I was very impressed. We were just daunted in trying to teach them to spell. In Helen McGrath' s pre-kindergarten classroom at Nuckols Farm Elementary, the teachers often speak with their hands. Chase Scott is one of her students. All of the children in the class have been diagnosed with autism and assorted other learning disabilities.
Autistic children have difficult processing verbal instructions.
The goal is not necessarily to make the children fluent in sign, McGrath said, but to give them another piece in what is for them a very confusing communication puzzle. The children will communicate through sign and spoken words, although the latter does not always come easily, if at all. Like with Chase Scott, McGrath and her teachers have found that sign language often helps them develop their verbal language. Sometimes the results are not exactly as envisioned, but they are results just the same. In class recently, McGrath gave a little boy a wet paper towel so he could wipe the numbers off a sheet he'd been writing on.