Visual schedules have been used extensively to support students with Autism Spectrum Disorder understand a routine and smooth transitions between activities. Visual schedules can be used more broadly with students and are particularly effective for students with language disorders and learning disabilities.

When using visual schedules remember to:

• include the written word/s underneath the picture
• explain the sequence of activities from left to right
• use a finish box / pouch / line so that the student must physically do something to indicate the action has finished
• persist, practice, remind, repeat - students will take time to learn new strategies and effort is required to make using a visual schedule a routine part of their day

Here are some ideas for implementing visual schedules in speech-language therapy sessions or when supporting a student in the classroom:

• use pictures to represent each activity in the therapy session (e.g. hello, story cards, glueing, writing, goodbye). This is particularly useful for students who are easily distracted or who wish to finish after ten minutes.
• uses pictures/words to represent the steps of an activity (e.g. listen to story, think about important words, listen to question, answer OR clarify question).
• use sequencing strips to order the steps of a task and support comprehension. You can ask the student to put the steps in order and check that it makes sense (e.g. Read the first paragraph, highlight the main idea in blue, highlight the important details in green, highlight any unknown words in yellow). By cutting the steps into strips the student can be given one strip at a time to focus on.
• To Do Lists! These are an invaluable tool for adults as well as students!! Use To Do lists to clearly outline the activities that are required for a task. This is really useful as a comprehension reminder for students, a way to keep them on-track with a task and a motivator to see a task through to the end. Use a tickbox so that the student can physically indicate when a step has been completed. Great for students from Grade 2 - 6.
• Use simple schedules with younger students to support their understanding of a class activity. This could be as simple as three pictures: Colour / Cut / Paste. Ask the students to use the pictures to tell you the steps they need to do for a task. This helps you check if they have understood the demands of the task.

Here are some examples of visual schedules.

Using a Text Restricter

For a student, reading a page of text can be a daunting task. Their anxiety may be triggered by any number of factors:

• lack of confidence in reading or comprehension ability
• difficulty with processing so much visual information at once
• awareness of the effort needed to read when decoding skills are poor

A simple support strategy can be the use of a text restricter. A text restricter reduces the amount of text that the student needs to focus on, allowing text to be broken down into manageable sections. You can make it easily by cutting out the corner section of a piece of paper. Click here to download an example of a text restricter.

Firstly, encourage the student to look at the entire page of text. Direct their attention to headings, subheadings, pictures or graphs. Ask the student to predict what they think the article/story/text will be about.

Then, overlay the text restrictor on the text and explain to the student that they will read and think about one section at a time. This allows you to help the student implement reading comprenhension strategies during the reading process (ie. clarifying unknown vocabulary or confusing sentences, summarising the information read, noting the information in a mind map, predicting what might come in the next paragraph)

Finally, remove the text restricter and encourage the student to summarise the information that they have read - this might be 3 key details/ideas that they have recalled from the text. This is when mind maps are incredibly useful for students with language and learning difficulties - use the mind map created during the reading process to provide an overall summary of the text.

VersaLearn is a provider of language and literacy programs, professional development and speech-language therapy services. For over twenty-five years Jane Henderson and Associates have been providing speech pathology services to children at schools and at our clinics.

VersaLearn provides specialised assessment and therapy services for children from early childhood to adolescence. Our experienced Speech Pathologists assess and deliver therapy services at our family-friendly clinics and at primary schools.

Our experience and passion for supporting children's language and literacy has led us to develop specific programs and professional development for education staff. Our recently launched catalogue outlines all the programs and professional development to support students with language and learning disabilities.