Egg-cellent Social Language Ideas!

picture by Eric Britz

We are in the midst of Spring break (yay) and Easter is right around the corner.  I have been seeing lots of posts about targeting articulation and language using plastic eggs, so I thought I would add my two cents on ways to work on social language!   The colored eggs are perfect to work on Zones of Regulation ® with my students too.  The red(pink), yellow, blue and green eggs align to each zone, but just as there are no wrong emotions, there are no wrong colors either, so if you have a few orange, teal or white eggs, no worries. Ask your students to come up with what emotions they think might align with these colors. Don’t be surprised at how creative and insightful they can be!

We also prep by reviewing books or videos as a refresher to what each zone might look like.   I made an interactive book, Calm Down, that I use with my younger elementary friends as part of this prep.  We can then brainstorm ways to calm ourselves down when we are in the red, yellow or even blue zones.   My students can dictate or write down these strategies on pieces of paper and put them into the corresponding colored eggs.

 

You can put different strategies in any colored egg and have your students choose one, read the strategy and then match it to the zone.   For your students who are comfortable and accurate with these concepts, you can extend this into a “good egg/bad egg” game and have the kids decide if the strategy in the egg is a good solution/expected one or an unexpected strategy.  For example, if you are in a red zone (angry, furious, out of control) and the strategy says to go take a walk and calm down, that’s an expected solution. However, if the strategy says to scream in someone’s face until you feel better, that’s definitely an unexpected solution.  How fun would it be to put the “good eggs” in a basket, and the “bad eggs” in a little trashcan? You can further tease out the social language concepts of consequences and how other people might feel or think about us when we have unexpected reactions.

Have you seen those cute emoji eggs in the dollar stores?  Me too, but if you can’t find them, just make your own with a sharpie!  You can draw different mouths on both sides of the bottom of the shell, different eye and eyebrows on the top of the shell and rotate to get more choices per egg.  You can give your students the chance to draw their own egg emojis and have their peers guess which emotion they drew and identify the clues they used to make those guesses.  Hello non-verbals!  If you give them an emotion, ask your students to identify scenarios that might elicit that emotion (write or draw a picture) and stuff them in the eggs.

You can also fill the eggs with tiny objects or picture clues that all relate to one concept or idea.  For example, a tiny cake, a candle, a ribbon, a deflated balloon=birthday party! This is a fun way to work on gestalt thinking and help our kids connect the details to the big picture ideas.  The quicker or the less clues they need to make a smart guess, the more “points” they earn (it doesn’t have to be a tangible reinforcer, my kids are competitive enough to just want to beat the previous number of guesses)!  I don’t deduct points for a wrong guess, but we do stop and talk about what made them make that guess, and it gives me insight to where the breakdown might be.

Lastly, you can use the eggs and a basket to work on conversation skills.  Each person gets two of the same colored eggs (one gets blue, one gets green, etc..).  I write a CC (connecting comment) or a ? (ask a question) on all of the eggs indicating what the student needs to add, and I tape a picture of the topic on a basket.  We go around the table until all the eggs are in the basket and we have maintained the topic so that everyone has asked a related question and made a connecting comment.  I’ll play too and throw in an off topic comment or ask a totally unrelated question to see if my kids catch me!

I hope you found some egg-cellent ideas to work on social language concepts with your students this Spring!  What are some other ways you use plastic eggs?

Don’t change the channel!!

While my team did not win (congrats, Pats fans!), the Super Bowl offered a dazzling and sparkly half time show with Lady Gaga and a few commercial gems I added to my Pinterest social video board.  There was a plethora of video game ads and upcoming TV show teasers, but not a lot of memorable commercials for me this year.  Anyone else think that the Humpty Dumpty ads were kind of creepy?

I love to use video clips in social language therapy to work on the Social Thinking® concepts of expected/unexpected behaviors, connecting what someone says to what others are thinking or feeling, making predictions/smart guesses and more!  Many of my kids can do this with a static picture or social scenario read to them, but in real time, not so much! Social language is fluid and fast, making it hard for my kids to keep up with the processing of language and non-verbal interpretation with their peers.  Video clips (keep them short) are a great stepping stone towards real time application of the social competencies you are working on!

I have shared some videos on the blog previously, so you can check them out here if you want to add them to your video repertoire:  Doritos in Speech? Score!  ,  That’s Awkward and Puppies, Predictions and Cars .  You can use my free football themed social language commercial freebie from my TPT store HERE to analyze the components of each commercial with your kids. You can also create your own lessons with video clips and embedded questions that you create using Playposit (read all about how to use that fabulous free resource)!

Here are a few more that you will want to check out from this year, if you missed them because you left to grab a snack….or cry (I still love you Falcons!):

Skittles at the Window boyfriend

Cam Newton Buick 

or this trio of Kia videos with Melissa McCarthy:

Hero Journey

Penguin Problem

Iceberg car

Gronk’s Cleaners

Hawaiian Rolls

 Any that I might have missed that you loved (or hated)?   Share here!

 

 

Tis the Season for Compliments!

The holiday season is upon us! How does it always feel like it sneaks up on me? It’s been a difficult year for our communities for many reasons, so I wanted to add a little kindness to my social skills activities to end the year.  I made these little Christmas stocking freebies to encourage my students to think about one another and offer up the positive things they see in their peers.  I added starter prompts on the compliment strips, but you could do this with blank pieces of construction paper too.  I like the black and white versions of the stockings so my kids can color and decorate the stockings to represent themselves (and bonus, coloring is a calming activity that helps many of my students stay in their Green Zone).    For your students who don’t celebrate Christmas, they can decorate their stocking to represent themselves or the holiday they do celebrate. This would be a great activity in the speech room, social skills groups AND the classroom!

Giving and receiving compliments is a hard skill for some of my students with social language impairments.  We build on the skill by talking about perspective taking, feelings, thoughts vs. words, non-verbals and emotional regulation. Pairing this activity with the book “How Full Is Your Bucket?” is a great way to extend the idea of kindness and how our words and actions impact others. This stocking activity is an opportunity for your students who often stand out because of their unexpected behaviors, to be recognized and seen for their strengths instead!

You can do the activity together with your students to give examples, both expected and unexpected, and talk about them before they get started on their stockings. You can have fun with this, and remember our kids with social language impairments are NOT incidental learners!  This teaching time helps our students understand the point of the activity (and what NOT to do). BTW, I do look at what they write before they share them with their peers, because sometimes their idea of a “compliment” might not be perceived as one (example:  Your hair is HUGE!).  It’s a teachable moment, so stop and talk about how someone might feel or think if they received that comment.

Once the stockings are done, you can create a holiday bulletin board (A Friendship Fireplace? A Kindness Corner?) and hang the stockings on the board.  If your kids are comfortable (and you do want to try and keep your therapy room a social “safe” zone emotionally), they can share their compliments directly with one another.  It would be a fun activity to pair with a hot cocoa kindness party too (really, ANY day is a great excuse for a hot cocoa party).  If my students are not as comfortable sharing directly, I have them write the name of the person they are complimenting on the back of the sentence strips and they leave them with me to stuff the stockings. I get to be the Speechy Santa!

Before the winter break, take the stockings down and send them home with the kids.   You might be surprised at how often they read what their peers wrote about them.  We all need to feel the positives now and again, especially our kids who struggle socially.  Here’s to kindness and a gift that keeps on giving!

How do you encourage your students to demonstrate kindness to one another?

That darn elf….

My boys are older now, but I admit I was sucked into the  Elf on the Shelf  phenomena (not to be confused with The Mensch on the Bench lol).  It was such a genius idea from a local author, Carol Aebersold , to celebrate a family tradition.  This was in the pre-Pinterest era (aka the “olden days”), thank goodness.  All that glossy, professionally lighted creativity gives me anxiety as a mama!  But soon the fun story and process of coming up with mildly naughty adventures for our elf (Elwood) became a bit daunting.  Elwood wrapped my car completely in streamers, spelled out my youngest son’s name on his bed in underwear (hilarious for a 6 year old boy, I promise) and hid in our Christmas tree at the last minute when I woke up late and had forgotten to plan the night before.  He always left a note saying good bye before heading back to the North Pole.  As my boys grew older, we passed our elf along to a younger cousin (I so owe my sister in law some good wine for that).

Looking back at those Christmas memories, it dawned on me that Elwood’s adventures would be a fun way to work on the Social Thinking concepts of Expected and Unexpected behaviors with my social skills groups.  My kids always had hilarious stories of the unpredictable situations their own elves got into (God bless their mamas!) and this can evolve into a fun lesson on what the unexpected might make us think, feel or say. You can take it a step farther and set up some predictable and unpredictable settings around your school or therapy setting with your elf. Snap some pictures on your iphone or ipad to use in therapy this month.  You can add some other characters (such as a stuffed reindeer, some older students or even your principal, if they are game) to add perspective taking skills to your pictures.  What are the others in the picture thinking, feeling or saying in the situation?  A fellow slp blogger, Activity Tailor, had posted a link to these cute headband thought bubbles that would be perfect to use in this activity too.  You could even make a tiny one to add to your elves!

You can extend the social language concepts by talking about hidden rules, identifying the right timing/people/place of being funny, and  predicting what might happen next! If you click over to the Elf on the Shelf official website HERE, they also have a school resource page with free, common core related activities and printables for your K-5 kiddos!  Easy, inexpensive and seasonal fun for your younger students?  Now that’s a gift!

How do you add holiday themed fun into your social skills groups this time of year?

 

How to Sink The SS Friendship

 

One of my favorite parts of my job is supervising Clinical Fellows (CFs), first year SLPs.  I love watching them work with their students and seeing so many creative ideas!  At one of my schools, the CF (who used to be a middle school teacher, so she can handle ANYTHING) brought out a file folder to use in articulation therapy.  She had fashioned a game board stapling two file folders back to back and adding a laminated paper grid template inside, just like the old Milton Bradley Battleship® game!  Here is an instructional video on how to play the real game to help your kids understand the purpose and strategy. You can use graph paper or one of these great templates I found on TPT for a dollar.  The larger boxes are perfect for your younger students or those who need less visual “noise” on a page.

Each of them used a highlighter to draw in the boxes that comprised their “ships” on the boards (you can’t see the other persons board).  Each of the pages had sequential numbers across the top of the grid and letters down the side of the grid. The top page of the grid was to mark their own secret ship location and the bottom grid let’s them mark their guesses as a hit or a miss.  The student would pick a combo (B-7) and if it was highlighted it was a hit, if not, a miss.

When the student found all the highlighted blocks, they sunk the SLP’s ship. You could mark out the highlighted boxes for a hit in red,  or use an ink dauber or a chip to cover them.  She had the students produce their target sounds ( the dreaded /r/of course) on each turn for data collection and then had incidental data in the questions they asked (Is your ship on…).  Easy, fun and creative, right?   This portable game can be generalized to virtually any speech and language target and that’s the beauty of it!  Aren’t my CFs such smart cookies ?!

I started thinking about the social implications (shocker, right?) of how to use this game format too.  You could do this with the actual noisy electronic board game (which many of my boys would LOVE) or with a portable version that you can make yourself.   We set up the board after talking about the target social concept du jour, and the possibilities are endless!

• We can draw a topic card or picture, and  take turns asking related questions or comments.
• We can give examples of the skill we are working on that week, such as expected/unexpected choices for a particular time, place or person.
• We can embed and demonstrate the skills of whole body listening throughout the game.
• The game can be student against therapist, or made for a whole group to use with individual folders.  When it’s all the kids trying to sink the therapist’s SS Friendship, it’s amazing to see how well they can problem solve and work together in a group!
• Identifying and matching emotions and facial expressions on each turn.
• Identify the characteristics of what a good friend is and isn’t.  The concept of “frenemies”, especially with my girls headed to middle school, is a really important topic to discuss.  For my students on the spectrum, reading people’s intentions and understanding sarcasm are tough lessons that they need LOTS of instruction and opportunities to practice in a safe environment.
• I use card sets from other social games for prompts for my readers or you could use short movie, commercial clips or pictures for social scenario prompts.   I use my Seasonal Social Skills card decks to target 6 areas of social concepts (and use the included data sheets aligned to each area).

Being a good friend may not be an academic core skill, but it is a critical life skill. Practicing all the embedded social concepts that help our kids successfully develop friendships might not ensure smooth sailing socially, but will definitely help them calm the waters ahead.

What other games or activities have you used or adapted to target social language in the school setting?

 

 

 

 

That’s awkward…

I have been working hard to add some new social language videos to my Pinterest board and came across a YouTube channel, LAHWF, by Andrew Hales.  He is a twenty something  guy out of Utah, who started creating socially awkward videos in response to his own social awkwardness, and turned it into a career.  His channel has almost two million subscribers.  His videos are not mean spirited and many are laugh out loud funny, but he really taps into social conventions and expectations through his clips.

The first video I saw was awkward elevator .  It runs just under a minute and a half and has Andrew smelling peoples shoulders, standing with his face in the corner, planking and hugging someone randomly.  It is a fantastic video to use when teaching Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking curriculum.  You could use it to illustrate the concepts of expected/unexpected behavior, what people might be thinking and feeling and the hidden rules of riding in an elevator.

There is quite an extensive amount of videos in the channel’s library,  but some are not appropriate for school, so preview first!   Here is a list of a few of my favorites that you might want to check out for working on social language concepts with your middle and high school students:

awkward escalator

scaring people

talking people’s ear off

ignoring people

complimenting people very loudly *

*people in Utah must be extraordinarily nice, because no one got upset or even annoyed!  Watch this last video all the way to the end to see this in action.

What YouTube channels do you use to work on social language concepts?  Share here!

 

The Broke SLP

Well, it’s January and by now all the school funds for materials or mini-grants are like my Christmas decorations, gone for another year.  However, we have a whole five months of school to go and the winter blahs are upon us.  Gray, dreary days mean it’s time to shake up our lesson plans as both the kids and the therapists get a bit squirrelly (especially when there is no outdoor recess for a week *shudder*).  What to do when the all your shelves hold are the same old, same old staring back at you and even the treasure box is running low on fun?

My wonderful CFs (clinical fellows-first year speech language therapists that I supervise) always inspire me with their creativity!  No one knows better how to stretch a dollar than a new grad.  I watched a lot of great therapy this week with my genius SLP newbies and wanted to share some free ideas to brighten up your therapy.  I am happily surprised when they grab onto the concepts of Social Thinking (Michelle Garcia Winner) for their students with social communication impairments.  This is a paradigm shift for most new grads (I still don’t understand why this is not included coursework in the communication disorders programs, but that is a topic for another day) and most have taken the information and run with it!   One activity I saw was the use of “expected/unexpected” visuals and videos to talk about perceptions and behaviors.  You can download the free therapy ideas with visuals here or from this great website here .

You can extend the ideas using these free printables for jigsaw puzzle pieces   (great for cause/effect activities or contrasting unexpected/expected behaviors) or making your own free game boards with social scenario questions (or using videos) here and here .  One more great free social activity packet from Speech2U  on TPT, has visuals, video links and great descriptions to use, making it a Slam Dunk.

Are you sensing a pattern here?  Free falls right into the sweet spot of our budget-woohoo!

Last but not least, if you have older students or just really want some great insight into our students with ASD (autism spectrum disorder), check out www.wrongplanet.net  .  Youtube has many videos by Alex that are worth a few minutes to watch! This is a treasure trove of ideas and understanding of the social world from the point of view of people who have social language impairments.  Alex Plank and friends delve into insightful discussions about dating, work, and what it means to be a person with ASD.  It offers great talking points (and ideas that can work into therapy) for our students in middle, high school and beyond.

What are your favorite freebies for social language therapy?  Don’t be shy, share them here!