Visual Strategies for Improving Communication: Practical Supports for School and Home

Great book with great ideas. Got me thinking about how to use stratagies at home. Great speaker as well-saw her in UTICA_NY

My autistic son is a visual learner. He watches TV, computer and other children and will learn from them. In addition - abstract concepts and teaching basic academics can be done with a lot of visual support vs. auditory presentations alone. This is a strong book to identify the issues for special needs kids and using visual strategies to solving them. I highly recommend this book.

I have read a lot of books on autism and I would highly recommend this one! The author details, in a very clear way, why"visual supports" work well for everyone, but especially for those who have communication related disorders. Then she goes beyond the explanations to give you real examples you can use and directions on how to implement them. She has a very practical approach and acknowledges the differences and similarites needed between school and home programs. I think this book would be invaluable to a teacher of special needs children and also the "regular ed" teacher who has a wide range of children and their individual needs to consider. Parents and caregivers will also benefit greatly from this book as it has many examples that go beyond the school experience.One of my favorite quotes from the book is "Imagine being on one of those whirlwind package tours of Europe; sixteen cities in 7 days. You discover the tour agent forgot to give you an itinerary. Every day you don't know where you are goin, what you are going to see or when you are going to eat. Frustrating? That is how many of our students feel about life on a daily basis. It is one of the reasons we see students cling to ritual and routine."This book is literally packed with ideas and is well worth the cover price. ....

When I first started working with students with autistic characteristics this became an incredible tool. I continue to use this tool with these students and other students for whom a more visual learning approach helps build success!

My youngest daughter has autism. Last summer my wife and I brought her to a summer camp. We could not tell our daughter that she was going to spend 5 nights and 6 days at camp because we have no communication system with her. We brought her to camp, left her there with the counselor and she cried. Every morning she packed her bag, lugged it to her counselor and said, Bye Camp". How would you behave if you were in my daughter's situation?Linda Hodgdon's book, "Visual Strategies for Improving Communication", shows parents, educators and other professionals how to use picture schedules, calandars, visual bridges and other visual tools that help my daughter become more aware of what is happening in the world around her. "Visual Stategies for Improving Communication" is a wonderful book written in an easy to read format showing many examples on how to implement visual tools for children with autism and many other communication and behavior diso! rders