How to teach Decoding to students with autism

Some students with autism quickly learn to recognise and memorize sight words, but they struggle when they meet a new word they’ve never been taught? This is because our students with autism and special education needs have not yet learned to decode words.

Other students with autism have difficulty learning sight words. This causes them to become frustrated and lose interest in reading. In order to help these students, or your homeschool child with autism, you need to teach them to DECODE words!!

The first step is to introduce phonics- letter sounds. If this is the stage your students are at then check out my post on How to introduce Phonics to kids with autism

The next step is to teach students how to put these sounds together. The easiest words to ‘build’ are CVC words (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant) like dog, bus, tap. You can use letter cards, tiles, etc to put sounds together eg c-a-t =cat. *Safety note: If you have kids who put everything in their mouth, then magnetic letters are very dangerous as magnets will cause gut blockages which require surgery (google ‘kids with autism’ and ‘magnets’ for more info). If you don’t have space to store plastic/foam letter tiles then my Printable Letters which are coloured/colored and black line are easy to use and store. For younger kids who needs hands on practice building words check out my CVC Words Mats .

Once your students can build cvc words it’s time to practice reading them. I like to start with matching themwith these CVC Word Match Worksheets and then finding them in these Phonics word search puzzles

The next step is to move onto reading & writing simple sentences with CVC words. I have some easy to use activities for you practice these skills: Read & Write Decodable Sentences Set 1 and Decodable Sentences Cut & Paste

After CVC words it’s time to teach CVCe words- the ‘e’ on the end is the ‘Magic e’ which changes the sound of the vowel. let me give you some examples:

m+a+d= mad; m+a+d+e= made, so the Magic e changes the /a/ sound to /a-e/

c+u+b= cub; c+u+b+e= cube, so the Magic e changes the /u/ sound to /u-e/

I’ve created easy prep activities to help you teach this. Check out my CVCe Words Match worksheets and Read & Write Decodable Sentences Set 2 (which also moves onto CVCC words). These redaing resources are purposefully made without picture clues because we don’t want our kids with autism guessing words using picture clues instead of decoding the letter sounds, as that won’t help them with independent reading long term.

Other decoding skills include reading consonant blends (fl, sp, gr) , Check out these Blends Picture to Word Match pages and Word Family Worksheets.

I like to teach Vowel Teams next- that’s where 2 vowels go together to make one sound eg “ea” in “beans” & “oa” in “coat”. These Vowel Teams Read & Write cards will give your students lots of practice with this phonics concept.

Recognising digraphs (ch, wh, sh) and trigraphs (thr, shr) will help your students decode more complex words. Check out my Digraphs Sound to Word Match and my Trigraphs Read & Write Cards.

Thank you for reading! As always if you have any questions please email kirsten@curriculumforautism.com

Best Wishes,

Kirsten