The Strategy Chain: Combining Strategies to Maximize Reading Comprehension Effectiveness for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Studying elementary teachers’ strategies led to a significant finding: special education teachers optimized strategy efficacy through strategy combinations, here called strategy chains. The literature lacks a focus on strategies designed to assist students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) with reading comprehension. This paper discusses the actual reading comprehension strategies used by teachers working with elementary students with ASD with an emphasis on the finding that teachers often chain their strategies together for a more powerful impact. It is intended to assist teachers who provide reading comprehension instruction, especially for at-risk readers such as students with ASD. Teachers of students with autism should rely on a range of both pre-instructional and instructional strategies in order to support their students. These strategies include both reading comprehension theories and theory-based strategies for teaching students with autism, and range from environmental and sensory strategies to explicit reading strategies such as questioning and sight words. Teachers reported using the strategy chain in their classrooms, and many of the individual strategies are strongly supported by prior research. However, reading comprehension strategies for students with autism is an under-studied area, and more research should be done on the impact of strategy chaining on student learning. The paper discusses more in-depth the effects of strategy chaining.