Autism
Who Are We
Members of Grant Wood AEA’s Autism Core Team provide a variety of services. These services include: agency inservices, on-site inservices, team consultation, student observation, attend IEP meetings, functional analyses, educating peers about autism, and a variety of other services to help support individuals in the autism spectrum and the staff working with them.
Autism Team Referral
If you want to make a referral to the team, please contact Grant Wood AEA, 319-399-6700.
Characteristics of Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders
Communication
•The student displays problems extending into many aspects of the communication process.
•Language, if present, may lack usual communicative function, content, or structure.
•Characteristics may involve both deviance and delay in both receptive and expressive language.
Social Participation
•The student displays difficulties in relating to people, objects, and events.
•Often students are unable to establish and maintain reciprocal relationships with people.
•The capacity to use objects in an age appropriate or functional manner may be absent, arrested, or delayed.
•The student may seek consistency in social events to the point of exhibiting rigidity in routines.
Repertoire of Activities, Interests, and Imaginative Development
•The student displays marked distress over changes, insistence in following routines, and a persistent occupation with or attachment to objects.
•The student may display a markedly restricted range of interest and/or stereo-typed body movements.
•There may be a lack of interest or an inability to engage in imaginative activities.
Developmental Rates and Sequences
•The student may exhibit delays, arrests, regressions in physical, social, or learning skills.
•Areas of precocious or advanced skill development may also be present, while other skills may develop at normal or extremely depressed rates.
•The order of skill acquisition frequently does not follow normal developmental patterns.
Sensory Processing
•The student may exhibit unusual, repetitive, or non-meaningful responses to auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and/or kinesthetic stimuli.
•The student’s behavior may vary from high levels of activity and responsiveness to low levels.
Cognition
•The student may exhibit abnormalities in the thinking process and in generalizing.
•Difficulties in abstract thinking, awareness and judgment may be present as well as perseverative thinking and impaired ability to process symbolic information.
Grant Wood AEA Autism Related Training Opportunities
Training opportunities are available for parents, teachers, administrators, and Grant Wood AEA staff. Visit the Grant Wood AEA Professional Development website for updated information. Visit the list of offerings.
Resources
The agency offers autism resources for check out through the Grant Wood AEA Media Center and the Parent Education Partnership. Visit these links to access a list of available resources.
SMART Newsletters (Sharing Monthly Autism Resources for Teaching)
Additional Resources
Autism Society of America
Autism Society of Iowa
Autism Speaks
Illinois Autism Training & Technical Assistance Project
Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence (OCALI)
Regional Autism Services - University of Iowa |
