A presentation providing information on building emergent literacy in children with autism. As children with autism are at risk for reading difficulties, it is critical that these children are exposed to literacy at a young age. Degenaar stresses the importance of emergent literacy and of assessing this development in children with autism. Degenaar explains that literacy is part of the developmental process and talks about the need to develop the skills needed for reading, such as listening skills, knowledge of sentence structure, phonological awareness, comprehension and the like.

Degenaar shares information on the importance of learning in the natural environment, including reading words on everyday items; frequent and repeated shared reading;and, increasing the parent’s awareness of the building blocks of literacy.