MindWing Concepts Blog

On the heels of Autism Awareness Month, I wanted to highlight a product that provides a terrific complement to use of the Story Grammar Marker® for treatment of social learning and narrative deficits for students with autism spectrum and related disorders. You Are a Social Detective is a CD-ROM product (compatible with Mac and Windows systems) created by Michelle Garcia Winner of Social Thinking® in conjunction with the folks at Social Skill Builders. The program is based on the popular comic of the same name, which provides a visual primer on basic social thinking concepts such as expected and unexpected behaviors and their effects on others, “thinking with the eyes,” and making “smart vs. wacky” guesses. Many children on the autism spectrum require explicit and consistent teaching of these concepts and coaching in their application across the school day. Using this video modeling program allows for instruction across many leveled lessons, as students view video situations and apply the key skills to identify expected and unexpected behaviors, zoom in on clues about others’ thoughts and feelings, predict the outcome of social scenarios, and utilize social behavior mapping strategies.

I have been using this program with groups of students over the course of this year, and I have been impressed by both the amount of content provided (allowing students to build skills over many exposures) and students’ positive response to the material across a range of age levels. The engaging interface has really grabbed students’ attention, and I continually hear as my groups begin, “Are we going to do Social Detective today?” The pace of the program is arranged perfectly so that 3 or 4 video clips and accompanying discussion questions can be tackled in one session, followed by a brief interactive arcade-style game, and still allow for another activity in the course of your 30-minute session (the program saves student groups’ progress within the levels so that you need not repeat video clips). The structure of the program also allows plenty of room for clinical scaffolding; this is not an activity that students are meant to complete independently. Rather, they will need your assistance as a clinician to focus on key details within each scene and verbalize what has occurred (and what might occur next) thought their “Social Detective” lens.

One key tool that can be applied to analyze each video scene is, of course, Story Grammar Marker! Each scene presents kid characters (though they vary in age and, notably, so do the expected behaviors for different age levels) who are in different settings and experience a kickoff! As the program progresses, you move from deciding if the portrayed reaction was expected or unexpected for the situation, to making smart guesses about reactions, plans, and the feelings of the characters. I find each video clip to be an excellent place to employ the Universal Magnet Set to teach and reinforce use of the narrative icons toward the analysis of each scene, like so:

This serves as a great complement to the material provided, and does not end up being repetitive of the questions asked within the program. Rather, use of the narrative icons provides an additional visual and language-based support to help students understand what they saw, while building narrative skills and use of the cohesive ties that link the narrative icons: when, but, so, because, etc. The lessons in You are a Social Detective also, naturally, align well with the activities in the Mindwing Autism Collection that apply narrative elements toward understanding social interactions.

A demo of the program can be viewed here (Flash-based, so not iPad-friendly). I hope you will check out this great program!

Sean J. Sweeney, M.S., M.Ed., CCC-SLP, an SLP, instructional technology specialist and consultant, works in private practice at The Ely Center in Newton, Massachusetts. He is the author of the blog SpeechTechie, a contributor to the ASHA Leader, and recently took on a role as Product Development Manager for Smarty Ears Apps.

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April is Autism Awareness Month, and I wanted to highlight one of my favorite tools that I employ with students with autism spectrum and related disorders: The Incredible 5-Point Scale by Kari Dunn Baron and Mitzi Curtis. The 5-Point Scale is a tool designed to help students understand the confusing, emotional and language-heavy range of human behaviors by boiling it all down to a scale of 1-5. The approach is very versatile and can be applied to many situations and target behaviors, such as emotional state, voice volume or scales to help students grade their responses to everyday occurrences such as a “Participation Scale” within the classroom.

The original 5-Point Scale book models how to use the tool as an affective scale, with 1 being “fine” and 5 reflecting an “out of control” feeling.

Where you want the student to “be” on the scale can depend on the scale- in general, a 5 is always bad, but your target level may not always be a 1. In the example of the Participation Scale, when setting up the range with the student, you might describe a 1 as disengaged and “tuned out” in class. A 5, then would be “dominating” and thus the target level would be a 3- “listening and making comments appropriately.” It all depends how you want to apply it!

What the Incredible 5-Point Scale allows you to do is reduce the language load on your students while teaching them a strategy that can be carried over into many situations. It provides a way to give simple and quick feedback (without power struggles): “You’re at a 4 right now. Let’s move that down to a 3.” Additionally, you can continue to scaffold and build language by associating the simple numbers and labels with more complex descriptions of emotions and social behaviors. The 5-Point Scale is wonderfully “sharable”; once you create one with a student or group, it can easily be applied in their classroom or home setting by a teacher or parent, somewhat like an advanced social story.

The 5-Point Scale also is wonderfully complementary if you are using Story Grammar Marker with your students, because many scales can be constructed around (and teach variations according to) narrative elements such as Setting, Kick-Off and Reaction. Take, for example, a scale designed to help students gauge and react to problems (Based on Michelle Garcia Winner’s “Big Problem, Little Problem” strategy in her Think Social curriculum):

On the first page of my document above, you can see how the Problem Scale has been aligned with Story Grammar Marker by using the icons (perhaps a great use of the Universal Magnet Set) for Kick-Off- meaning the kind of Kick-Off or problem one is encountering- and Reaction. The scale thus shows 5 kinds of problems and an expected reaction. In the second scale, you can see that the scale has been applied to a particular setting- Halloween night in the neighborhood. The kids I worked with all generated the Kick-Offs at each level of problem- a very engaging activity for them and a good preview of the holiday. The Kick-Off and Reaction icons provided an additional connection recently when I developed a “Negativity Scale” and we discussed 5 different Reactions to the same Kick-Off (e.g. a friend spilling your drink), ranging from overly positive (1) to extremely negative (5).

I definitely recommend that you visit Kari Dunn Baron’s site and check out her products. In particular, I have found the original book and video a great place to start, and her excellent Social Times series of magazines for students shows how the approach can be expanded, with a different 5-point scale in each issue.

Sean J. Sweeney, M.S., M.Ed., CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and instructional technology specialist working in the public schools and in private practice at The Ely Center in Newton, Massachusetts. He has presented on the topic of technology integration in speech and language at the ASHA convention and is the author of the blog SpeechTechie: Looking at Technology Through a Language Lens, which won the 2010 Best New Edublog Award. He can be contacted at sean@speechtechie.com.

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