Supporting Sentence Formation with Visuals for Diverse Learners

​One of the biggest challenges I faced when first working with students on the spectrum was figuring out how to use visuals effectively when teaching.  So many colleagues promoted the message of ‘use visuals’.  When it came to encouraging writing and sentence formation, I was perplexed with how to incorporate visuals.  After contemplation and trial and error I found these tools to be helpful.  

Many students on the spectrum that I worked with were rule followers, once they understood the rules that is. By beginning with sorting word types and then structuring sentences to ensure they contained subject and verbs I found more success during our guided writing.  For some students putting pictures cards in the sentence structure guide was effective.  Depending on the student’s abilities I would exchange the pictures with words.  When moving toward independence the visual structure can then be used as a reminder to check their sentence content in a systematic way.  As a support for understanding the parts of speech structuring your classroom word wall by adding words to noun, verb, and adjective as opposed to via alphabet may be helpful as well. 
 
Supporting students on the spectrum can be a challenge.  I would be interested in how big the pile of materials made throughout the year would be as practitioners constantly re-evaluate their strategies.  Just the items I have made, tried, and discarded would be ridiculously large.