"Just Give Him the Whale!"

Book excerpt: When learners with autism have deep, consuming fascinations'trains, triangles, basketballs, whales'teachers often wonder what to do. This concise, highly practical guidebook gives educators across grade levels a powerful new way to think about students' "obsessions": as positive teaching tools that calm, motivate, and improve learning. Written by top autism experts and nationally renowned speakers Paula Kluth and Patrick Schwarz, this guide is brimming with easy tips and strategies for folding students' special interests, strengths, and areas of expertise into classroom lessons and routines. Teachers will discover how making the most of fascinations can help their students learn standards-based academic content, boost literacy learning and mathematics skills, develop social connections, expand communication skills, and minimize anxiety. Just Give Him the Whale! is packed from start to finish with unforgettable stories based on the authors' experience, firsthand perspectives from people with autism themselves, research-based recommendations that are easy to use right away, and sample forms teachers can adapt for use in their own classrooms. An enjoyable read with an eye-opening message, this short book will have a long-lasting impact on teachers' understanding of autism'and on their students' social and academic success.