I love Lucy (the other one)!

I have had the opportunity to work in my church’s special needs class for the past few years.  The kids can have significant sensory, cognitive or medical issues that make it more challenging for them to be in a larger group (as we are part of a BIG church).  Our class offers sensory activities (swings, trampolines) and a modified curriculum for the weekly bible lesson (thanks Boardmaker and Kathy E.!).  My friend and room coordinator, the amazing Karen, recently bought some new materials for our class, and Lucy the Calming Companion (see above) was one of them!

She immediately became the favorite class pet and the kids loved how soft her fur is and how the weighted body was perfect for a snuggle!  I cracked open the accompanying story and we read all about how Lucy uses her strategies to feel calm and offers ideas that the kids can use too. What a fun companion to add into your Zones of Regulation tool box or counseling sessions!  You can adjust the amount of weight via the zipper on Lucy’s belly, as needed for each of your student’s sensory needs (wouldn’t that be great if WE could do that too??).  There is even a tutorial of how to wash Lucy when she gets a little too much love, grime or drool.

Lucy was  created by  Christy Bennett, an OT, and Stephanie Tishgarten.  A kickstarter fund gave this little pup a way to be shared and you can check out the website and video (including the real Lucy) about how Lucy, the Calming Companion, came to be.  You can order your own Lucy at this site as well!  For my friends with sensory needs, the wiggles or just those in need of some hypoallergenic hugs, Lucy is the perfect addition to our room!  I know you will love her too.

 

 

Peace & Joy

Today is Christmas in the United States.  It’s a time where the world seems to pause for just a breath; everyone seems kinder and the world has a sparkle to it.  Thanks for taking the time to read along with me at my blog this year, and I hope you have gleaned some helpful ideas on social language.  I am enjoying the season with my family and will see you in the New Year!  Here’s to peace on Earth and goodwill towards all in 2017.

Ugly Sweaters and Inferences.

Earlier this year, I posted about using T-shirt slogans for inferences.  Tis the season for ugly sweater parties, so why not extend this concept to the holidays too? I found this great freebie on TPT from LittleRed when you follow her store (you will get a pass code to download the clipart) with a variety of clip art holiday sweaters like the one in the picture above!. You can make your own slogan/picture activities for your late elementary through high school students to figure out the meaning  or guess who might wear these holiday sweaters.  If you don’t want to make your own, the internet is FULL of great examples. Preview first my friends, preview first, I saw a LOT of inappropriate sweaters (don’t use them, but they are sure to give you a laugh). On a related note, I also found a cool website, Stereotype Design, that gives a few sentences on a T shirt and you have to guess the movie ( well, hello figuring out the big picture from details!).

You can create a whole Pinterest board of ugly holiday sweaters/t-shirts to work on these skills as well (or just click for my board here; it’s a growing work in progress, just like me).  Walk them through a few examples to practice together, then see how they do!

The questions you can pose with the ugly sweaters could include:

What do you think the message or picture means (intent)?  

Is this literal or sarcastic?   If it’s humorous, what makes it funny?

Who might wear this?  Who would NEVER wear this?

What do you think other people might think or feel when they see this sweater?  

Where would it be okay to wear this sweater?  Where would it NOT be okay to wear this sweater? 

What first impression do you have of someone wearing this sweater?  

What background knowledge might you need to understand the slogan or picture?

Would you wear this sweater?  Why or why not?

If you disagree or are upset with a sweater picture or slogan, should you say something?  Why or why not?

*Ask your students to take pictures of any other interesting holiday sweaters that they see to extend this activity.  You can call it “operation sweater sleuth”! I would clearly state the rule that the slogan/pictures can’t have any profanity or inappropriate content, especially with your middle schoolers on up.

Any good, kid friendly holiday sweater slogans or pictures that you have seen recently?  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?

Strike a Pose.

The newest viral rage is the #mannequinchallenge.  It is basically a live version of a freeze frame picture.  All kinds of videos have been uploaded by sports teams, schools, SLPs at ASHA (check out this video on PandaSpeech’s instagram page HERE) and even this dog (he is amazing)!  When my son showed them to me, I thought it was silly fun but then I started to think about how I could use these videos with my  kids working on social skills.  It combines a topic with social relevance (for the moment) that they can talk to their peers about AND the perfect tool to work on some social language concepts (most of my kids LOVE videos).

Each of the challenge videos are thematic, for example, sports, music, or school. Remember to preview first, just to make sure nothing “unexpected” pops up!  Often they have funny poses or actions included and it is incredible that almost no one moves.  Each video lasts only a minute or two, and is the perfect length of time to use in a social skills lesson. You can use these videos to work on identifying the gestalt or “big picture” idea the video represents (what’s the setting or theme of the video?) and identify the clues that helped them make a smart guess. Then you can talk about what the people in the video might be thinking or feeling and identify the related non-verbal clues that they see (there isn’t anyone speaking in the videos). The lesson can extend to include predictions about what might happen next when the frozen actions come to life.  Most of the videos end with all the people moving, laughing, or clapping to celebrate their successful completion of the challenge so pause it before that point, to make your predictions!  If your kids are up to the challenge, you can make your own video and sneak in some working in groups skills too (shhhhhh)!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Lego mannequin challenge

Disney Holiday mannequin challenge

Cleveland Cavaliers at the White House mannequin challenge

Pentatonix concert mannequin challenge

The Ohio State University Football team mannequin challenge

What are your favorite mannequin challenges that you have seen?

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?

 

 

 

 

Blogging at Autism Classroom Resources this week!

I am very excited to be blogging on Autism Classroom Resources this week with Chris Reeve!   Click on the image above to hop over and read all about ideas on how to integrate social language into a preschool setting. Don’t forget to follow her blog while you are there for TONS of fantastic information on supporting your students with ASD!  I always learn something new from Chris. and you won’t want to miss out!

Social Language and Literacy (part 2)

Last week, we talked about using books for social language concepts with younger students in part one of this series.  This week, I want to talk about using literature to work on these concepts with your middle and high school students.  I had the opportunity to be invited to at TPT brunch recently in Atlanta.   (Side note: if the TeachersPayTeachers brunch rolls through your area, grab an invite and GO!  There were so many great ideas shared and it was fun to connect with TPT people in real life!) One of the speakers was a fabulous local TPT teacher, Heather LeBlanc of Brainy Apples .  She shared about how she uses literacy across the curriculum with her students.  Our conversation sparked some ideas on how to use literature with my upper grade students with social language impairments.

Heather explained how she used The Diary of Anne Frank  as part of the difficult unit on the Holocaust in her social studies class.  In addition to the novel, she found some amazing resources in our local community through Kennesaw State University including the library lending actual materials (Traveling Trunks) from that period of history and providing connections to survivors of the Holocaust to come speak to students.  How amazing to hear the story of someone who was witness to these historical events! From a social perspective, connecting a personal experience to our thoughts and feelings in deeper and more meaningful ways to words in a book is a powerful teaching tool.

Her great ideas caused me to think more about the literature  that is used in our upper grades.  The stories are often complex and require a lot of background knowledge to understand the stated themes as well as the more subtle ones that are woven through the books.  For example, my own high schooler is reading A Raisin in the Sun.  This story contains themes about dreams, hopes, racism, poverty, pride, family and suffering. These are concepts that often pose a challenge to our students with social language impairments, and frankly can be difficult for even our neurotypical students to understand. We often ask our readers to take the perspective of other people or experiences that our students haven’t had.  Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes is hard work socially!

Breaking down these bigger concepts into the basics of what the characters (and we as people) feel, think and say, can help us understand the character’s actions, motivations and point of view more accurately.  Cause and effect (walking through this step by step), identifying problems and possible solutions and discussing how a character’s actions impact other characters in the story all have a social language basis. Graphic organizers are an effective tool to pull apart these social pieces for your students and there is a great set for free from The Curriculum Corner HERE .  While this set is for 4th and 5th grade students, I use them with my older students with social language impairments as they are clear and organized well for the concepts.  Take a look at the Common Core to see how much is already embedded in the classroom ELA standards for our beginning middle school students!

I love using the resources from Sparknotes and Schmoop  to help my older students understand the themes and social meaning of stories.  Schmoop even has a video summary (Schmoop tube), in a three-minute condensed version using student friendly language, of many of the literature units for middle and high schoolers.  As I was Googling A Raisin in the Sun materials, I happened to stumble across this class assignment for students to develop a play list of music that would align with the themes of the story. What a great way to demonstrate understanding of these themes!  You can get pretty creative in working on these skills but don’t reinvent the wheel, look around for lots of great ideas that are already available.  Great SLPs (and teachers) work smarter not harder, right?

What are some ways you work on social language concepts with the upper grades ELA curriculum?  Share here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social language and Literacy (part 1)

I love to read.  My  perfect day would be spending it in a library filled to the 3rd floor with real books, comfy reading nooks, unlimited coffee, tea, and hot cocoa,  and with a librarian that looks like George Clooney…ahhh.  So it is no surprise that I use books often in speech therapy, particularly social language therapy with my kids.  There are many options for younger students, such as picture books ,Cynthia Rylant’s Henry and Mudge series,  or any of Peter Brown’s books  (You Will Be My Friend is one of my favorites) that align beautifully with social language concepts!  I have a Pinterest board for stories HERE that you are welcome to peruse.

The social language concepts of prediction, inferencing, point of view and emotions are embedded in stories.  What does this look like?  Let’s start with the covers.  Having our students make what Michelle Garcia Winner refers to as a “smart guess” based on a title or picture, is the first step.   Helping our kids look for clues in pictures or words, “think with their eyes”, and then making a leap to guess what the story might be about is hard work for those with social language impairments.  Don’t gloss over this step, remember our students are not incidental learners!

The next step is to read through the story together, stopping to make a guess about what might happen next.  Prediction and listening comprehension go hand in hand.  If there is novel vocabulary, pause the story and talk about what they think those words might mean (hello context clues!).  You might ask your older students keep a personal dictionary, like this freebie from Natalie Snyders,  as we read to help them in discussions along the way. Your younger students can use a composition notebook to journal pictures of story vocabulary if they are not yet strong writers.

I laminate a large heart, thought bubble and word bubble to use with our story too.  We use these templates to talk about what a character might be thinking, feeling or saying in the story. With my older elementary students, you can compare and contrast character’s emotions and expand the conversation into point of view. Venn Diagrams are great for this!  We talk about identifying the problem and possible solutions in the story (there might be more than one), and can extend this skill to explaining which one would be the best solution.These skills are embedded in the Common Core curriculum from K on up, by the way (take a look at the ELA standards for literacy).

With my younger students, we draw pictures to sequence and re-tell the story.  They love to act out the stories and what a great opportunity this is for learning to work in a group, negotiating, sharing personal space and turn taking!  We also brainstorm after we read the story, and talk about what expected or unexpected situations occurred.  Did the characters act in predictable or unpredictable ways in response to these situations?  This provides an opportunity to talk about expected/unexpected behaviors and help our students connect their personal experiences to the characters.

This is not a one time lesson.  I use stories over several sessions, and can extend the social language concepts over a month of speech.  These are great lessons to use during push in groups or whole class lessons as well. Pre-teaching these skills before you take them into a whole class will give your students the vocabulary and practice to participate in whole group instruction more successfully too.  I created a packet of ten templates that you can use with any story to work on these concepts HERE in my TPT store.

What stories or author’s do you love to use in therapy?  Share here!

The Masks We Wear

My school has a self contained program for students with significant autism and emotional/behavioral disorders embedded in a general education elementary school.  We are lucky enough to have fantastic adaptive p.e., art and music for our students and these teachers come up with some amazing activities for my friends!

This past spring Mr. Rob, our adaptive art teacher, started making these cool masks with our kids.  They picked a color palate of tissue paper and created the masks using forms.  These got me thinking about the figurative masks we all wear.  How do we want the world to see us ?  For my kids on the spectrum or those who struggle socially, this is a hard question.  Emotionality is often what others see first in my students, but this isn’t all of who they are, just a tiny piece of them.   I adapted this great art activity to put a social spin on it.

For my late elementary kids (on up), we talk about the characteristics that define people: personality traits, physical characteristics, etc..  We use cartoon and movie characters to walk through this process together as they are often over-exaggerated personalities, and this is an easier way to start.  You can use movie or video clips for this as well.  I have a social videos board on pinterest that you are welcome to look through for some ideas.

Next, we make our masks.  If you don’t have the forms, you can make your masks flat on paper or let your kids brainstorm ways to give their masks shape (party stores have plastic masks that you can use as well). You can even take pictures of your student’s face (with parent permission) and print them out.  We label all the positive characteristics that we want others to see in us on the mask itself- you can write on the paper along the edge of the mask, use tape, stickers, draw pictures, etc..

With my older students, we also talk about the difference between being fake and what it means to “put your best foot forward” with others. No one is happy all the time, no one has it all together and definitely, no one is perfect!  This can be a pretty difficult concept to grasp, so this may extend your prep time and therapy discussion beyond one session, but that’s okay!  This can lead into making a plan on how your students are going to help others see the best in them.  Partnering with materials from Social Thinking and the Zones of Regulation curriculum is really helpful in formulating how to do this successfully (and what to do when things don’t quite go your way), but that’s another post for another day!

What are your thoughts on talking about the masks we wear socially?