And our Child Autism UK October star is… R
I would like to nominate ‘R’ for a Star this month. I first met R in November 2025 when he was nine years old. R attends a mainstream primary school and is supported 1:1 but wasn’t accessing the main classroom when I started working with him. The staff at his school are wonderful and are very keen to help, so I was able to collaborate with them on some new ideas and put in place some new targets.
R was excited to learn. When shown new activities, he was engaged and smiled as he was being shown what to do, keen to have a turn himself. A school target was to be able to write his name and we began by ordering the letters of his name, he smiled with pride when he achieved two of the letters. After only three weeks of teaching, R learned how to spell the last part of his name with a range of different letter cards, presented in a mixed order. R can now spell his name and type it on the computer – well done! We also taught R to model the actions of others, initially he found this really funny and enjoyed copying actions while jumping on the trampoline. R can now copy a wide range of single actions, and the team are working on increasing the difficulty and expanding this to copying two actions in a sequence ready to encourage new play skills and new daily living skills.
R knew some body parts when we started in November 2025, so we have worked on teaching any he didn’t know in order for him to be able to communicate any pain he is experiencing or to join in with games. He really enjoyed working on this receptively e.g., “Touch your nose” so he picked up new body parts quickly. When I first met R he was able to trace along lines with accuracy. We extended this to copying lines and shapes accurately, and then onto forming letters. Now R is beginning to write familiar words.
R and his team have made great progress, using the agreed strategies to aid his learning. He is a Star! Well done to him and his team.
Jennie Kidney BCBA/UKBA (cert), Child Autism UK Case Manager
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
And our Child Autism UK October star is… R
I would like to nominate ‘R’ for a Star this month. I first met R in November 2025 when he was nine years old. R attends a mainstream primary school and is supported 1:1 but wasn’t accessing the main classroom when I started working with him. The staff at his school are wonderful and are very keen to help, so I was able to collaborate with them on some new ideas and put in place some new targets.
R was excited to learn. When shown new activities, he was engaged and smiled as he was being shown what to do, keen to have a turn himself. A school target was to be able to write his name and we began by ordering the letters of his name, he smiled with pride when he achieved two of the letters. After only three weeks of teaching, R learned how to spell the last part of his name with a range of different letter cards, presented in a mixed order. R can now spell his name and type it on the computer – well done! We also taught R to model the actions of others, initially he found this really funny and enjoyed copying actions while jumping on the trampoline. R can now copy a wide range of single actions, and the team are working on increasing the difficulty and expanding this to copying two actions in a sequence ready to encourage new play skills and new daily living skills.
R knew some body parts when we started in November 2025, so we have worked on teaching any he didn’t know in order for him to be able to communicate any pain he is experiencing or to join in with games. He really enjoyed working on this receptively e.g., “Touch your nose” so he picked up new body parts quickly. When I first met R he was able to trace along lines with accuracy. We extended this to copying lines and shapes accurately, and then onto forming letters. Now R is beginning to write familiar words.
R and his team have made great progress, using the agreed strategies to aid his learning. He is a Star! Well done to him and his team.
Jennie Kidney BCBA/UKBA (cert), Child Autism UK Case Manager
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
