Hands-on Lesson on Using Your Filter by Kelley

Here's a quick hands-on lesson to illustrate the concept of using your verbal filter to keep the group feeling calm.

We define what a thought is...

We use thought bubbles and various pictures to identify main topics group members like to think about.

We then discuss the idea of "smooth" vs "prickly" thoughts and comments. Smooth thoughts and comments are those that keep the group feeling calm and keep the interaction moving forward. Prickly thoughts and comments are those that make others feel uncomfortable and stop the interaction. Here's the visual that we use for prickly and smooth interactions. You can download it here.

We pass around a smooth ball and a prickly ball to further reinforce the concept of which was more comfortable.

After reviewing the smooth vs prickly concept, we define what a filter is and why we use filters in our communities (coffee, cleaning water, etc). We then introduce the idea of a brain filter that keeps prickly thoughts in our heads and allows smooth thoughts to be verbalized.

You'll need a container, a pitcher of water, a strainer, food coloring, a bag of small sticks/rocks/mulch, and small strips of laminated paper with a sharpie marker.

We ask the group to decide on a color that will represent smooth thoughts. This was a minefield of negotiation and group decision making in itself! Finally, they came to the decision that they would use blue food coloring to represent smooth thoughts.

We mix up the blue water in the pitcher and then identify various prickly comments that could disrupt an interaction and cause prickly thoughts in others. We write them down with a sharpie on laminated strips of paper and added them along with the sticks (which represented other prickly comments or behaviors such as turning away when a peer is talking or interrupting) to the water pitcher.

We then pour the contents through the strainer (representing our brain filter) to model keeping the prickly comments in our heads and letting the smooth comments be expressed.

I hope that you'll find this activity to be helpful in your social and speech groups!

Easy Lessons to Target Play Skills & Sharing

Orlanda and I have spent a considerable amount of time over the past 6 weeks in our collaborative speech/social thinking groups working with our "littles" on basic play skills and sharing. We have two small groups (4 kids each) that we needed to target these skills. One group is made up solely of Kinder students who have significant speech and language delays (both articulation and pragmatic language) and ADHD. The second group is made up of Kinder and 1st grade students who all have pragmatic language deficits, but are "higher" than the first group. The students in this group have Autism Spectrum Disorder and Speech Impairment.

We grouped the lessons in this unit into indoor play skills and outdoor play skills.
During the outdoor play lessons we listed different activities that the kids like to play outside and which were solitary activities vs activities they do with others. After choosing a few of the most common activities on the lists, we taught the explicit rules and defined the "hidden rules" for those activities. We read portions of The Social Skills Picture Book by Jed Baker, PhD that related to outdoor play.

We then took the kids outside to the Kinder playground when no other students were outside to practice taking turns with the balls and playing a simple game that required joint attention. The kids did a great job.

Next, we began to target indoor play skills. We specifically wanted to make sure to address the kinds of activities the kids engage in Kindergarten and 1st grade "centers". We again made lists of activities they did indoors and divided them into solitary vs activities done with others. We read applicable parts from The Social Skills Picture Book again and discussed "hidden rules" for playing with others during centers. We spent several sessions watching and discussing the lessons on sharing and taking turns from Playtime with Zeebu. The kids loved Zeebu and it provides a great anchor to remind students to share in the inclusion setting.

We spent a session reading a picture book on sharing. For the Kinder students with less language sophistication, we read Will Sheila Share? by Elivia Savadier. For the combo Kinder/1st grade group, we read I Am Extremely Absolutely Boiling by Lauren Child.

Finally, we spent several sessions practicing sharing and indoor play. During the first session, we used wooden trains and train tracks (which worked really well since there is an example of sharing/not sharing with trains in the Zeebu video). During the second session we used Legos. Before the first session we spent time teaching various phrases that could be used to initiate play and to help facilitate sharing using this visual.

When we played with train tracks I initially "controlled" access to the tracks handing out one or two to each child and then prompting them to use the scripts to ask for more from me or from a peer. When we did the Lego activity, Orlanda gave each child a small pile of Legos that they eagerly started building with individually. Sure enough, they soon wanted more. They were prompted to ask a friend for a piece. Ya gotta love a little sabotage! :) We do have a few students who we wanted to target accepting "no thanks" from their peer for an answer while we also had one particular student who tends to get run over by his peers and we wanted to help him know it was ok to say "no thanks" at times. This led to some interesting interactions!

I have worked on generalizing the skills from small group to the inclusion classroom by using this powerpoint social story. I just load it on one of the classroom computers in the specific classrooms and prompt the kids to read it (either independently or with me) before center time. Feel free to download it for your use!

Click here to download the "Playing with a Partner" Social Story

I hope that you will find the lesson ideas and tools to be useful with your students.  ~ Kelley

Toys to Talk About--The "Hoberman Expanding Sphere" Toy

Hello all! I'm still here! (And, quite frankly, my brain has REALLY been enjoying summer vacation!) I don't know about all of you, but when I shut down my computer after the last day of school, I think I literally switched "work mode" to "sleep mode". I have really been enjoying my time off from school, and my six year old son recently declared, "it's unfair for summer vacation to be shorter than the school year." (I didn't really have a good argument for that one.) So, aside from perusing Pinterest for new and fresh ideas to incorporate into speech therapy, I have made time for another favorite hobby. . . . .THRIFT SHOPPING!

I have always found that shopping "on a dime" has helped me find some great deals on "Toys to Talk About". Now, this has become an interesting topic at home with my kids (who happen to also serve as my own personal guinea pigs). I have lots of fun engaging with them to see just how many words and phrases ONE toy can elicit, it's like a game to them and me!

The first toy I found this summer was on my "wish list" and was inspired by one of the SLPs that I supervised this year during her Clinical Fellowship Year, Katie Ruffin. I observed Katie as she provided therapy to students in middle school and high school. We spent a lot of time brainstorming and developing ideas for many students who had minimal verbal skills and we spent a lot of time focusing on developing "Core Vocabulary" (future post on this important topic is yet to come). It was during an observation of her working with a student that I came across her using the Hoberman Expanding Sphere Toy and I knew that I immediately needed to get my hands on one myself! (I have to admit, I didn't know the exact name of this toy until I researched it for this post, but now I can give credit where it is due!) Here are a few pictures of the toy that I am talking about:

Retracted Sphere



Expanded sphere and Retracted Sphere

Now, I knew where I could go and buy one of these toys online or in stores, but I got lucky when I found mine for only 25 CENTS at a Yard Sale! So, not only was I excited to get my hands on this new toy, but the price made it SUPER EXCITING!

So, let's talk about how this toy became a "Toy to Talk About". Some of the words and phrases that I observed it used for in a speech therapy session included:

• BALL (of course)
• OPEN
• CLOSE
• IN
• OUT
• MY TURN
• YOUR TURN
• THROW
• I THROW
• YOU THROW
• CATCH
• I CATCH
• YOU CATCH
• I WANT
• MINE
• YOURS
• ON
• UNDER

In order to facilitate communication with this toy, a communication board was also used with the student. This board could be used with or without voice output depending on the needs of your students. Also, I observed this in an individual therapy session, but it can certainly be just as engaging and useful for language in a small group therapy session! Here is an example of a communication board that might be used in a session with this toy. Go to this link to grab this board from the Boardmaker Share Website: Core Vocabulary--Go-Talk-20. For a younger student, I would likely cover the unnecessary pictures or cut them out and use them as picture exchange versus pointing.

Here are some photographs of how this ball was used in a therapy session that I observed:


"The bird is IN" the ball."
"Put the bird IN."




"The bird is OUT of the ball."
"Take the bird OUT."

In addition to playing with the ball in the ways pictured here, the SLP and the student also played a game of "catch" and also incorporated other objects to throw the ball into and to take in/out of the ball. While I was researching this toy online, I also came across an image of a much larger version that looked like this:


Boy, wouldn't this be fun!?! The language opportunities would be endless! I envision using it to teach and learn positional words and many other vocabulary words, and this would be great fun for turn taking and building social communication skills too! Guess I'll have to add the "kid size" version to my wish list now!

I hope you find this toy will create "something to talk about" in your classroom! I'd love to hear how you might use this toy with your students! How many more words and phrases can you think of to teach to your students using this toy?

Looking forward to Saturday morning Yard Sales!
~Orlanda

The Friendship Track Visual Tool

One of my 5th grade students with Asperger's started the school year with the goal of making friends. I was pleased to see that he had been able to maintain the one friendship he made last year across the summer. This was a huge leap for him. At one of our first Social Thinking groups of the year, he set the goal of trying to expand his network of friends. The glitch for him is that he struggles to see the connection between moments when he shows "unexpected" social behaviors and the reactions of other students. As fabulous as Michelle Garcia Winner & Stephanie Madrigal's Superflex (c) curriculum is, he had outgrown it. I had to figure out a new way to help him see the connection. And so, the Friendship Track was born...

I found a simple Google image of a train track with switches that split off to multiple tracks. I added a yellow arrow (his favorite color) for the straight track. He and I defined the types of behaviors that other kids would feel were friendly and respectful.

Next, we defined behaviors that would cause other kids to not want to hang out with him (picking his nose, being bossy, turning his body away from the group when others were speaking to him, etc.)  and labeled it the orange track.

Finally, we defined behaviors that caused other kids to completely avoid him or be fearful of him (physical or verbal aggression, physically out of control behaviors, etc.). These were labeled the red track, which split off dramatically and headed off the cliff.

Through our conversation, I explained that when he used expected behaviors he was traveling down that straight path that created friendly thoughts and feelings in others. The yellow track was the shortest and fastest path to travel to the goal he had set of making friends. However, sometimes he engaged in behaviors that either annoyed his classmates -- like making noises in class or bossing them around.  Those behaviors would switch him onto the orange track. It was still possible to make his way back onto the yellow friendship track, but it would take some effort and a little time to change those feelings and thoughts in others. Finally, we focused on the effect of "big" behaviors like being verbally or physically aggressive or refusing to follow directions. When he engaged in those behaviors he sent himself onto the red track. It was still possible to eventually work his way back to the yellow track, but the visual of heading off the cliff made it very clear that it would take considerable time and effort to change the thoughts and feelings of others when he engaged in behaviors that alienated or scared his classmates.

I laminated a visual to remind the student of what kind of behaviors are seen on the different tracks and attached it to his binder. This semester I had him begin to rate himself after each class period regarding what track he traveled in his interactions with peers and teachers. He logs the information in his data collection system daily which goes home to his parents. This has helped him become more accountable for improving his relationships with others.

I've been pleased to see that this visual has been a powerful tool to help this student make the connection between his behavior and the effect it has on his social success. I also created mini train tracks as visuals for my Teaching Assistant and I to keep on our lanyards. We are able to quickly and subtly cue the student when he begins to engage in unexpected behavior. The visual helps him remember to "stay on track".
                           I hope you find this to be helpful  ~ Kelley