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=Getting Social! Teaching Social Skills at EOC=

For my QComp project I looked up and read/watched online resources, bought and read books, and attended a workshop. Here are some results of that project.


 * Principles I learned from workshops and reading:**

-research says that teaching social skills works best when you:: use Peer mediated interventions use video modeling use Social Stories


 * Class this year**

I tried to do peer mediated and social stories. I invited Lana to the class even though she doesn't really need to improve social skills exactly. She and I ( or she and others) would do demos of different strategies and behaviors, and then students would practice.

I also wrote out social stories- examples of wrong and then right (that's the order they're supposed to have, according to workshop leader) ways to respond to situations.

Instead of video (which is difficult to do on blackboard, I think) I used visuals from books or online sources to demo ideas/strategies (like teeter totter for equalizing conversation and taking turns).

Another thing I tried was mnemonics. Many of the autism people use these for teaching sequences, so I tried it out (none of them worked particularly well in my experience). I used some they made up, but then I made up my own. For dealing with someone else who was upset about something, here is how I tried to teach empathy responses: HUG(E) Heard- make sure the person knows you heard what they are upset about (wow, your mom had a heart attack?) Understood- showing you understand what that means for the person (wow, that's a big thing! or wow, how do you feel) Guess- make a guess about how they are feeling. Even if you're wrong, it will help the person see they are trying to understand (are you sad? scared?) Empathize- talk about how you would feel, or have felt in simliar situation in the past.

This worked reasonably well, but had to be explained a lot to people like Kaylee!

Other topics we covered in class included: how to start conversations- opening "lines" asking questions asking follow-up questions balancing conversations giving compliments emotions- expressing self-calming skills while playing games finding out about other people

**Assessing social skills**. Here are some resources for questionnaires/measurements of social skills. Resource- Texas has center for autism and very good resouces- this is about several measurement scales [] 1. Social Responsiveness Scale- questionnaire for parents and/or teachers, helps get at which social things are difficult []

2. questionnaire contained in curriculum book: $40.00 []

3. Questionnaire contained in diagnosis/curriculum book $69.00 []

4. Free PDF containing assessment/questionnaire []

Interventions- Texas has gathered info on effective autism interventions here: []


 * Online Resources**
 * These are places where our school can continue to get good ideas.

[] good article about methods and research-based approaches

[] particularly emphasized autism, and the "hidden curriculum" (things other people take for granted but autistic students don't understand

[] nice basic article about social skills: asking questions, telling stories, making comments

[] using visual strategies (and other things)

[] good, short list of strategies for teaching conversation skills

[] cool site by one of the speakers at workshop I went to- has worksheets that can help make things visual (like "conversation map"

[] social skills story on Youtube video

[] video of teacher/mom about how to stop "runon" conversation

I bought these books during the year:
 * Books**
 * Visual Techniques for Developing Social Skills - by Rebecca Moyes (speaker at workshop I attended)**


 * Social Success Workbook for Teens**

I'd like to try this one if I could show movies - but hard to do in our school! :) [] book (with cd/s?) about using movies to teach social skills- includes lessons from each scene/movie $30.00 I'd like to get this one!

assessing social skills finding online resources finding book resources finding people resources using resources to design classes and activities