I have taken up part time employment in a local primary school as a teacher aid. In the yr 5 class, there is a boy diagnosed with mild aspergers syndrome.

He has little motivation when doing class activities, and I was wondering what sort of reward system he would respond to in the class room. Providing him with prizes would be expensive, and unfair on the other children in the class.

What would you recommend to help keeping him motivated and interested in his work?

Hi Mary,
You do not have to give the boy prizes, to motivate him. I would find what subjects or class activities he does like and schedule these in after the subjects he doesn't like. I will describe a visual timetable, but as this boy only has mild aspergers, this may be more of a behaviour problem, rather than related to his aspergers. In my experience when you are working at school with children on the autistic spectrum, you need a timetable (either written or pictures). You schedule the child's day so that there are several short periods where he gets to do something that motivates him. So if he hates Maths, but likes reading, you schedule 10 minutes for reading a book after Maths, but he only gets the reading activity if he completes the Maths activity. You may have to start with the Maths activity being quite short, but over time you can slowly increase this time (and if appropriate, shorten the time of the motivating activity).

I hope that helps, I think there is more about visuals timetables in the autism or download section on this site.

Cheers Sarah