3 Popular Strategies to Support Autism in the Classroom

Today marks the start of World Autism Acceptance Week. Schools across the country will spend the next seven days celebrating their pupils and staff on the spectrum. At Teaching Personnel, we hope that all the week's events, activities and fundraisers will expand people's understanding of both the challenges and the many joys that constitute life with ASD. 

The world can sometimes seem like a scary and disheartening place for children with autism. When human communication feels like a strange game whose rules you can’t always grasp, even the most innocuous of everyday scenarios can become distressing and disorientating. That’s why educators and researchers have devised a great number of strategies for supporting autism in the classroom. 

SCERTS is a model designed to help teachers, families, therapists, and anyone else with a duty of care to an autistic child. It is an acronym that refers to the model’s three core planks, as outlined on the official SCERTS website.  

• SC (Social communication) - the development of spontaneous, functional communication, emotional expression, and secure and trusting relationships with children and adults

• ER (Emotional Regulation) - the development of the ability to maintain a well-regulated emotional state to cope with everyday stress, and to be most available for learning and interacting

• TS (Transactional Support) - the development and implementation of supports to help partners respond to the child’s needs and interests, modify and adapt the environment, and provide tools to enhance learning (e.g., picture communication, written schedules, and sensory supports). Specific plans are also developed to provide educational and emotional support to families, and to foster teamwork among professionals. 

SCERTS is conceived as a ‘lifespan’ model that allows appropriate elements of support to be applied consistently over time. This ambition and scope means that SCERTS can readily integrate elements of other frameworks and models, including those we will explore in this piece. 

As a toolbox for structuring collaboration within support teams, SCERTS is the gold standard. 

A large number of both mainstream and special schools across the UK employ SCERTS as a guiding principle. 

The SPELL model is the National Autistic Society’s in-house framework for responding to the individual needs of people on the spectrum.

SAFE put SPELL front-and-centre of their efforts to support those pupils. Staff are given yearly training in its concepts and recommendations, while senior leaders and managers refer to SPELL when making high-level decisions.

At the nearby Marlborough School in Sidcup, senior leaders and teachers build SPELL guidelines into the fabric of daily school life. This work spans a range of tactics, from using colour coding books by subject to provide a structured baseline for independent study and using plain worksheets without unnecessary illustrations to liaising with Occupational Therapists and Educational Psychologists.

The TEACCH framework (Teaching and Education of Autistic and related Communication-Handicapped Children) was developed by American researchers in the 1960s at the University of North Carolina. 

These five values are realised through tactics that should feel quite familiar by now. 

Over the last few decades, TEACCH has crossed the Atlantic and found a foothold in UK schools. 

As the UK’s largest educational recruitment agency, Teaching Personnel helps thousands of primary, secondary and special schools across the country support their autistic and SEN pupils.