reading

Books

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I whole heartedly believe in the power of reading. Reading is a great way to learn things. It is a great way to escape your reality and enter another. Reading helps you peer into the minds of other people, even people who passed away centuries ago.

Reading is a very important skill, and I try to help where I can.

I have just spent the last 2 months leveling all of the books in my class library. I took them one pile at a time and went through each and every book (I have 8 books left). I leveled them by the Raz-Kids level system.

I know this is not the standard, and I know this system is very niche. But here is the thing. My school uses Raz-Kids for all of our reading assessments. We use it for our digital reading library. It is the system the children know.

So how did I level books by Raz-Kids?

There is a chart supplied on their website that give extremely broad strokes, a comparison of their levels to Every other leveling system. The chart shows a conversion to ATOS, to F&P, to Lexile, you name it. So I began scanning the books with an AR-Book finder to find the ATOS level, and convert it over. If it doesn’t show up there, I used AI to search for the best fit.

It was a projet I felt was important. but here’s the thing. I’m a terrible reader.

I can read out loud quite fast. But I don’t retain any of it. I read quite slow if I want to understand it. Sometimes rereading a section 3 or 4 times to think about it it as I go.

One of the methods I have used is the reformat method. If I am reading digitally, I will copy the text into MS Word. Then I read through line by line and reformat it as I go. I will fix the indents, adjust the spacing, and moving the cursor along as I go is a safe speed for me. It keeps me focused on the text and gives me enough time to analyse, it. It also gives me something to fidget with while I read: The keyboard.

If I cannot do this, or if I am reading a paper book, I need isolation. I cannot read with any distractions. Music helps me focus, but if I hear people talking, or the sounds of the tv, or someone needs to talk to me, I have to go back and reread the last 2 or 3 pages to catch myself up. If several distractions occur nearby, i may have to go back a whole chapter. And this is if I like the book I am reading.

Research materials don’t work so well. I often find I have to skim the pages, espacially if I have to work in a research group or discussion group. I can’t go full slownedd to understand the text as the rest will be waiting. So I have to skim and give my best guess about the contents.

I really don’t like this method. If it is worth reading, it is worth reading well. But that means I need my time to do so.

This has come up recently as I was talking to some coworkers about difficulties some of my students face. and I realized 1/2 of my grade 2 class reads for comprehension at my speed or faster….

I can read a lot more difficult passages, but when it comes to reading basic children’s stories and understanding what was said, I am slower. I always pre-read the files before reading to the class for this reason.

But still.

I love books.

We need to accept all of the children and adults who have difficulty with this though.

I want to write…

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I find writing very therapedic. I love writing, as most Autists do. But often times I just can’t do it. I will sit down with a great idea in front of my computer, and then something will interrupt me. Once I am interrupted, my brain doesn’t reset to work mode.

Tonight I opened my novel, Gateways, I was about to start writing ideas for chapter 5. As soon as the file loaded, my wife sat down beside me. She wanted to talk about our current Job hunt. I understand that, and I love my wife. So we talked about the future for a few minutes. maybe 5. and she left me to continue my writing.

It was gone. all my thoughts on the chapter had now been released to the wild. I sat there trying to focus, and I found I was no longer even in the mood to work on that book. So I opened up my New Valarians book. I started to make notes on Chapter 7 of that book, and it was not time to tuck my daughter in.

I love reading to my daughter, and tucking her in. It is one of my daily highlights. But when I sat back down, and stared at the book pages… nothing. Those thoughts had flown the coop. And I no longer felt the urge to work on that book.

So I sat staring at my screen, and drank my tea. and I thought I would share my notes on Autism and Writing.

Written Communication Over Verbal Communication.

Many Autists prefer to communicate through writing. There are a few reasons for this, but it starts with our difficulty with verbal communication.

When we speak to a person, there is an unwritten rule about the proper pace. How much time needs to be between each speaker. Too long, and the one speaker gets bored or thinks you are not listening. Too short, and you are too eager, or you are not listening, because you border on interrupting. Both are often labeled as rude. Also if an autist, like myself is talking and we get interrupted, we loose our thought process. We stumble, as we had our words laid out in our mind before speaking. When we write, we can take our time to plan out what we want to say. We can take our time, and not be interrupted.

Clarity is also an issue. When we want to communicate something, there is often a lot of details we want made clear. We want there to be no chance of misunderstanding, and so a lot of written messages are long. We cannot get that clarity when we speak. Allistic (neurotypical people) often ask questions to clarify. Once we have been asked a question, often times we have to spend time searching up the information in our brain to find the answer. Because of course the questions asked are not the questions we thought would be asked. Also the pause to find the best possible answer can be often seen as not knowing the answer. Thus it seems like we are deferring to the wisdom of the allistic person. Even if our information is more up to date, or correct.

I love writing. But I do not enjoy texting. I used to enjoy texting, back when it was simple. But nowadays, no. I will often times use voice to text, and then spend 15 minutes editing the text. You see when you communicate by text, there are now rules to texting.

You cannot make a large text, it is rude. You have to use simple words, because if you use real words it may offend the other person and be seen as patronizing them. CAPS CHANGE THE MESSAGE. So if you accidentally lock the caps on, you have to go back and rewrite it. Emojis are used to show feeling, and many other things. I liked it when there was just 5 emojis; 🙂 😀 😛 😦 @-}–

When I send text to people now I have to spend 5 minutes just scrolling through the emoji list. I’m asking myself which one is the correct one to use… I don’t know. If I put a flower, does it mean, I want you to have a happy day, or does it mean romantic feelings? Why do we even have an eggplant? and Flags? birthday cake? streamers? dogs? cats? soccer balls? Why can’t we just use words for these things?

When I am writing my novels, or my blogs, I do not need to use emojis. I can relish in the joy of real words. It is a blessing. It helps me de-clog my mind. However, sometimes, as is often the case in here, I feel it is unstructured.

It takes a lot of energy to structure my thoughts into comprehensible writings. Then to go back and add details can bean added hurdle. That’s kind of why lately I feel more like I am just rambling on my blog, but it brings peace to my mind and helps me sleep.

So that is where I am off to now.

Maybe this weekend I can get some writing on my books done.