Improving Reading Comprehension

I am always looking for reading comprehension strategies that will help our students, especially those with autism.  Have you ever had a student that could decode beautifully, but lacked necessary comprehension skills?  Researchers, O’Conner and Klein studied 20 high-functioning students with autism and found that the effects of anaphoric cuing were statistically significant and medium in size. (O’Connor and Klein, 2004)
Anaphora is a linguistic unit, such as a pronoun, that refers back to another unit.  Students with poor reading comprehension and students with autism do not consistently relate pronouns to antecedent nouns.  Anaphoric cuing involves teaching the student to pause and refer back to the noun for understanding.  Check here for more information!
Using a graphic organizer to identify the pronoun might be helpful to the student.  A visual representation adds depth to learning.  The Frayer Model is a four-square model that prompts students to think about a word.   Examining the “he” in a story might be a worthwhile activity for students who characteristically read over the pronouns.