Social Stories

Do you want a few more sites that you can use for Social Stories?

Autism 4 Teachers is a great site with alot of different types of downloads. This site has SO many wonderful resources that are free and very helpful. Here is one of the pages devoted to Social Stories. Try some of these.

You also need to look at Squigly's Story Builder. Thiese are not social stories but simple stories that can be personiized with names and other information. It is a page off of Squigly's Playhouse. This site also has alot of different downloads like puzzles, games and crafts.

Here are some simple stories by topics - these do not have visuals but if you are new to developing stories it will give you an idea how to write them.

These stories from Fairfax County Schools are very easy to use. They are complete with visuals and have very few words - just print and form a book.

This will help you get started. Don't you just love the internet!

Free Book Downloads

Have you seen Reading A-Z.com? Well, go check it out. If you sign up you get Free book downloads - complete with worksheets for a limited time. You can sign up and pay to become a member and receive access to thousands more materials but can also just check out the free downloads.


Included on this site are materials on Guided Reading and Wordless books. Wordless books have wonderful uses for our students with autism. In fact if you are familiar with the ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule) used by psychologists for autism assessment - Wordless books are part of the tool kit used with this assessment.

Here is a good website for Preschoolers. It is called Lil'Fingers Storybooks. This site includes very simple online picture books that are easy enough for preschoolers to use and teach early academic skills

Reader Tips

OMAC Readers are the Best! I've had such wonderful comments and website tips from so many readers and I'd like to pass on that information to you.

Kids can dream is a great site built by a high school senior who has 2 brothers with autism. This site has a huge bank of visual social stories created by a wonderful young lady.

Behavior4Kids is all built around Social Learning and behavior. Good visual examples of all kinds of material.

Classroom Timer Download is a free download of a large timer for use on your computer. Very easy to download and very easy to use - complete with an audible buzzer. Great for you in special education classrooms. Also has things to purchase but the timer is free and very handy.

Online Lectures on Dan Marino CHILDNETT.TV This is a site with a huge number of videos and video lectures on autism and other developmental disabilities.

Visual Symbols for Communication Boards. This has alot of pictures for use with communication boards. Great site.

Thanks for all of the emails alerting me to wonderful sites out there that are created to help us help our children with special needs.

More Freebie Teacher Tools

I love things that will make my life easier - We all struggle with not enough time to do what we want to do for our kids with autism. We can't find what we need and sometimes you just need to make it yourself but who has the time.

Rubrics are great for students with asperger's syndrome. The students need to know what is expected of them to get what grade - But have you ever tried to make one? Good grief! It takes forever.

So here is a site you need to check out:

Free Teacher Tools.

More Rubrics

Here is another for different kinds of stuff:

Teacher Tools

More Teacher Tools


So now in your spare time you can browse these sites and find ways of making your life easier.

Teacher Tools

Tikatok

This is the coolest thing.....check out Tikatok. Look at the Social Story that I created. Excuse the story - I created it with the photos in about 10 minutes.



Click on the book cover to turn the pages.

You can create these books with your students to teach social skills. You can then order them in soft or hard cover OR view them full screen in your classroom. The one thing you can not do is print them out yourself.

But WOW.....what a great Social Story! Use your LCD projector to project it from your computer to the screen in your classroom and presto - a wonderful group social story.

Check it out.

(PS - isn't my niece beautiful??

Summer Time Plans

Oh....summertime. We love it and so do our students.

But let's not forget to keep the students on some sort of schedule for the summer. We do not want regression but we also know that kids need to be kids regardless of the struggles they have with certain types of disabilities.

The children need to play, get lots of sleep, enjoy leisure activities but they also need some structure.

Teachers love to provide parents with ways of dealing with the long summer break. Here are a few tips and resources that you as teachers can provide to the parents of your students.

Here is a great website that you can refer to the parents of your students or use in your classroom for easy visual schedules. They can use this to make chore carts, visual schedules for tasks or weekly activity schedules.

Sparkle Box is a great site with lots and lots of free picture symbols for download. Parents can use this to create all kinds of schedules and supports for the summertime. Oh, yeh....you'll love it too!

More Visual Aids for Learning. This is specifically for the home and will be very helpful for the parents of your students.


One of the things that you could do as a parting activity (I know you are saying
"Cindy...Are You Crazy-Have you lost your mind - Do You know how many IEP's I have left to do???!!")



But I'm going to ignore that and keep going (smile)....



Invite the parents in for a make and take for the summer. Take two hours on a Friday, let your students get it ready (great vocational skill), bake brownies to serve (great functional skill), and host the Make and Take for the summer session. Have them choose from 1 visual support they could use for the summer, provide the materials to make it, and let the students help their parents.


Just try it.

PDD Screening Questionnaire

PDD or Pervasive Developmental Disorder is a broad category within the DSM-IV that covers Autism Spectrum Disorders. Childbrain.com is a great website by Child Neurology and Developmental Center that offers an online screening questionnaire that helps to provide additional information about PDD.

I thought long and hard about posting this link. There is a fine line between Teachers and Parents assuming the role of the medical professional in diagnosing their child without getting the professional advice and just gathering information to become more knowledgeable.

These are my warning remarks before looking at this site:

DO NOT use this screening tool to diagnosis your child or student.
DO use this screening tool to help guide you in determining areas of weakness.
DO NOT use this as an assessment tool to get special education services.
DO use this to help you learn about the red flags in the area of PDD.

Okay...I feel better now and will give you the link. Being a former psychologist myself I am very careful about these types of informal screenings - they are harmless as long as you use them correctly. They ARE NOT standard based assessment tools with a high degree of validity and reliability.

According the ChildBrain.com you should use the link below and open the separate page for the questionnaire. There are links on the page that define the grading and scoring to help you decide on the correct answers. After answering all questions, you click on "Score" at the end to reveal your score.

Once you have answered all questions and the score appears, you should print the page and bring the results to the physician appointment as one tool for discussing symptoms. The ChildBrain site also states that the score is NOT indicative of a definitive diagnosis by itself. It is helpful though.

Use the site below and look for the PDD assessment/screening tool.

http://www.childbrain.com/pddq6.shtml