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!

"Please don't eat your boogers!"

Winter in Austin, Texas means one thing... Cedar Fever. For those of you not familiar with this oh, so wonderful annual event it is allergy misery for almost everyone in the area when the pollen literally blows off the cedar trees in Central Texas. Thankfully, the joys of living in Austin the rest of the year outweigh the not-so-fun booger fest that starts around here in December.

I'm sure that I'm not the only teacher or speech/language pathologist that has to battle the mining-for-gold party that seems to happen on a daily basis with some of our kids. We've used Social Stories, Power Cards, role plays and attempts at shoving Kleenex at kids with little success.

Two of our biggest offenders this year were 5th graders. Finally, as part of perspective taking work as well as rolling in a little personal hygeine instruction, I stumbled across this youtube video of a teenage girl talking about how grossed out she is by nose picking. Hmm.... maybe 5th grade boys might be more motivated to listen to a teenager? It was worth a shot...

Here's the video in case you would like to use it with your students. I would suggest using it for 5th grade on up. There is nothing wrong with using it for 3rd-4th, but I'm not sure that they would be as motivated by the girl factor as pre-pubescent boys!

The girl in the video rambles a bit, so my suggestion is to start at second :21 and stop it at 1:52.

If I could, I would send you a bouquet of Purell, Clorox Wipes, and a big box of Puffs!  ~Kelley