Free time with my students means the world to me! But for many students with ASD unstructured times are the times they find most difficult. At these times there isn’t a designated plan of action, instead, we expect them to navigate the complex social world around them, often without support. The student often arrives back in your classroom upset and frustrated, feeling as though the world is against them and desperate to do anything but settle down to work.
It doesn’t have to be that way though. Free time can be used to your advantage. It can be a positive thing. It’s one of the reasons that both I and many other members of my team don’t take a break and eat our lunch with our students. No one has asked us to do it; we just do it because it works best that way. My students will tell you that eating my lunch with them is my favourite part of the day – and what’s more, they are right!
I love lunchtimes because it allows me to be with my students on their terms, to talk to them about their special interests, to find out what makes them tick. If I make time to listen to them, they are far more likely to want to work for me. For me, it’s a win-win situation!
If we are around we can help our students to navigate these social times successfully, but more than that we can equip them with the skills to be more independent in the future. We can practice conversations, get to know our students better, give our students independence when they can cope but be near enough to step in and prompt when they can’t. Surely this is what lunchtime supervisors are for, I hear you cry. True, they are. But our students often need more skilled support from someone who knows them well, who can spot them when they are starting to get anxious not when they have entered full-blown meltdowns. Who knows the right moment to whisper ‘will you play with me?’ in their ear, when they are standing looking longingly at another child before the moment is over and they’ve walked away assuming that the other child doesn’t want to play with them.
At break times, I have students who will sit and chat, I have others who will play tig, others who need some alone time on a computer and others still who like nothing better than to help me with jobs. I have students who will only play if a member of staff plays too, and ones who want to be alone.
We know that one learning style doesn’t suit all of our students; we create lessons to help them succeed. So what makes us think that one type of break time suits all of our students? Some need time to run and play and let of steam – others need time to escape from the pressures of social interaction and lose themselves in technology. We need to be adaptable and provide our students with opportunities for both.
So why not try something different next break time? Arrange some different activities, ask someone to help you with a job or just sit and chat. Give it a try; you’ll be pleasantly surprised. After all, if your teacher said ‘If you don’t do your work, then you won’t get your break’ and break was your least favourite time of day, what would you do?
This is a re-blog post originally posted by funASDteacher and published with kind permission.
The original post can be found here.
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