Social Skills Activities

Our students brainstormed expected versus unexpected behaviors, and
how others think of us when we engage in unexpected behaviors.

This past school year, I've been using the Superflex Comic Book curriculum by Michelle Garcia Winner to focus on social skills topics with my students with autism and pragmatic language deficits.  The students have increased in confidence in their ability to monitor and modulate their emotions and energy level, to begin and maintain conversations, to participate in classroom discussions and collaborative projects, and to use appropriate body language and facial expressions in conversations with peers and adults.  I've had such fun with this curriculum, and I'm grateful to the Public School Foundation (who provided us with a grant to purchase these materials) for their generous support in helping the idea come to fruition.

The Unthinkables are "bad guys" who send our brain the ideas to behave in "unexpected" ways.  

Our students read about how the hero, "Superflex," uses strategies such as positive self-talk, calming deep breaths, thinking about what others are thinking about, and matching our reaction to the size of the problem, to defeat the Unthinkables.

Our students learned about each bad guy "Unthinkable," along with ways to defeat them.  They used calming strategies to reduce their emotion levels on the emotions thermometer from angry/exploding down to calm/cool. 

Our students figured out which calming strategies worked best for them when they were frustrated. 

Our students played egg-hunt games in which they used strategies to defeat the Unthinkables in each egg given a variety of situations.

Who has helped you meet your goals?

Spring Social Skills Activity: A Superflex Egg Hunt

For the last few months, I've been using a comic book superhero social skills curriculum by Michelle Garcia Winner to teach social thinking, flexibility, and calming strategies to my student with autism and pragmatic language difficulties.  We've discussed the many different "bad guys" (a.k.a., Unthinkables) who can send our brain messages such as "be bossy!", or "have a super huge reaction to this problem!" or "demand things to be your way only!" and the superhero "Superflex" who is able to defeat these characters using social thinking strategies such as positive self talk, calming strategies, flexibility, and thinking about others' thoughts and feelings. The students have a good basic understanding of the Unthinkable bad guys now, and, this week, I felt they were ready for a generalization activity to pull it all together. 

 So, this week, for our third grade social skills group, I filled plastic eggs with pictures of various "Unthinkable" Characters from Michelle Garcia Winner's Superflex curriculum, and then had each student take turns finding an egg, reading the description of the "bad guy"/unthinkable, and then telling us how to "defeat" that bad guy using calming strategies or flexible social behaviors. 

It was a great activity!  The students in the group seemed to enjoy it, and really recalled useful calming strategies and self-talk phrases they could use in difficult situations.  The resounding favorite phrase for the group?   "No biggie!"  (It's one of my favorite phrases, as well!  Just ask my grad student intern, who hears me say it several thousand times per week!)

Michelle Garcia Winner's materials have been a breath of fresh air for my social skills practice.  Students are highly motivated to engage with them, to read about the characters, to try out the strategies Superflex suggests, and are just generally excited to learn from these materials.  One of my students has even written and acted in his own mini movie about Superflex and Rockbrain, and carries a picture of "Glassman" with his books to remind him not to "fall apart over every little thing." 

I am so grateful that I have access to a plethora of wonderful materials for teaching social skills through a grant given to our school by the Public School Foundation.  These materials are enriching not only my practice, but the practice of many of our other CHCCS SLPs, who have been borrowing them and learning to use them, as well. 



If you're an SLP, how have you used Michelle Garcia Winner's social skills materials in your practice?

Joint Attention and my Favorite Band

Tonight, my husband and I went to see my favorite band play in Raleigh. It was a fabulous evening of gorgeous music and just general fun.

I tried to be in the moment during the show, and I was struck by how much that increased my enjoyment of the experience. At one point, the band was singing a song about how "sometimes rain that's needed, falls," and the crowd all around me was singing those same lyrics, and I realized that almost everyone in the whole theater was sharing in this beautiful quiet moment of joint attention. Which was rather transcendent, actually.

That moment got me thinking about how people bond.

I teach social skills groups to children with autism, ADHD, and general difficulty with social language skills at work each week. The last 2 weeks, we've focused on "making friends." We've learned about how to choose which person might make a good friend, how to learn about that person, how to ask about his/her favorite topics each time you see him/her, and how to judge whether your friendly gestures are being taken well or not.

But, we have not focused on what makes some friendships "click." On how to bond with friends. Which is ultimately my goal for each of my students...to get them to the point where they are able to bond with others.

The interesting thing to me here, is that this band we went to see tonight, it's not my husband's favorite band. It's mine. Yet he indulged me; he entered into my interest. And we shared a beautiful bonding experience together because of that. It deepened our relationship to share joint attention together.

So this week, I'm going to remember that my students (and my family, too, for that matter!) really want me to come and see their favorite "band." To stand and listen and watch the things they really love. To have me appreciate the things they find amazing.

Hopefully I can do just that.




Have you indulged friends' or family members' or students' interests and reaped the reward of a stronger connection? I'd love to hear about it!