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Assessments
Assessments are ways to figure out what your child already knows and what they need to work on. Try to assess at least 4 times a year (every 4 months) to monitor and review your child's overall progress and adjust your teaching methods and lessons accordingly. Give your child ample opportunities to practice whatever goal it is that you are trying to teach them. Often certain things will be more challenging for your child so be sure that you show positive encouragement and that you are pleased by their hard work. Praise them about the progress and achievements they are making. You will find that your child will be at various levels in different subjects. When you are working on finding a realistic expectation of your child, it is best to separate the concept into two core areas.
The two core areas of your focus for teaching any task in your homeschooling should be based on:
What your child currently knows: What are their strengths? What do they understand?
What your child doesn’t know: What are they not understanding? Where do they need help?
This separation does not reflect or assume any grade level. It is a simple way to discover any areas of need so this way you can figure out what you need to do to fill in the area. From these 2 core areas, you can customize your ways of teaching and perform different methods of assessments to determine what the next step is. Keep in mind that these are not “tests”, but simply a way to help you figure out what area you can focus more attention on to fill in where you need to and what can be skipped. You will be able to determine what your child has mastered and what won’t need to be repeated in your teaching so you can move on to working on something else.
Realistic Goals
When you are ready to add something new to your homeschooling, be sure that you focus on one realistic goal at a time. Each child with autism has different levels of severities and expecting many goals all at once can be overwhelming. Think about the extensiveness of your child’s abilities and be realistic with your expectations. As a parent, you are the best person to determine realistic goals for your child and can figure out a way for these goals to be achieved. Homeschooling allows you to determine what, when and how of your goals that you have set for your child. It is vital to remember that if you try something new and it doesn’t work the way you would expect, you still have learned something.
This is not a failure. You can adjust anything within your homeschooling to make it work differently and keep going forward with it. Remember that while one goal is your focus, it does not imply that nothing else is worked on. It just implies that the rest of your homeschooling day is more relaxed in other areas at that particular time. Don't give up and keep working at what you have set out to do.
Another important thing that needs to be mentioned to homeschooling parents is not to compare your child to any other child. If you find yourself doing this, stop now. STOP! This is not going to help you and it is not going to help your child. There is always going to be another person who is doing more or learning faster or doing it better. You have to remember that someone might be looking at your situation and think that your child is doing more than their child is. Focusing on things like this will only waste your time and energy on something that you can’t do anything about. So just stop now. Simply put all of that energy and effort into the objectives and goals that you want your child to learn and achieve and stick to the working plan for that.