Step Into My Sessions: The complexities of interacting with peers
Visual supports can help our students find their way with schoolmates.
For some students, recess, lunch, and after-school playground time is pretty easy – a time to connect socially, expend some energy, re-charge for whatever is next, or practice some play structure skills or sports. 🏃🏼➡️⚽
But for many of the students with whom we work, these less structured times can be confusing, challenging, and exhausting. Instead of a time to have a break, time on the blacktop can be filled with uncertainty and stress. 😣
Over the past month or so, one of my students has been struggling.
New at this school, he’s spent the first half of the year making connections. 🫱🏼🫲🏼 Now he is deep in the complexities of how to keep the friends he’s made. In the fast-moving 9th grade atmosphere, connections can be pretty fluid, with someone wanting to hang out one day, but the next, perhaps preferring to be with a different friend.
Lots of feelings have been coming up for my student, many opportunities to do what he feels is the best choice, only to find that it has gotten him into a bit of trouble. 🫣
Collaborating with school clinicians, he and I have been working on a SocialScale to clarify choices, so he can preview them before he goes out, and assess his level of success after lunch recess.
Over several weeks, we developed this SocialScale:
Solidifying abstract concepts.
What we discovered as we talked about this SocialScale was, that even though these were the student’s own words, when we dug down a bit, they indicated they were a bit confused about the differences – it was still too abstract. How do you tell the difference between the peach and the grey circles? 🤔 There’s so much involved – context, intonation, gestures, body posture – it’s not surprising that our students need concrete examples.
The student then asked “Can you find a video with examples we can watch?” You betcha!! 🎞️
We started with one that this student particularly likes: UP Mailbox Scene, by Pixar:
George didn't mean to hit the construction worker, but he couldn't manage his uncomfortable feelings.
George didn't mean to hit the construction worker, but he couldn't manage his uncomfortable feelings.
This student quickly identified that George’s reaction was in the grey circle on his SocialScale – even though he didn’t mean to hurt him. 📬 He understood that George was too mad and upset to stop. It was a mistake, after which, George felt embarrassed and ashamed.
You can see how we added this information to the SocialScale above – a great example of “same but different.”
We watched two more animations, stopping and noting where on the SocialScale a character was at particular moments. We used:
Bridge, by Ting Chian Tey
Maca & Roni: Snack Battle, by Kyungmin Woo
Our work that day helped clarify for the student exactly WHAT behaviors fell WHERE on the SocialScale as we explored actions in context – that’s how we can get the full picture. 🖼️ That’s just one of the gifts we get from a terrific animation! I’ll keep you posted on how our work unfolds…next important step: explore how HE is feeling by helping him explore his feelings in a supported atmosphere that incudes visual supports to help him keep info and ideas in working memory as we talk things through.
Want to learn more about SocialScales? Check out the info on my website, and come to Office Hours later this month!
Hope your April is filled with lovely blooms! 💐
