Supporting Joint Attention Skills from a Neurodiversity-Affirming Lens

Supporting Joint Attention Skills from a Neurodiversity-Affirming Lens 1

Joint Attention Ideas Joint attention refers to how people, in this case, children, coordinate attention between social partners concerning objects or events and involves initiating and responding to bids for the shared focus of gaze and action. It is a crucial developmental milestone that emerges in infancy and sets the foundation for more complex social … Read more

Getting Pupils to Maintain Attention on Non-Preferred Tasks

Getting Pupils to Maintain Attention on Non-Preferred Tasks 2

Many children with autism struggle with executive functioning. For these children, initiating tasks and sustaining attention, especially for non-preferred tasks, can be nearly impossible. Many children I have worked with appear to “freeze” and have trouble taking the first step (Mazefsky et al., 2013). Yet once initiated, they are often able to complete tasks or … Read more

Teaching Joint Attention to Children: Evidence-Informed Best Practices

Teaching Joint Attention to Children: Evidence-Informed Best Practices 3

What is Joint Attention? Joint attention, the ability to share attention with another person towards an object, activity or event, is a crucial skill for social development and learning. For the pupilI work with it is a crucial skill to teach. For some joint attention skills do not develop naturally and needs to be taught … Read more

AAC Game: Shark Bite

AAC Game: Shark Bite 4

AAC Games for Communication Our next review for a game suitable for AAC users is Shark Bite. I bought this reduced at a supermarket. Shark does does tick the boxes for being suitable for use in communication and interaction sessions. It has a surprise movement to make you jump. The game has multicoloured accessories and … Read more