For kids with autism, a different way of learning:
https://buffalonews.com/business/loc...db004be1e.html
From the article: "In classrooms at Henry J. Kalfas Elementary School in Niagara Falls this past summer, enthusiastic teams of college students led groups of youngsters aged 4-6 through jam-packed days of life-skills lessons disguised as fun and games.
Summer camp? Yes, but with a vital purpose.
Instead, it's a treatment program for children with autism devised at Canisius College’s Institute for Autism Research. It offers a unique social skills intervention that starts with young children, but could improve the quality of life for all autistic people.
“While the program is a treatment program, the children will see it as a summer camp,” say the SummerMAX program’s instructions for parents. “We do not tell the children they have autism.”
The Institute, founded by Canisius psychology professors Marcus Thomeer and Christopher Lopata in 2009, just received a nearly $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to study whether their interventions can be made widely available through after-school programs.
While much autism research has focused on using one-on-one behavioral training to reach the most severely disabled kids, the number of people diagnosed with autism has ballooned to include a majority of so-called “high functioning” kids who are understudied and underserved, the Canisius researchers say.
As knowledge of the range of autism symptoms has increased, many people with IQs above 70 who have language and cognitive abilities have been identified as autistic due to their difficulty grasping social and communications skills that enable them to interact with others, the researchers say.
While two-thirds of people with autism now fall into this group, studies indicate only 17% to 25% receive social interventions through schools and clinics, Lopata said.
“That is an extraordinarily low number,” he said. “Three quarters of kids are not getting intervention, which seems crazy given the nature of the diagnosis. A hundred percent should be getting it.”
Many IAR studies, funded with over $11 million in federal and foundation grants, have shown that autistic children without intellectual disabilities can acquire social skills through intensive intervention programs, vastly improving their future ability to get jobs, have friendships, engage in social activities and function apart from their parents."
I'll stop there, but will add more, if necessary.
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