lesson plan

Chelsea Fisher
Analytic and Persuasive Writing
Professor Robinson

Lesson Plan Title: Autism what is it? How does it change the life of an autistic person?

Concept: The concept is to teach 5th graders what autism is and some of the affects autism has on an individual. This lesson will mostly focus on the social incapability’s, and differences that autistic kids deal with. This concept will be taught using the Florida State standards of dance. Mostly the creation and communication standard will be addressed. Standard 1: the student understands dance is a way to create meaning. The students will try and show emotions with peers first without using facial expressions or words, then with only facial expressions. This will show the ability that people generally have to understand what other people are feeling without them directly telling them. This will show what empathy is; autistic children have been studied as having a general lack of empathy and thus this will lead into explaining that autistic children have a difficulty in relating with other people because they cannot understand what other people are feeling. This activity in full with the lead-in, the dancing, and the discussion afterward should take about 20 to 30 minutes.

Goal: The main goal of this is for the fifth graders to understand one of the aspects of autism, which is the social difficulty an autistic child has due to a lack of empathy. Also they should get a general understanding of what autism is simply through communication and discussion; this will hopefully lead to a moral of accepting people with differences.
Required materials: about two cards per child with emotions or feelings on them ex. Anger, another card could say happiness, confusion, sadness, pain. A single chair will be needed when for a demonstration of overstimulation.

Anticipatory Set (Lead-In) - First it is important to ask the students if they have ever heard of autism, are they know what it is, if they know anyone affected with the disorder. The teaching aspect will of course change according to the original understanding of the topic by the students. Once this has been discussed, the teacher will then explain what autism is. Autism is defined as a brain disorder that begins in early childhood and persists throughout adulthood; affects three crucial areas of development: communication, social interaction, and creative or imaginative play. This causes difficulties in functioning in normal society because they are more sensitive to what is going on around them. Next ask the students if they know what empathy is, or in other words they know what it is like to understand what one of their friends is feeling without their friend telling them. Instances when they knew their mother or father was mad at them for doing something wrong before they were punished, know when someone is lying or cheating them. This will lead into the communicating without words in order to simulate empathy.

Step-by-step
1. Each student will choose a partner
2. One student of the partners will choose an emotion card out of a container
3. The one who has chosen the card must do a charade type action and dance of the emotion without using words or facial expressions.
4. The other student will have to guess which emotion or feeling they are displaying
5. This will be repeated with the other partner choosing the card.
6. Each partner does this twice
7. Then the same sequence will e repeated but they must only use facial expressions this time.
8. Then there will be another discussion sequence about whether or not the students were able to feel and understand what their partner was feeling. This will lead to the teacher explaining the difficulties for people with autism to empathize or understand what other people are feeling. Ask the fifth graders how they think this would affect someone when they are trying to make friends or understand what is going on in a social situation. Ask them how they think it would feel if they could never understand if someone was lying to them.
9. Then the overstimulation exercise will be done.
10. The teacher needs to choose one student to sit in a chair for this
11. The rest of the class will first surround them and act normally have conversations with the other students around them, use their acting skills to represent what a park is like, maybe pretend they are in a grocery store , any public place.
12. Then the other students need to simulate the same situation (this may get loud and hopefully not unmanageable) but this time they need to go crazy and be loud and intimidate and annoy the student in the seat.
13. This will represent what a normal situation or public place feels like to a child with autism.

Closure: The teacher will then sit everyone down and ask them how their life would be if every time they were in public or in a social setting they could not only relate to other people but would also see all places as over stimulating. Explain that these are both effects of autism, which make it difficult to participate in normal daily life.

Assessment: The student should demonstrate ability to show emotion through dance and communicate through facial expression and dance. They should also be involved in the conversation and be respectful and understanding of the effects of autism.

Adaptations (For students with learning disabilities): This may require simply more communication by the teacher about the topic to make sure that the concept is understood by all students. Also when the emotion cards are handed out the teacher may want to give these children quick ideas about how to represent their emotions.

Extensions (for gifted students) : This is difficult to really change, they should be expected to be very involved in the discussion aspect, they also can have more emotion cards and express more emotions through dance and expression in the same amount of time.