Snow day social story experiment

I have been wanting to create Social Stories for some of my students for some time now. I have students in Kindergarten and second grade who I believe would benefit from these stories. Social stories were created by Carol Gray and are used most often with students with autism. From her website: "A Social Story describes a situation, skill, or concept in terms of relevant social cues, perspectives, and common responses in a specifically defined style and format." Carol Gray basically created a formula for creating individualized social stories to aid in teaching social skills. 

With what seems like our never-ending snow days, I have been able to work on some materials that I normally would not have time to create. So here is my first draft at a social story:

Let's Have  A Conversation!

-People like to talk to other people. When two or more people talk together, they are having a conversation. Friends like to have conversations so that they can learn about each other.

-When I want to talk to my friend, I make sure to get his attention first. I can do this by saying my friend’s name in an inside voice. When I say my friend’s name, I should look at him so that he knows I am talking to him.

-In a conversation, it is important to ASK QUESTIONS, LISTEN, COMMENT and RESPOND. 

-When I want to ASK A QUESTION, I should first look at my friend. Then, I can ask a question. There are many types of questions I can ask my friend.

-I can ask a question to learn about what my friend likes, such as, “What is your favorite color?” or “What do you like to do at home?”

-I can ask a question to see if my friend will play with me, like, “Do you want to play Go Fish?”or “Do you want to play hide and seek?”

-I can ask a question to get some help, like, “Can you help me read this book?”or “Can you help me tie my shoe?”

-After I ask a question, I should be sure to LISTEN to what my friend says. I can show I am listening by looking at my friend. It is important to listen so that I know what my friend wants to tell me. Everyone likes to be listened to when they are talking.

-When my friend responds to my question, I can respond with a COMMENT about the topic to let my friend know I was listening. I can make a comment like, “Blue is my favorite color too!”, or “I don’t play video games after school, I like to read.”

-In a conversation, my friend might ask me a question. When my friend asks me a question I should RESPOND by answering the question politely. When I respond, my friend learns more about me.

-In a conversation, friends take turns talking to keep the conversation going. Friends take turns ASKING QUESTIONS, LISTENING, COMMENTING, and RESPONDING. When friends take turns talking, they are having a good conversation. In a good conversation, everyone gets the chance to talk and listen.

-It is fun to have a conversation with my friends. When I have a conversation, I can learn about my friend and he can learn about me!

This took me a little more than an hour to create (which is why it has not been feasible for me to do this up to this point, there are some "premade" stories that you can purchase, but the point is for them to be specific to the students you are targeting, and most of the "premade" ones just aren't going to fit your specific need). My initial reaction is that I have far to many directive sentences and not enough descriptive or perspective sentences. You are technically supposed to have 2-5 descriptive or perspective sentences for every directive sentence. My second reaction is that it is entirely too long and comprehensive. I may need to break down these skills a little more. Maybe one story should cover asking questions, while another story should cover commenting. However, the nature of the conversation is that it is comprised of all of these components seamlessly....but I do think the one I have written could be trying to cover too much.

I think I will just try the one I have written and see how it goes before I make changes. Unfortunately, my next step is to add graphics, and without Boardmaker this step could break me.

Homework time

I have been struggling with the fact that I do not send homework home with my students (besides a few of my severe speech kids who get minimal pair sets sent home occasionally). I think it's important to carry-over good speech and language skills at home, and I want to give parents the tools to do this! However, having the time to get together homework for 42 students who all have different goals was a daunting task to say the least.

Then, and SLP friend told me that she sometimes does calendars, with different speech and language activities on the calendars for each week. They aren't specific to each child, they are just general skills that would benefit a wide range of students. This sparked my interest, and after some successful googling actually found an SLP's website with these calendars already created! Sweet! Parents choose two activities per week (they look to take only about 5 minutes) and initial when they have completed them. After getting together folders and parent instructions, I have sent these home with my K-2 language students.

Next on my list is to work on calendars for my older language students and articulation students. 

Multiphonemic project

Last year, I was turned on to these really old multiphonemic cards (with pictures representing sounds, not necessarily the letter) by one of my supervisors. I copied the old ones, and have been using them as quick 3-minute warm-ups for my young students with moderate/severe phonological process disorders. Basically, the cards go through all phonemes in isolation. Once students learn the associations of the picture of the card and the sound, I can use the cards as a visual reminder to point to while they are working. I usually run through all of the cards at the beginning of the session, then pull 1-2 to work on specifically with other materials like picture cards.


Then, I ran into this same concept in another new book. This book had a page with small flashcards with essentially the same idea (although with different pictures). So, I copied this page and had my students color the pictures. Then, I created "parent instructions" and laminated these two front and back to send home to practice.

After that, I blew up the pictures to a larger size, colored them, laminated them, and velcroed them to my wall. Now, at the beginning of each session, we run through all the sounds. Then, when we are working, I can refer to the picture cue by pointing or by taking off of the wall and putting it in front of my student.