New Product :: Social Skills Rubrics

These rubrics were designed to help counselors, teachers, social workers, or SLPs keep track of a student’s progress on school success, problem-solving, friendship, feelings, communication, and self-esteem goals. Each individual set includes 7 rubrics in both a teacher and student version (for a total of 14 rubrics + 2 blank ones to customize).

Rubrics are presented in PDF and editable Microsoft Powerpoint Format, so the wording can be customized to fit your students’ ability levels and needs. Also, you can use Powerpoint’s printing settings to print multiple rubrics per page. Great for when you have multiple students working on the same goal!

If you'd like to save a little money, you can download the Complete Social Skills Rubric Pack for a discount! It includes 42 rubrics in both a teacher and student version (for a total of 84 rubrics + 2 blank ones to customize). The following skills are included:

Enjoy :)



School Success Skills
- Following Directions
- Work Completion
- Remaining On-Task
- Asking Questions
- Being Prepared
- Attendance
- Following School Rules

Problem-Solving Skills
- Debugging
- Tattling and Reporting
- Compromise
- Point of View
- Fact and Opinion
- Dealing with Disagreements
- Dealing with Gossip



Friendship Skills
- Choosing Friends
- Feeling Left Out
- Being a Good Sport
- Apologizing
- Taking Turns
- Giving a Compliment
- Accepting a Compliment



Feelings Skills
- Feelings Identification
- Reading Body Language
- Responding to Negative Emotions
- Feelings Demonstration
- Expressing Feelings
- Dealing with Anger or Frustration
- Dealing with Anxiety



Communication Skills
- Introducing
- Having a Conversation
- Talking on Topic
- Interrupting
- Conversation Body Language
- Personal Space
- Mental Filtering



Self-Esteem Skills - some skills offered as a freebie
- Positive Self-Talk
- Goal Setting
- Understanding Strengths
- Dealing with Peer Pressure
- Dealing with Mistakes
- Self-Reflection (Complete Pack only - not in freebie)
- Working in a Group (Complete Pack only - not in freebie)

Enjoy!!

Pinterest Find :: Toys for Vestibular Development

The other day, I came across this awesome blog post from The Inspired Treehouse. Now, I'm most definitely not an Occupational Therapist, but I feel like sometimes teachers come to me thinking that I am! It's probably because our poor OT friends are often stretched so thin and across so many buildings that they aren't always around every time a teacher has a question. That being said, I try to at least have SOME idea of some strategies I can recommend for teachers to try until I can consult with our OT and make sure I'm not just making things up!

Which is why I was very excited when I found this post discussing the best toys for helping kids develop their Vestibular System! At our school, we have several students with Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, or other sensory difficulties. One of major areas they need extra support is with movement (usually needing more of it!). This post is actually written by OT's (which means they know significantly more than I can pretend to know!). It's one I bookmarked right away and will refer teachers to next time I have a question about a movement-seeking kiddo.

Check it out here!

Tips & Tricks :: Classroom Transitions

Many kids have a lot of difficulty changing from one activity to another during the school day. Add to that Autism, ADHD, or another disorder and you've got the scene set for distractions, tantrums, and frustration.

I'm not sure what it is about this time of year - maybe it's the fact that it's too cold to go outside (at least here in Illinois!), that the sun isn't out nearly enough, or just that routines are getting boring for some kids now, but I feel like February and March are two of the most difficult months to get through as educators!

To help fight the transition blues, here is a list of some ways to spice up and tighten up classroom transitions to help keep things moving in the right direction!

1.  Establish a consistent schedule or routine for the student to follow.  As unpredictable as the school day can be, consistency can go a long way in reducing anxiety or disorder in transitions, especially for students with disabilities.

2.  Adjust students' schedules to have the fewest amount of transition times possible.  For example, if a student is already out of class to go to P.E. or Music,  it may be a good time to schedule social work or speech-language time in order to reduce the number of transitions in and out of the classroom.  Another option would be to provide push in therapy services to avoid transitioning in and out of the room. On the other hand, if improving transitions is a skill a student is working on, gradually increasing the number of transitions during the day as they can tolerate them may be important.

3. Provide visuals for the students to follow. Not only does this help students with diagnoses such as Autism, but it helps most other students as well! I've written some information about visual transition timers in a previous post about Autism here. You can buy a bunch online or make your own!

4.  Before an activity begins, be sure a student understands what is expect of him or her at transition time. This may take a few times of role playing and practicing the transition. For example, after a student is somewhat familiar with a routine, the conversation might go like this:

Me: "Johnny, I'm going to set my timer for 5 minutes for your break. When it goes off, it will be time to clean up and go back to your classroom.

Johnny: "I know."
Me: "So how much time do you have?"
Johnny: "5 minutes."
Me: "What happens when the timer goes off?"
Johnny: "I go back to class."
Me: "Perfect! Enjoy your break!" [set the timer]

5. Give verbal and/or physical cues before transitioning to an activity. Depending on the age and needs of the student, I like using at least a 5 and 1 minute warning.

6.  Sing songs or chants to signal transitions.  Use the same songs each time so children can anticipate what is to happen next. Here are a few of my favorites:

7.  Keep it simple with directions for the transition.  Concise one or two-step directions are often the most effective.

8.  Positive reinforcement! If a student did a good job transitioning, reward them with praise, a high-five, a smile, etc. Students often learn about appropriate behavior by watching what happens when other students perform well or not.

9.  Scaffold as skills improve. As a student demonstrates increased competence, gradually pull back the support you give. Fade and reduce any verbal or physical prompts to all the student to transition as independently as possible.

10.  If changes need to be made, give feedback quickly and move on. Don't dwell on the negatives or allow them to take over the next 10 minutes! The more you delay the start of the next activity, the more a student learns that if they don't transition well, you'll get wrapped up in the drama and they can avoid transitioning even more!

Tips & Tricks :: Visuals for Students with Autism

One of the most effective interventions for students with Autism is using visuals. Yet whether your school district uses PECS, Boardmaker, Microsoft Office Clipart, or my personal favorite...Google Images, the process of searching for and resizing images can easily eat a big chunk out of your day.

And since none of us have lots and lots of time laying around, I was really excited when a special education teacher in our district shared this site with me! It's called ConnectAbility and on the site there's an awesome tool called Visuals Engine. The Visuals Engine contains thousands of images you can choose, and what I really love is that they're REAL images. Then, you can select page layouts of 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, or 16 images per page - the site automatically resizes all your images to be the same size! You can also add in whatever text you want to accompany your images (or leave it blank). After you create your page of visuals you can choose to either print the page or save it as a PDF. There's nothing worse than spending all your time making visuals for a student only to have them lose all the pieces by Friday! Since you can save your work super easily, it can be a huge time saver.

Here's a page I made with 12 images per page. This took me less than 2 minutes!

Hopefully this will help you save a few minutes while allowing you to make great visuals for your students!

Enjoy!

Review :: Superflex Social Thinking Curriculum

Each year, every teacher at my school receives a $50 purchase order to spend on supplies, curriculum, or materials for our classrooms. It's definitely not much, but I was so happy with my purchase this year that I wanted to share it with you!

Normally, I'll buy colored card stock (for making my numerous visual schedules, break cards, and the like), a few books discussing bullying, divorce, or other issues, or school supplies. This year, however, I decided that I needed some new curriculum! Sure, I have binders upon binders of worksheets and other things, but I'm getting so BORED with them...and so are my kids.

I'd heard really good things about the Superflex Curriculum and read a few good reviews online, so I decided to give it a try. It's a Superhero comic book-based curriculum for students in grades 2-5 to help teach social skills and behavior regulation. If nothing else, I thought that since it featured superheroes and villains in a comic book format, it'd be my best shot to compete with the video games, movies, and TV shows my kids are interested in! And lucky for me, the starter set came in at just under $50! Perfect :)

If you aren't familiar with the curriculum, I invite you to take a look at the Social Thinking Website first! After several weeks of using it, here's what I've found:

Things I Love:
- The comic books are super colorful and grab my students' attention.

- Teacher guide includes prompting questions and really good lesson plans for organizing your instruction
- Each villain (called "Unthinkables") has a cute name that is really easy for my kids to remember and addresses many of the social difficulties my kids have.
- Some of the books come with a CD that has all the printable pages. No more need to squish my teacher guide in to the copier and deal with crooked copies! I can just print one from my computer and make pretty copies!

Things I Wish Were Different:
- I know it's an educational curriculum, but it makes me sad that it has to be priced like one. I have a hard time coughing out $20-$30 for a book! Also, the store sells squishy flexible brain stress balls, but I got them for super cheaper on Office Playground.
- The only "comic books" available at this time are for defeating the first 3 (out of 14) villains (Unthinkables). The teacher guide provides other books that can be used to explain the remaining 11, but my kids keep wanting more of the original comic books, not random other books that I can pull in to describe the Unthinkables! I believe more are coming though.
- My original Superflex book started coming apart at the binding after only 2 weeks of use. I'm the only one who holds the book and the staples holding it together started ripping through the pages. It's already taped up, which makes me sad!

So far, I've used it with students with Autism, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Developmental Delays and it has worked very well for those students. A few of my kids with more severe Cognitive Impairments get distracted by all the action in the comic books (I have to show only 1 page at a time and keep portions of it covered) and have a hard time understanding the concept of "fictional characters," which the teacher's guide warns about.



Even despite a few negatives, I love this curriculum! My planning time has been SO reduced, which is wonderful. I'm still getting used to the layout of all the lessons, but my students have been paying attention, contributing appropriately to conversations about social thinking, and even using Superflex vocabulary outside my office!! "Rock Brain got in my head yesterday when I didn't want to let my sister use the TV." I have to say, THAT is pretty awesome! So if you've got some grant money, unspent purchase orders, or extra TpT earnings laying around, I highly recommend Superflex!

Note: None of the images in this post are mine. They are all from Social Thinking and Office Playground. Also, I was not compensated in any way for this review. It's just something I wanted to share!

New Product :: Social Emotional "I Can Cards"

Even though social workers and counselors aren't required by most schools to use common core in their individual and group counseling sessions, there has been a huge push in the educational community for states to adopt Social Emotional Learning standards instead.

According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), SEL has been shown to promote students' academic success, health, and well-being, while also preventing problems such as alcohol and drug use, violence, truancy, and bullying. It also reduces emotional distress and conduct problems.

So far, Illinois is the only state to officially comprehensive, free-standing standards , but many other states such as Washington, Idaho, Nebraska, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont are in the process of creating their own or using variations on the Illinois standards, while all others have some goals or benchmarks integrated into state academic standards. For more information, check out the CASEL website!



This download includes 339 4 x 6 cards from the warm set, cool set, and printer-friendly set depicting “I can” statements for the following Illinois social-emotional learning standards. However, they are presented in Microsoft Word format so the text can be easily changed to fit other states' standards or to adjust the wording for your students.



They are designed to be used to help students know exactly what types of skills and knowledge they are expected to learn, or can be used as a reference for you as you develop social-emotional IEP goals or intervention plans.

There is 1 card listing each goal (3 total per set):



1 card listing each standard (9 total per set):



and several (101 per set) for each performance indicator under each standard (early elementary, late elementary, middle/jr. high, early high school, and late high school). Skills are presented in age-appropriate language depending on the performance indicator level.


Enjoy!

New Product :: Fall Social-Emotional Activity Pack

I'm really excited to announce the arrival of my new Fall Social-Emotional Activity Pack! I already have  Holiday and Spring Social-Emotional Packs in my store, so I knew I wanted to add a Fall pack too. This one was specifically designed with kindergarten through second grade students in mind, but may be appropriate for older students too who are working at a lower level.

It contains several social skills, anger management, and social emotional activities that are sure to get your students excited about the cooler weather! It contains the following:

- 24 Fall-Themed Conversation Cards*
- 24 Friendship Scenario Cards*
- Angry Monster Coping Skills Activity

- “Banish the Boos” Positive Thinking Activity (and answer key)

- “Debug” Problem-Solving Activity

- Halloween Behavior Punch Cards (2, 4, 6, 9, or 16 per page)

- Listening Poster (4 different genders/races used)

- Pumpkin Emotion Cards for matching, role-playing, or other games

- Pumpkin Friendship Glyph*
- Thankfulness Turkey Activity

- Thanksgiving Behavior Punch Cards (2, 4, 6, 9, or 16 per page)
- Trick or Treat Behavior Sort Activity

Enjoy!

Tips & Tricks :: Autism

This summer, I've writing a blog series focusing on several different disorders that affect children at school: ADHD, Autism, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Anxiety Disorder, and ODD. Each entry will describe the disorder, give practical strategies for improving success at school, and also a few social-emotional goals and accommodations that might be appropriate for students with special education services!

This time, I'll be talking about Autism. Once a completely unknown disorder, Autism is now becoming one of the most common disorders for which students receive Special Education services. According to Autism Speaks, current statistics suggest that approximately 1 out of every 88 children (1 in 54 boys) will be diagnosed with Autism.

In the past, Autism has one of the five pervasive developmental disorders, which are characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, and severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior. Other PDD's include Rett Syndrome, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Asperger Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder - no otherwise specified. This year, the diagnostic manual that doctors use to diagnose many disorders, DSM-IV, is due to be revised and many of the classifications may change.

The diagnosis of Autism covers a wide spectrum, from severely impaired individuals to high functioning people. Every child is unique. Some individuals with Autism only display a few of these behaviors, while others exhibit nearly all of them. Also, some of the following symptoms can also be characteristic of other disorders as well such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, ADHD, or Cognitive Impairments. Autism is characterized by a range or behaviors or impairments in each of the following areas, not a single trait.

Symptoms:



Social Development -

• Pay less attention to social stimuli


• Don't smile and look at others often


• Little to no response to their own name


• Less eye contact than their same-aged peers


• Exhibit social understanding


• Impaired ability to imitate and respond to emotions


• Delayed language or absent verbal expressive communication


• Difficulty expressing wants and needs in socially appropriate ways

Repetitive Behavior -

• Frequent hand flapping, head rolling, or body rocking


• Compulsive behavior that appears to follow strict rules, such as arranging objects in stacks or lines


• Resistance to change


• Ritualistic behavior involving unvarying patterns of activities


• Restricted behavior that is very limited in focus, interest, or activity, such as preoccupation with a single TV show, toy, game, or subject


• Self-Injurious behaviors such as eye poking, skin picking, hand biting, or head banging


• Echolalia, or repeating words or phrases said by others

Other Symptoms that are sometimes found in students with Autism -

• Sensory abnormalities such as overreacting to loud noises or bright lights


• Deficits in motor coordination


• Unusual eating behaviors such as extreme avoidance or preference for certain foods


• Extraordinary talent or "splinter skills" in one particular area


• Unusual speech habits, such as referring to themselves in the 3rd person past the normal developmental time for doing so


• Frequent meltdowns

Suggestions:

Before I go on, I would like to point out that since I am a social worker, my suggestions will focus on interventions to use in a school or home setting. There are many other interventions out there ranging from medications to dietary changes, but I am not an expert in that area, so I won't be addressing them! On to things to use at home or school:

• Encourage the student to get involved in extra curricular or sports activities in order to boost their confidence and self-esteem


• Keep routines and schedules structured and predictable so the student will always know what to expect


• Provide a way to communicate (ranging from full communication systems to break cards if they need to leave a situation)


• Try a visual schedule. These can be made out of paper and pictures, or you can try one of the several apps for iPads or Droid devices.


• Provide visual reminders of behavioral expectations such as pictures of rules posted on their desk, behavioral charts, etc., or have students act out rules. Simply yelling a student the rules over and over won't work!


• Color-code materials for different subjects throughout the day to help with organization


• Provide a "cool down" or break area with stress balls or other sensory toys, as well as visual reminders of how to calm down


• Allow students to leave assemblies if noise is too stimulating or to sit in quieter areas to eat lunch


• Use a visual transition timer before transitioning to a new activity


• Use social stories and or other social skills curriculum to teach appropriate social interaction and empathy skills


• Talk to other students about disabilities. Since students with Autism have impaired social functioning, they are often excluded from social groups. While being mindful of confidentiality issues, have discussions in your classroom about student diversity and explaining that some disabilities are more visible, while others can be more hidden. Be especially watchful for bullying.


• Collaborate with social workers, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, or physical therapists to be sure all student needs are being addressed

Sample Goals

• Given small group practice, Mallory will improve her classroom performance from requiring frequent redirection to independently remaining in her seat and following directions.


• Given social skills training, Joey will increase his ability to recognize emotions in others from being unable to label any emotions to correctly identifying happy, sad, mad, and scared in others independently.


• Given a social skills curriculum, Hannah will increase her conversation skills from answering questions from peers with 1 or 2 words to answering with a full sentence with no prompts.


• Given social skills training, Sarah will increase conversation skills with peers from ignoring others to starting, maintaining, and ending appropriate conversations with 2 adult prompts.

Sample Accommodations:

• Break work into smaller pieces


• Allow extended time for assignments as well as frequent breaks which give the student a chance to get up and move


• Don't allow students to "pick their own groups." Either assign them, or allow independent work.


• Provide sensory items, swings, or other tools to meet student's sensory needs


• Present material in visual ways


• Allow students who struggle with organizing their writing to dictate assignments, or record their verbal answers and then write them down

I've posted this before, but Ellen Notbohm offers some great thoughts to keep things in perspective when you're working with students with Autism here. And if you're looking for activities for your students, check out my Social Skills Activities for Girls and Boys and my 180 Social Skills Cards: The Ultimate Pack! You can also check out my Pinterest Board especially for all things Autism for even more ideas!

Thanks to Wikipedia for contributing to this article!

New Product :: Social Superstar Game

If you're anything like me, you want to like a lot of the social skills games on the market, but you just can't. Either the kids hate it, it's way too deep and "therapy-y," the board game looks like something out of the 70's, or there's no possible way you can finish it within 30 minutes, etc. etc. Yeah, you know those games. In fact, I have an entire office full of them that I never use!

On the other hand, social skills games could be really awesome! They don't take a whole lot of planning, and the kids could have fun WHILE learning skills they need! Win-win, right?

Which is why I can't tell you how unbelievably excited I am to finish this project!  I've been working on it for the last several weeks and am SO happy with how it turned out! First of all, it's not made by some educational company who "thinks" they know our kids. I made it (and tested it with my kids), so I know they'll enjoy it!

The music-themed (no singing required-don't worry) game contains 150 cards (including some blank ones and decorative card backs) of the following types to teach social and pragmatic language skills in students with Autism, Cognitive Impairments, or other social skill deficits:

- Home Social Skills Questions

- School Social Skills Questions

- Community Social Skills Questions

- Communication Skills Questions

- Conversation Acting Topic Cards

The game also includes a cute printable board game in color or black and white, 8 colored “record scorecards” for each player, and reward stars for the student’s scorecard. You can even download a preview before to see if it'll work for your needs!



It's normally $9 at my TpT store, but for this week, it'll be on sale! Grab it while you can :)