I enjoyed the readings this week as well as the digital story activity. In the "Digital Stories Targeting Social Skills for Children with Disabilities" article Cori More wrote, "When children experience difficulties in social areas, they may experience difficulties across many settings." This is true for people with and without disabilities. If you can't properly function in social setting then you will be very limited in life. Having good social skills can be beneficial to you in education as well as work. More also wrote about peer tutoring. I have had a lot of experience with the Montessori teaching ideology so I absolutely love peer tutoring. It is a good way to get students actively involved in their learning. Even struggling students can benefit from tutoring their peers. Having a student teach a skill can help them refine it in themselves.
My uncle is autistic and throughout the years he's had a lot of classes and been given a lot of tool to teach him how to interact in social situations. He has had many workers work one-on-one with him. They would take him out and teach him how to cross the street, wait in line, how to tie his shoes, and lots of other things. Whenever there was going to be a change in his schedule, that we were able to anticipate, we would slowly expose him to it. Whenever he got a new worker or when my grandmother would go out of town we would have to give him constant verbal reassurances. I chose to make my digital story about going to the store. For a while, whenever my grandmother took my uncle shopping with her he would expect to get anything he wanted. If she said no then he would try to sneak it. We had to work very hard for months to get him out of that habit.
I thinks that social stories can be very beneficial in the classroom. It is very important to use vocabulary that students can understand. Digital social stories with an audio narration of the story can help students who aren't strong visual learners. Having students make their own social stories about specific social skills that they need to work on would help engage them in the learning process. Having their families on board would help students carry the skills they learn out into the real world.
You did a great job on your social story. You were able to include several life lessons in one story such as you can't always get what you want and that's ok, you need money to get things and if you just take them it's stealing. This would be great to use with students before a field trip or when learning about shopping.
ReplyDeleteI really like your social story, it really allowed the students to understand that not every time you go shopping you can buy something and that's okay. It also expresses the importance of money and that without paying for something it's stealing.
ReplyDeleteI love how you created a social story that came from personal experience. I also like how you mentioned peer tutoring. You could have the students as a whole create a social story by using those methods.
ReplyDeleteI loved your topic and especiallyt he back story on how it was a personal topic that you experienced with your uncle. Do you think he would have benefited from something like this? I thought your pacing and wording was very clear. I might check the images a bit more to make sure they are the right size as some turned out grainy or hard to read (I would also start with a bit of an introduction or title slide as well). Otherwise, great topic and on track!
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