Word study interventions (e.g., Words Their Way) have been used for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to support progress in reading. While decoding abilities have been investigated, spelling has not been widely researched. This case study project describes a student who communicated through augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) by typing novel utterances; however, his spelling did not follow conventional rules. Therefore, this created communication breakdowns for his communication partners as he could not utilize the spelling prediction features on his device. As a possible solution to this problem, the Words Their Way intervention was implemented to improve spelling. While this student made progress in his spelling abilities, more research is needed to generalize results to other AAC users.

Published in: London International Conference on Education (LICE-2020)

• Date of Conference: 23-25 November 2020
• DOI: 10.2053/LICE.2020.0018
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-22-8
• Conference Location: London, UK