How to develop comprehension skills, sequencing, etc?

Hello all!

This is my first time posting here. I work as a tutor and was hoping to get some specific suggestions to implement with different students. I am going to list a bunch of different asks; feel free to only respond to one of them :)

I have a grade 4 student with autism who struggles with comprehension. When he has the text in front of him, he can answer some basic comprehension questions (ex. what colour was the car in the book?). When the text is removed, or more implicit, he can get confused. This also transfers to his sequencing capabilities.

In addition, I want to work on building his schema. As in, exposing him to different occupations/situations/environments, etc. How can I support this effectively? I tried a mind map activity that worked well in mapping out what he already knows. We did a related reading, but he could not add anything new to the mind map afterwards.

In addition, he pronounces 's' as 'k'. Is there any exposure activities that could help? Things like mimicking a snake or giving instructions on how to make the sound hasn't worked.

Another tutor teached someone with intellectual disability. She is very sweet and is working on functional academics (differentiating colours, putting alphabet in order, etc). I believe she is around 10? Do you have any suggestions on how we can aid her progress? Her tutor said it took a year to learn the sounds.

Thank you so much :)