utensil. When Ms. Morrow was doing her morning coverage of the news, every time she would ask a question, his movement would pause. As soon as he would recite the answer, he woiuld go back to his preferred movement. Carson often just mumbles the answer to himself. One of the things he’s working on is communicating and using his voice. Most times, he has the answer, he just needs to be conscious of how he says it. Ms. Morrow often has to remind him to open up his mouth and talk clearly. When she understands his answer, he nods at her and goes back to his movement.

when he is listening to Ms. Morrow, you can really tell he is being attentive. But then there are times when he seems to be staring off into somewhere and I found myself wondering what he could be thinking about. i know, from Ms. Morrow, that he likes dates and history, A LOT, so maybe it could be that. he even asked me what year I was born so that he could probably figure out something that happened in that year. Also, I could see him glancing over at me during the period. I think he knew that I was paying special attention to him.

One moment where his personality came out was when the students were given stickers for answering a question correctly. Ms. Y, the aid, offered to give them some of her stickers. When she went over to Carson, he took the stickers from her hand and looked meticulously at all of the stickers. you could see how critical he was being of his choice, taking it off the sheet himself. Also, he didn’t put his sticker on his shirt like all of the other students, he just held it in his hand for a while.