Drawing as a connotative mechanism in the reading comprehension of poems in autistic students.

Abstract

This proposal is based on the application of drawing as a didactic strategy focused on improving the difficulties that autistic students present in the comprehension of poetic texts. The research design is qualitative, descriptive and socio-critical, applied to a sample of four autistic students. The strategy is developed through a didactic sequence of three sessions, a pretest and a posttest; fundamental instruments to evaluate the didactic strategy. Among the results, in the pretest they do not present any analysis regarding connotative mechanisms and the poem. Also, they have great difficulties in grammatical, lexical and orthographic aspects. During the didactic sequence, they do not explain the connotative mechanisms by describing the representative images of such elements, they add unrelated contextualization and present hesitations with polysemous words. However, interpretation, representation and linking improve when the drawing or image is used to decode that connotative meaning to a denotative one. As for the posttest, the students demonstrate a better analysis compared to that performed in the pretest. Finally, it is emphasized that this research is the result of the search for a more inclusive education for autistic people.