Social Stories are a short story that delivers social instruction. They "take complex skills and break them into smaller components that are more easily understandable" (More, 2008). As a teacher, I think this is a great tool to use to teach a specific lesson. It uses visuals, text, and audio so it hits almost ever base for the different spectrum of learners. One of the most important things that stuck out for me in the article we were to read, was that when making a social story you need to take the child's perspective into account. You need to be on their level with vocabulary and sentence structure and the topic at hand. This is great to use for behavior intervention, and because the stories are individualized, you can tailor the story at hand to find any student.
For my own social story, I kept it broad so it could fit most any student. I chose a simple idea: keeping calm and figuring out what to do when a you (a child/student) are mad. I've embedded it below. I felt like making a social story about keeping calm was a really good choice because, as a teacher aide in special education classrooms I feel like the things I'm saying constantly are 'use nice hands', 'we use our words', and 'do not hit your friends'. Many students, especially students with disabilities who may have trouble communicating their feelings and needs, get angry very easily. The idea of making my social story on staying calm was an instantaneous decision for me. As far as troubleshooting the program went, I wasn't very impressed with PhotoStory. It was primitive and lacked an easy flow. I think I would have been much better over simply using photo editing software and working it into a movie maker program (two things I am more familiar with anyway). Otherwise, making this social story was a great experience and I will definitely do it again in the future.
I really like your digital story, you gave time between reading to let the pictures portray the emotions. God music too. Good job
ReplyDeleteI really liked your social story! It was helpful and could be used in many classrooms of all ages! Good job :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the insight about the tool. I know that there are other ways to do this task, and certainly for some people, other tools are easier. This is a simple (maybe primitive, like you said) tool that can be used somewhat on the fly to create a social story with little editing, etc.
ReplyDeleteI think the topic you picked is a great one and I see the value. Your pacing and wording seemed on track with the best practices of creating social stories. Nice job.