Repost in Tele-Context: Cookies Crumby Pictures Address Self-Regulation

Originally posted 3/14/19.

I'm reposting this now because people could use ideas for videos that set contexts in telepractice sessions. These are all great social cog/self-regulation videos and could also be used for language lessons- for example story grammar or sentence formulation, or compare-contrast to the inspiration stories for the videos.

For a self-regulation curriculum in addition to Zones of Regulation, very reviewable in teletherapy, see also Hanna Bogen and Carrie Lindemuth's Brain Talk.



Sesame Street has been on a self-regulation initiative for the last several years. A series of skits called Cookie's Crumby Pictures parody popular movies and model strategies for listening, recalling directions, waiting one's turn and self-control. Children would not get the references to Karate Kid or When Harry Met Sally, but find the videos entertaining nevertheless. You can even sell them to older kids with a little effort. As always, a video that covers a social-emotional concept in the context of a story offers both a social cognition and narrative teaching opportunity. Check out this full playlist here, and a few sample videos are embedded below (email subscribers, click through to the full post).

Whole Body Listening:



"Thinking with the Eyes" (see Social Thinking®) and Problem Solving:




Considering your professional development schedule next year? Check out Sean's offerings for training sessions.

A good app to take self-data

Streaks is an award-winning app (Apple Design Awards) that allows you to keep track of up to 12 good habits/intentions and simply mark on the calendar when you have completed the task (e.g. read for 15 min). The app is designed for the "don't break the chain" concept, but you can indicate how often you intend the habit to be completed so that you still construct a streak.

This type of app would be helpful for us as clinicians who need to practice self-care routines in the New Year (decade). It also would be a tool for use with older clients who may need to practice speech exercises or positive social/language activities.

The same principles could be enacted using Google Calendar as a (free) data-taking tool; the benefits here would include the ability to add more text/data for tracking.

Happy New Year!

Considering your professional development schedule? Check out Sean's offerings for training sessions.

Use Google Earth to Preview Community Settings/Walks

Walking is important. I always notice that I get a broader view of students' overall social functioning when the group is moving around. A table provides a grounding space that often regulates students; they don't have to think about using their eyes to assess space and monitor their own physical presence as much at a table. So take a walk! A community or neighborhood walk provides the opportunity for pre-lessons and post-review of your activity.

One great resource for this is Google Earth. On the Google Chrome Web Browser or Chromebook, or via the iPad app, this free resource literally allows you to "walk" through any area using Street View. To jump into Street View, after searching for a key address (use the magnifying glass icon), drag and drop the yellow "Pegman" onto the map, any point on the blue lines that indicate Street View access:

Some lesson points:

-Have students observe and look for community locations, both while using the arrows and moving "down the street" in Street View and actually walking down the street. This is a "Thinking with the Eyes" (see Social Thinking®) task that could be made more structured with a scavenger hunt.

-I am all about crosswalks. The navigation of crosswalks is a safety and lifeskill but also social task that many students at all levels struggle with. I generally see my students continue to converse as they walk up to a crosswalk and then stand there, waiting for me to direct them. Previewing these areas is also helpful in Google Earth.

This particular crosswalk has no street light to tell you what to do. You need instead to observe cars coming from each direction, as well as their directional signals and the drivers' eye gaze, to determine when to initiate a cross. A lot of social cognition involved there! A screenshotted image such as this could also be imported into Google Drawings, where you can sketch stick figures for guidance (a form of Comic Strip Conversation).

Considering your professional development schedule next year? Check out Sean's offerings for training sessions.

Cookie's Crumby Pictures Address Self-Regulation

Sesame Street has been on a self-regulation initiative for the last several years. A series of skits called Cookie's Crumby Pictures parody popular movies and model strategies for listening, recalling directions, waiting one's turn and self-control. Children would not get the references to Karate Kid or When Harry Met Sally, but find the videos entertaining nevertheless. You can even sell them to older kids with a little effort. As always, a video that covers a social-emotional concept in the context of a story offers both a social cognition and narrative teaching opportunity. Check out this full playlist here, and a few sample videos are embedded below (email subscribers, click through to the full post).

Whole Body Listening:



"Thinking with the Eyes" (see Social Thinking®) and Problem Solving:




Considering your professional development schedule next year? Check out Sean's offerings for training sessions.

More on Breathing

Breathing is an important tool that SLPs can employ in a variety of client populations. For our students with self-regulation difficulties, having tools they can use anywhere without disruption of the current situation they are in can be very important (see Zones). For us, too-- our jobs can be stressful, whether it is a difficult treatment situation, a contentious IEP meeting, or just going back to work after the summer (I AM STILL NOT REALLY READY)...we need tools.

I've always found any kind of mindful breathing to be useful, but this summer I stumbled upon a link from VICE News that led to some interesting science. One study sited here documents the effects of "coherent breathing" at a rate that balances the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, leading to increased calm for people with varied conditions: "In subjects with MDD (major depressive disorder) treated with resonant breathing (coherent breathing with pursed lips resistive exhalation) at 4.5–6.5 breaths per minute (bpm), HRV (heart rate variability) increased and mood improved." Part of the technique is that one should avoid counting, say to 6, as that engages the sympathetic side too much.

I was easily able to find an app that therefore provided other cues so that breaths could be timed to correspond with the BPM guideline: The Breathing App (free for iOS). I have used this as a warm up for groups and also frequently for myself. The app provides different modes: in one, a ball enlarges as a visual for inhalation timing, and decreases in size for exhalation. I have found especially useful another mode which uses audio tones of different notes to time the same--great to use in the car when feeling just a tad anxious on the way to some work task. Check it out and try the technique!

Stop, Breathe & Think Kids

Stop, Breathe and Think Kids is a great free app that promotes age-appropriate mindfulness through video and play-based "missions." These can be a great way to start a session with youngsters and promote "portable" strategies/tools related to the Zones of Regulation®. The videos are also contextual, based in characters, settings and actions, so can be used in conjunction with narrative teaching strategies. The "Find a Mission" option in the app aligns a video with the students' current mood and emotion, thus allowing for teaching of feelings vocabulary. The app and its older brother Stop Breathe & Think, useful for older students, also offers a web app.

Tap Roulette- A useful therapy tool

Whenever including games or any situation where someone has to "go first," it can be a challenge even among students who don't have social learning challenges. We don't want these decisions to eat up our precious and limited therapy time. I do find that Social Thinking® and 5 Point Scales promote useful self-talk around this:
-Play involves 3 Parts: Setup, Play, Cleanup. Who goes first is part of setup and we don't want it to use up our time playing.
-Using a 5 Point Scale of Problems, going last should be thought of as a small or tiny problem.

However, we still sometimes come to a stalemate over who goes first.

Tap Roulette offers a free, quick, and fun solution that I think superior to the human-error-prone "Rock Paper Scissors" technique. Participants in whatever it is simply place one finger on the screen, tap PICK FINGER and after a roulette-style animation, a choice is made!

Tap Roulette also provides a fun way to work on categories; have students name items in a simple or complex category and run a contest to see which one "wins."

O*Net Online- Help Students to Look Forward

O*Net Online is a resource introduced to me by a vocational coach and I have found a number of uses of it since then. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, the site features career interest questionnaires and lists of skills, work activities, and equipment for different professions.

Skills needed for Video Game Designers:

The site is therefore a great tool for working with older students (MS, HS, young adult), for designing specific language activities that will facilitate buy-in, insight and development of their professional goals.

I recently shared with a colleague whose student was resisting "coming to speech" and she was able to discuss with him the communication skills needed to succeed in his desired occupation, which helped him build rationale around their work. She then included video clips from YouTube about the job, which provided further visual support and context to work on language. 

The site is accessible at the link above and works nicely on computers and mobile devices.

I will be presenting in the Washington, DC area in September for the Center for Communication and Learning, LLC- hope to see some of you there! Click here for details.

Autism Awareness Month: Keynote and Displaying Visuals (and The Incredible 5-Point Scale)

I have always been a fan of using presentation tools like PowerPoint and Keynote in un-PowerPointy ways (i.e. no reading of bullet points). Presentation tools offer a flexible space to position and interact with text, images, and visual elements such as tables for a wide range of uses in therapy activities. Creating a weather journal, for example, is much easier in a presentation app because you can place the text and pictures (i.e. of the clouds) anyplace you want on the "slide"- thereby bypassing many formatting difficulties in the moment of working with the student. In our recent App-titude column, Nathan Curtis and I discussed how the desktop versions of Keynote or PowerPoint can be used similarly in telepractice activities to arrange and sequence personalized photos for targeting objectives such as verb and concept use, vocabulary and storytelling. You can add backgrounds, animation of slide elements, video and even audio to make activities even more engaging.

In another recent App-titude column, I discussed ways that apps can serve as visual tools to facilitate conversation and play, and tie in with approaches such as Social Thinking® and The Incredible 5-Point Scale. I had the pleasure of hearing Kari Dunn Buron speak last year, and she described how the 5-Point Scale was designed to tap into the "systematizing" strengths of students with social learning challenges, leading them to better perspective taking and empathizing (see the work of Simon Baron-Cohen). 5-Point Scales are an extremely helpful and versatile tool. They can be used in systematic, focused ways much like the implementation of an individualized social story for a student with more intense needs. For our students with more moderate or nuance-based challenges, instruction can include a repertoire of scales to be referenced in naturalistic activities.

Here's where I love the Keynote app for iPad ($9.99, free for any Apple ID linked to a device purchased after September 2013). A 5-Point Scale can be created simply within a Keynote Slide by using a table and colored fonts. Once the concept is established using a scale related to a target for your group, expand your students' thinking by creating other scales illustrating the range of social behaviors in other situations. The key idea is that the 5 represents extremely unexpected behavior or situations. Depending on the scale, the target can be a 1 (as in calmness) or a 3, as in moderation on a spectrum from too much to too little (as in talk time). Developing the language with your students helps them feel ownership for the scale and also gives you a good window into their thinking. The power of the tool is that it can spark discussion and gentle cueing, "I know this problem feels like a 4 to you. Remember what other kinds of problems we labeled a 4?"

Try developing your own scales in Keynote. Once created, to save the loading time (and potential of accidentally moving stuff around with your finger) tap the "share square" and "open in another app" as PDF, whereupon you can choose iBooks. Your scales will then be saved in the "PDF" section of the app for use in future sessions. 5-Point Scales are also excellent tools to extend into the classroom, as all children can benefit from social-cognitive strategies, and of course are great to send home. You can send your materials to anyone as PDF files from the Keynote app.

A file with a number of scales I have developed with students (silliness, a prank scale based on a recent discussion about April Fool's day and social judgment, one on the social thinking of Hide and Seek which was useful for an egg hunt and playing the game Snipe, and a few others) are available to be downloaded from Dropbox by clicking the image below. This is a PowerPoint file downloadable without a Dropbox account, so from your iPad you can tap Download, then Open In... and choose Keynote (once you have installed it) or use in PowerPoint or Keynote on a computer.

Click on the scale to download a template

Some resources to learn more about The Incredible 5-Point Scale are available at the website. Also check Pinterest for some innovative ideas about using 5-Point Scales. The Should I or Shouldn't I? games from Social Thinking are also good ways to start with Five Point Scales.

Calming, Part 3

Incorporation of mindfulness techniques, regardless of instructional discipline, is a strategy that has more than emerging evidence. A systematic review of studies of mindfulness training for students and adults with developmental disabilities found significant effects on a range of areas, documenting reduced aggression and anxiety and increased social skills and academic performance (Hwang & Kearney, 2012). Many programs such as Mindful Schools are being implemented school-wide, teachers are being encouraged to practice mindfulness and leading treatment practices incorporate activities such as Yoga classes.

For our students who struggle with managing their own thoughts, and so are led in tangential/oppositional/anxious/dysregulated directions impacting their communication, mindfulness can be incorporated in small ways. Books, videos and audio files focused on awareness of and strategies around thinking can be very engaging, and also serve as language activities by virtue of eliciting descriptive and metacognitive language.

I highly recommend the Cosmic Kids YouTube channel for a start for short meditation activities for your young students. The Zen Den series are short, beautifully produced, visual meditations focused on a variety of calming thinking strategies. I have field-tested these with a range of groups, with great responses from both girls and boys. The fact that the clips are on YouTube makes a great connection to home, as meditation is meant to be done regularly, even for short periods of time.

Even if that carryover is not achieved, clips such as Master the Monkey establish a concrete connection and vocabulary for an abstract concept: our mind can be like a hyperactive monkey and we can practice strategies to keep it present:




Movies in My Mind presents a fun visualization exercise for which you can conduct a language-based debriefing after the fact: "What did you see on the other side of that door?"




Getting Wanty discusses a specific situation of wanting something in a store, but can be applied to many other situations involving "JustMe" vs. Thinking of Others and social behavior (see the work of Social Thinking®).



See also the great Yoga Adventures videos that put yoga in the context of settings and "stories," again offering connections to language activities and themes.

Hwang, Y, & Kearney, P. (2012). A systematic review of mindfulness intervention for individuals with developmental disabilities: Long-term practice and long lasting effects. Research in Developmental Disabilities. 34, 314-326

Calming, Part 2

Many of our students have difficulty regulating themselves around problem situations--or situations that are not even really a problem. These students benefit from strategies such as building causal language, using visual tools such as The Incredible Five Point Scale (my favorite being the Problem Scale from Disaster to Glitch), The Zones of Regulation, and self-talk. Lynne Hewitt recently wrote a great article on the connections between Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Speech-Language Pathology, so do check that out as well.

Breathe, Think, Do with Sesame (Free) provides a fun context to explore these strategies with your young students (PS-grade 1). The app presents five episodes including frustration about getting dressed, separating from a parent at school, and a block tower that falls down. Interactive activities guide the student to help the "monster" use diaphragmatic breathing, visualize plans, and choose a plan to solve the problem.

In addition to the above resources, the app also aligns well with use of Braidy the Storybraid and The Incredible Flexible You Program (TIFY), the five episodes being individual Abbreviated Episodes containing character, setting, kickoff event, response, plan and conclusion, and relating to the social cognitive instruction in TIFY. See also Sarah Ward and Kristen Jacobson's terrific work on executive functioning and making a "future picture" to accomplish tasks.

Disclosure: Author is a contractor with Mindwing Concepts, Inc.  for provision of blog content and professional development.

Social Fortune and Fate/Comics Head

As a member of the Social Thinking® Blogging Team, I am happy to be given the occasional opportunity to review one of their excellent products (I have them all anyway)! In this post, I will be taking a look at Social Fortune or Social Fate: A Social Thinking Graphic Novel for Social Quest Seekers (SFOF) by Dr. Pamela Crooke and Michelle Garcia Winner. This book is positioned as geared toward Middle School students and a great starting point for teaching Social Thinking concepts to older kids, and it is indeed both.

SFOF is formatted as a graphic novel with a twist- one half of the book depicts episodes where characters make "unexpected" social choices and must deal with how they have changed others emotions in negative ways, leading to icky consequences. Flip the book over and the episodes, with identical situations, are presented as the characters utilize expected behaviors, with more positive emotions and consequences resulting. The episodes include ten situations very relevant to middle and high school settings (upper elementary, too), including participating in class discussions, group work, finishing homework, asking for help, figuring out what to say when hanging out, and dealing with boring moments.

Image from Social Thinking website, product description page.

Each situation is depicted, discussed, and analyzed with a number of visual and conceptual tools that you can target with students in many other "teachable moments" beyond the contexts of the book. These include a spin on Social Thinking's Social Behavior Mapping technique, in which behaviors are linked to others' thoughts/feelings, consequences and feelings about the self, here called the Road of Social Fortune or Fate. Once explored, this concept can be used in all sorts of situations across the home and school day (see also the book on Social Behavior Mapping or its in-depth teaching via Think Social). The book also includes "Emotion Meters" and a "Problem Thermometer" to emphasize  understanding of behavioral impacts on others' emotions and the "Size of Problem" strategy.

One of my favorite aspects of the book, besides the Manga graphics which kids tend to find engaging, is the use of "Strategy Codes" related to the episodes to emphasize ways of thinking about the social world. Geared to access kids' interest in games ("cheat codes" can be used to navigate through levels of various video games), these handy acronyms are ripe for visual display and reference in your therapy room. These include MOBS (Moments of Boredom Survival), FOTO (Filter Thoughts and Opinions Often), TAC (Think About Choices), and FBI-ESP (Feel it Big Inside, Express it Smaller in Public). Once established in your students' memory, these can provide quick ways of providing feedback on both expected and unexpected behaviors.

Like many aspects of Social Thinking, kids will need some time and extra activities to process and apply the information in this book, and I have mentioned before that I would be reviewing some Social Thinking products with a tech spin. I often pair lessons from SFOF with comic creation, a natural connection to the contexts of the book. Real-life photo comics can be great to create with students, but can take a bit of work with the staging and acting involved (see Story Me for a great way to get your feet wet with this type of app). I like at first to use comic creation apps that contain some content, i.e. characters and backgrounds. For awhile, this was an area lacking in iPad-dom (but see the wonderful Pixton if you have a laptop available), but this changed with the release of Comics Head (free, with full version allowing for unlimited editable comics available at 3.99).

Comics Head is a one-stop comic creator allowing you to select from a variety of character styles, emotions, and settings, including importing background images from the Camera Roll. Though the menu takes a few minutes to get used to, you (and students) can create comics with ease once familiar with the features. Comics Head also works well when paired with the Story Grammar Marker® methodology to help students plan their stories- what will the characters, setting, and initiating events be? The app, like Pixton, allows you to save your comic as a template; you can therefore remix the comic showing the characters making different social choices and experiencing corresponding likely consequences.

I have used Comics Head in this way to make comics in which students apply the various Strategy Codes from SFOF- this one was a TAC (Think about Choices), and although not exactly a nuanced interpretation of that strategy, was great work for this student!

Comics Head also lets you insert (and trim!) saved pictures, thus allowing for limitless contexts. Beyond Strategy Codes, you can consider creating comics for situations not addressed in the book or, for younger students, comics relevant to the Superflex! curriculum.

As always, YouTube is a great source of video tutorials on any app, including Comics Head.

I hope you will check out Social Fortune or Social Fate (and Comics Head). Even if you are just getting started, both of these resources will open a lot of doors for you!

Disclosure: Author was provided a free copy of this book (but already had it!) by Social Thinking, based on the work of Michelle Garcia Winner, and is a contractor for provision of blog content and workshop presentations for Mindwing Concepts, creator of the Story Grammar Marker.

30/30

30/30 is a free app that I have used in lessons specific to teaching kids about executive functioning, but it can be used with many contextual tasks (e.g. a game, project, or assignment) to help students build planning, time estimation and self-monitoring, including social behaviors that contribute to effective task completion. The app is basically a timer, but it allows you to break down tasks into their component parts and guesstimate time for each. 30/30 also allows you to color code task elements, which works well if you are using strategies such as Sarah Ward's "Get Ready-Do-Done" approach.

For any task, you can give it a label at the top of the screen (main idea), then double tap each task element to edit its description and time interval, as well as color. The app is VERY gesture-based, but provides a tutorial when you first open it- my recommendation is to screen shot this or write the information down so you can remember what the different gestures do. Also be aware of the settings (tap the cogs)- you can turn off notifications and sounds, especially for those who get nervous with timers, and this area also allows you to email the complete list of tasks onscreen, which is great for collaboration with other educators or parents working with the student. You can also upload task lists to iCloud for use with different students or groups. This is a nice app to use in conjunction with an interactive whiteboard to keep ALL students on task.

Have you tried 30/30? Let us know in the comments what you think of it!

Game Show Sound Board

Often pretty simple stimuli can add quite a bit of engagement. Free Game Show Soundboard (found at this link or in App Store under iPhone apps) is just a screen of buttons that, when tapped, play sounds such as a bell ding, applause, audience laughter and cheers, etc. The app also has countdown timers and scorekeepers for two players.

I try to avoid too much competition in my sessions, however, this app can be used to add engagement and reinforcement when students are involved in tasks of earning points or naming items in teams, or just as a fun way to let students know what they are doing well...or with a twinge of humor, maybe not quite as well. In conversational activities, the "applause" serves to alert students when they have made a good comment that supports others, and I especially like to use the "crickets" to humorously point out a silence that students need to try and fill with a "thought!"

If you like the idea of using sounds in your sessions, there are a wealth of other soundboard apps that can be used in similar ways, to build listening skills, in units about the five senses, or to relate to narratives- this developer also has soundboards related to Halloween or farm sounds- relevant to this time of year!