Students with autism have different entry points with their communication skills. Generally , the starting point is labels or nouns and the most important words to learn are those associated with their every day lives so that the words they learn are functional, meaningful, and can have lots of practice on a daily basis.

As they master their functional labels, their world can be extended with vocabulary that is not necessarily a part of their everyday life, such as a wider range of nouns for transport or animals of different categories. Action words (verbs) are also important at this stage. The children can also be moved on to adjectives, numbers, and positional language to get them ready for using phrases.

As the children master single words, they can move on to 2 word phrases, and we can use colours or numbers coupled with nouns and verbs to start this new  skill. For example, the child may say 'two spoons' or 'red ball' or 'push car'.

The first whole sentence we taught the children was 'I want........' as it was functional and most likely to be used throughout the day.

Speech therapists can provide guidance to teachers and parents if the children attend a Special School. There are websites dedicated to helping parents and parents can google or find  speech therapists on Pinterest.