Speaking for ASA Alaska in Fairbanks on Thursday

Michelle Garcia Winner

Thursday: Speaking events

Speak from 8:30am – 3pm

Also Evening event (2 hours)

Implementing Social Thinking Concepts and Vocabulary: A Day to Develop Team Collaboration ( 5 - young adult )

Topic:

Learn over 20 unique Social Thinking Strategies and three core Treatment Frameworks! Help individuals advance their ability to understand the social context and tailor their behaviors accordingly. Helpindividuals improve their social observational skills, learn core Social Thinking Vocabulary concepts to encourage social communicative competence to work better in groups, andshare an imagination to better understand and respond to others. Discover tools for teaching self-regulation, executive functioning, emotional understanding and theory of mind/perspective taking. Work in teams to develop lesson plans to implement new strategies in your home, clinic, or classroom the very next day. People love this hands-on, engaging workshop!

Long Description:

It’s time to get practical! Learn about three core Treatment-Based Frameworks and over 20 unique Social Thinking Strategies based on Social Thinking Vocabulary and related activities! Teach students to better interpret and respond to their social world by exploring how to engage in richer social observation and making smart guesses to discover the hidden social rules. Learn systematic and logical ways to encourage social responsibility, by learning about our own and other’s social thinking. Explore how our thinking about the situation and what we know about others, can help us to navigate our creation of “expected behaviors” which also create “good” or “comfortable thoughts” in others. Teaching how we make these abstract concepts more concrete by reviewing a variety of activities provided through clinical examples. Our evidence-based Social Thinking Vocabulary is the backbone of Social Thinking teaching programs. Research published in 2008 in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Crooke, et al.) demonstrated how individuals benefited from learning these concepts. The study found that once children were taught how to think about the concepts, they were able to generalize the information.

Social Thinking’s Treatment-Based Frameworks and Strategies can easily be used in PBIS and Social Emotional Learning programs for all students.

Social Thinking’s Motivational Developmental Tools such as The Incredible Flexible You curriculum for 4-7 year olds, You Are A Social Detective, Superflex: A Superhero Social Thinking Curriculum will also be reviewed to help participants see how these materials incorporate key lessons taught throughout the day.

Participants will work in groups to learn how to use Social Thinking concepts across settings, creating one or two of their own lesson plans. We explore how to make lessons applicable across a variety of environments, and focus on enabling students to apply these lessons across their lives. Most lessons reviewed are explained in the book, Think Social! A Social Thinking Curriculum for School Aged Students (Winner, 2005), which is used in school districts around the world.

Social Thinking encourages us to recognize how the social mind is not only used to help us adapt our social skills more effectively but also when interpreting socially based information presented through student’s curriculum or in popular media. For more information on this, attendees can read:

•Thinking About YOU, Thinking About ME

•Inside Out: What Makes a Person With Social Cognitive Deficits Tick?

Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

  1. Describe why the context or situation is key for figuring out social expectations and related social skills.
  2. Describe the core five steps of Social Behavior Mapping to help teach social responsibility.
  3. Define at least five Social Thinking Vocabulary concepts.
  4. Describe how Social Thinking Vocabulary concepts facilitate generalization across settings.
  5. Describe the difference between sharing an imagination and a singular imagination as these relate to conversations and reading comprehension.
  6. Using one or more of the strategies reviewed in the workshop, describe what you can do differently with your student tomorrow.

Friday Speaking Event

Speak from 8:30 am to 10:00am

Focusing on Teens and Adults with Subtle but Significant Social Learning Needs

Explore how to help teens and adults with diagnosis such as ASD, Asperger’s Syndrome, ADHD, Twice Exceptional, etc. who have more “subtle but significant” social learning challenges learn to establish and manage their own public relations and self-management campaigns. We will also discuss related mental health challenges such as social anxiety. Strategies to encourage motivation and guide learning about one’s own executive functioning, perspective of self and others, friendship and the subtleties of social communication will be reviewed with case studies, related video, and hands-on lessons.

Learning objectives

  1. Learner will define what is meant by Subtle but Significant Social Learning Challenges.
  2. Learner will describe how a person’s “Nowness of NOW” prevents them from finding their own motivation to pursue longer term goals.
  3. Learner will describe 3 of the levels on the Friendship Pyramid and how this information can be used in treatment.

1

Social Thinking–Think Social Publishing 3031 Tisch Way, San Jose, CA 95128 408 557 8595 Fax: 408 557 8594