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MARCH 12, 2013 VCU WEBCAST
Services Provided By: Caption First, Inc.
>> AMANDA ARMSTRONG: Welcome. This presentation will focus on autism spectrum disorders and
evidence based practices that you can use to increase social skills in students with
autism. Take a look at this picture. You see different
size letters and words. When you first look at it, you see the word autism, right? Some
of the letters are large, some of them are small. Some have a lot of flowers, some have
few flowers. Autism in our children is a lot like this picture. The manifestation is very
different. So you have to look at a child with autism and think, okay, you have autism,
but let me see if I can find what the positive qualities are, find small flowers and make
them into big flowers. Deficits in social skills are one of the core features of Autism
Spectrum Disorders, and are a major source of impairment regardless of the intellectual
or language ability of persons with ASD. A lot of times we look at students with autism
and think, he can speak and she can speak and they are fine. They have social abilities.
That is not always the state. A lot of times we can see students who can speak are quicker
to be by themselves or regress on certain skills. It is much easier and more comfortable
for them to be alone than for them to try to use skills that they don't have.
They are going to be in various social situations, and if no one has prepared them for what life
can be like in those social situations, they may fail.
None of us like to fail. Do we? Social interactions are fundamental to our everyday life. They're
reciprocal. If I have certain social skills and I'm talking to you or looking to you or
smiling at you, and you never smile back, I'm probably going to quit smiling at you.
A lot of times you think about in a relationship, if you are trying to offer your love to someone
and we realize they are not loving you back, we are going to stop loving them. That is
the same with students with autism. They may find somebody that they really like or someone
may really like our students with autism but because they don't reciprocate these feelings
and emotions or even greetings, they don't build lasting relationships with those students.
We have to remember, very important, the social behaviors are learned. A lot of times we look
at our students and we skip over the social behaviors and look at the academic skills.
We look at their hitting, screaming, because those are all things that bother us, or all
things that are targeted by their SOLs or whatever.
But if they are not having social skills, they are not going to have lasting relationships.
And that is what matters when you go into the real world.
Most people are wired to connect to others and observe so that we can fit in. We naturally
imprint our behaviors on someone we admire. We want to be liked. If I see something in
you I like, I decide I'll do what she is doing so people like me too. We watch others. We
imitate them. Research has shown we also make decisions on what we don't want to imitate.
If you have a social behavior that I don't like, I may make sure that I don't imitate
that behavior. This type of cognition is impaired by students
with autism. They don't have the ability to differentiate what is the skill I should
show. We have to help them determine which skills they display in public, which skills
should they display for lasting relationships. Socially, most individuals with autism, they
may observe others socially, but not comprehend for the appropriate imitation. They may not
know what your body language is saying to someone else.
When they go to imitate it, is it not showing exactly what they want to show through their
body language, or they may not understand body language and physical boundaries. We
always see that with students with autism. Physical boundaries, either they want to be
too close or they want to be too far away. We have to teach them what is socially appropriate,
because the first interaction with someone physically is how you begin to build those
other relationships. They may have behaviors that interrupt their
ability to socialize. If I have various behaviors where I'm hitting myself or I'm swearing or
any of those type of behaviors, no one is going to want to hang out with me or be friends
with me because those behaviors interfere with our play time.
The results of these behaviors, students with autism aren't accepted by their peers. They
have challenges in turn taking. They may express, have problems expressing empathy. A lot of
times when you are talking to someone, you want them to empathize with you. Maybe they
don't understand the situation, but sometimes a simple head nod or uh huh, I get ya, can
indicate that they have empathy for you. Some small behaviors like that when we teach them
to our children with autism may help them to learn to demonstrate socially appropriate
behavior. If they feel like they can't be in certain
social situations and be productive and also valued, then individuals will isolate themselves
faster and will push them out of social situations. We have to make sure we give our students
the skills so that they are not bullied, because individuals realize they don't have those
skills, but also if they are bullied, they have the skills to speak to someone else and
let them know what is going on. So there is a lot to be said about teaching
someone social skills. I love this quote from Dave Hamrick. He said,
sometimes it was easier to not try. That is what happens with a lot of our students with
autism. They try, they try, they fail. What do they do? They give up.
Especially as they begin to get older into middle and high school, they see somebody,
try to make a friend with them, and then they decide I'm going to give up. We don't want
that for our students with autism, because as they begin to grow into adolescence and
teenage years and college or career, we see those relationships are the number one impact
on their success or their not success. When we are thinking about social behaviors,
we have to differentiate what is social and what is not social. If you think about coughing,
if I'm by myself and I cough, that is fine. I cannot cover my mouth. No one knows what
you are doing in private. But the minute I go into a social situation, I begin coughing,
what should I do? I should cover my mouth, or the thing these days is put your mouth
in your elbow, whatever you have to do. You want to make sure that behavior is socially
appropriate. That behavior that isn't always social becomes social. You have to look at
a behavior and decide how does that influence other people, and how do other people take
that social action. That is when a behavior becomes social. When
you are making a social behavior, you have to think about intentional instructions or
evidence based practices. You have to teach behavior that you want to
see increased. For students with autism, if we want them to increase their number of trials
for math problems, what do we do? We teach them.
We teach them over and over again, until they have mastered being able to do 20 math problems
without getting any wrong. We have to do the same for social behaviors.
We have to teach them over and over again in different situations, different ways. We
have to teach them so that they understand them, because if they don't understand them,
if they are not able to perform that skill in various situations, we are not going to
see that behavior as a success for them. Then you have adopted 24 evidence based practices
from the National Professional Development Center on autism. Those evidence based practices
are your golden key to working with students with autism, because they give you that guidebook
to say, all this other stuff that may not be great for our students with autism, there
are 24 practices that you know are going to be great for our students with autism.
Throughout those evidence based practices, you can go deeper and say, which of those
are going to be great for exactly what I'm trying to teach my student?
There are 11 of the 24 that are recognized to help children ages 3 through 18, that will
help them increase their social abilities. When you look at all of these, you think,
I can't use all of these. We don't need to use all of them. You have to find out which
one is great for that student, because every student won't perform well with each evidence
based practice. You want to make sure that you look at your
resources and make sure that you have the specific information that you need to implement
the practices. A lot of times we find that we try to implement something and it fails.
Are you implementing it with ability, are you doing it just as it should be performed?
In a second I'll show you the MP D.C. Website. You can go to that Website and see every step
for implementing these evidence based practices along with the other 13 that I removed.
You look at evidence based practices and say, I don't see applied behavior analysis on there.
Applied behavior analysis is the foundation of all of the evidence based practices. The
principles of reinforcement and behavior modification are embedded throughout the evidence based
practices. When you are applying those evidence based
practices, you want to make sure that, yes, I am using applied behavior analysis. When
you look at the steps for implementation, on the NPDC Website, you will be able to see
how the applied behavior analysis is embedded in there.
I'm going to give you a second to write down this hyperlink. This is a wonderful Website,
great resource for anyone who is new to autism or new to evidence based practices, because
you can begin to form an understanding, how do students with autism learn? What are the
most effective practices for teaching them? This Website is filled with resources so you
are not recreating the wheel. No one likes to recreate the wheel. The evidence
based practices are not necessarily appropriate for every learner. You don't want to look
at every learner. Can I say that again? Just stop, say it again. Okay.
Every evidence based practice is not necessarily appropriate for every learner. The practices
are most effective when carefully mapped to the learner's specific needs and their characteristics.
Let's say I've decided I love video modeling. I really do love video modeling. If I want
to implement video modeling, I need to make sure that my student attends to videos, that
they enjoy technology, that they will sit down for longer than one second and attend
to something so that they can learn. If I have a student who has no interest in
TV or videos or YouTube or any of that stuff, they are not likely going to attend watching
a video model. I may be able to get them up to that skill
through using first visual strategies or other evidence based practices and then implemented
video modeling. But that is not something that I'm going to want to start with if I
realize that they don't attend well. When you look at social skills like any other
skills, you want to say, is it a skill acquisition deficit? Does the student not have the skill?
They absolutely don't have it no matter what, I've never seen them try to perform it? Or
is it a performance deficit, which means the students has the skill but doesn't perform
the skill. You have to decide which one it is, before
you decide how you are going to teach it and exactly what you are going to teach.
Look at refusal versus inability. A lot of times we assume that our students with autism,
they are refusing something. But when you have difficulty or you don't understand, it
does cause lack of motivation and refusal, but if you don't have the skill, you can't
perform it. You have to look at factors in the environment, look at the skill and see
if it can be performed in the environment. Not every skill can be performed in every
environment. When we request certain skills to be performed of our students with autism
and they don't have the skill, a lot of times that results in a meltdown or behaviors that
we don't want our children to engage in. We have to make sure that we are not setting
them up to fail. We need to give them the tools before we expect them to perform the
tool. As we begin to dive into the evidence based
practices, here are some of the terms you need to know. The first term is the target
behavior skill. This is a skill or behavior that needs to be increased or decreased. A
target skill can be a positive behavior, such as giving a high five or saying hello, or
it can be a behavior that is nonpreferred such as kicking a chair or spitting or yelling
out loud. All of these behaviors can be targeted through
the evidence based practices. Then we move down to our baseline data. You can't find
out where you are going if you don't know where you are starting.
You want to look at the baseline data and observe the learner's behavior prior to beginning
the intervention. When I say intervention I'm meaning our evidence based practices.
That is your intervention. You have to decide where are we now, how many times did you say
hello now, how many times does he kick the chair now, so if I can decide my evidence
based practice that I put into place is helping that student.
Then we can look at prompting. This is the help you give to learners to assist them in
using specific skills. You want to make sure that you use that word "help" loosely. You
don't want to perform the skill for the student. You want to make sure that you are able to
see that they can perform the skill. Task analysis, this is the best way to teach a
student with autism, because you are going to break the skill down into smaller steps,
and then you are going to increase or decrease the steps over time.
You look at specific, observable and measurable ways to increase those skills, and you are
going to look at the student specifically to decide how do I need to break down the
skill. A student may need ten steps in order to go look to someone to give a greeting,
but there may be another student who only needs that broken down into three steps.
You have to look at the specific student, look at the current baseline data and their
skill, and decide how should I break down this task analysis?
Reinforcement is something that we use every day. What do you offer or what do you want
to give the student or offer them to increase behaviors? You can offer them tangibles. That
is something that you give them. You can offer them attention. Do I give you more attention
when you perform behaviors that I really like? It really depends on the student and what
their needs are. If you want to learn more about the principles of reinforcement, go
back to the NPDC Website. You can see the reinforcement procedures listed there step
by step on the Website. We come down to generalization. This is something
that we often forget with our students with autism, because they need to be able to perform
the skill in a real setting. We can sit here in this room and I can try to show you behaviors.
I can show that I can give a high five. I can say hello. I can smile. I wish I could
do a flip across the room. But whatever the skill is, if I can't do it in another setting,
then I can't use it. If you haven't taught me to perform that skill
at McDonalds or in the library or wherever the setting may be, I'm not going to generalize
it across settings. There is also generalization across people.
As teachers, we always get so excited when we can get a student to do something. I got
him to give me a high five or I got him to give me a smile. That is awesome. But how
can we teach them to smile at other people or give other students a high five.
That is when we get into the true essence of teaching, because then they are able to
use that skill. You want to focus on how to generalize those skills.
Going to look at peer mediated instruction intervention, and mainly because it is shown
to have positive effects on academic, interpersonal and personal social development, and it's
one of the largest most empirically supported type of social interventions for students
with ASD. Again, I gave you 11 different strategies
that you can use, but you have to go to the actual NPDC Website to review all of those,
because we can't do it in one hour. Peer mediated instruction intervention is
one of my favorite evidence based practices, mainly because it allows students with autism
to interact with their peers. A lot of times we think that when we build the social skills
and they are interacting with us that it's awesome. It is awesome, it is great they are
performing certain skills. But the majority of time we are with peers
that are around our age. Even as we get older, a lot of times we surround ourselves with
peers that are our age. We want to help students with autism develop those types of relationships
as well. Peer mediated instruction intervention teaches
typically developing peers ways to interact and help learners with ASD. You look at that
and think, typically developing peers? Yes. For this intervention, you are also going
to be teaching the typically developing peers, or the peer with the skill that you want to
teach the student with ASD. You really have to take time and make sure
that you are able to teach that other student the skill that you want them to perform when
they are with the student with autism. You are going to teach the learners with autism
to acquire new social skills by increasing social appropriate opportunities within the
natural environment. So in various environments, you can use peer
mediated instruction in the lunchroom, you can use it in the classroom, in the library.
With the students that I've used peer mediated instruction with, we try to start it out in
a smaller quiet environment, and then move it to an environment that may be a little
more loud or a lot of movement and things like that.
For instance, if we wanted to work on sitting beside a peer and having a conversation at
lunch, we may pull those two students and first let them have lunch in my classroom.
Then I'll take them back to the cafeteria and maybe have them perform the same skill
in the cafeteria, because the cafeteria we all know is a very loud place.
But you can get a lot of social skills in a cafeteria.
The peers are systematically taught ways to engage learners with autism. You are going
to make sure that you give them exact targets and skills that you want them to perform,
so that they can have the expectations of our students.
The first thing that you have to do is go through and find out what targets and skills
you expect from those two students. Peer mediated instruction interventions can
be implemented with pairs, or small groups of learners across the age range.
This is one that is also great because it goes from age 3 to 18, so it's something that
is great. We can probably all attest, we still learn from our peers even when we are older.
It's effective and clinical in school based settings, and effective in work settings,
because at work, when you first start a new job, you look at your peers around you and
decide what are they doing? That is what I'm going to do. They go here for lunch, I'll
go there for lunch too. That is how you learn socially appropriate behaviors for that setting.
Target responding to others, reciprocity, understanding others and interacting with
others in a group, you want to find peers that they like and peers that like them.
It is great to just pick your star student in the classroom, but if your star student
has no interest in this student or no interest in helping others, they are probably not going
to be the student for you to help implement peer mediated instruction intervention.
Let's look at the actual step for implementation on the evidence based practice list.
If you go to the NPDC Website, there are various things on the page, you can see the brief
package, the brief components, overview, evidence based step by step instruction, implementation
checklist and data collection form. I encourage you to go to the Website and check
out every package on there, because it is great information, and also they have already
done all the work. They have done all the resources, all the references. If you decide
you want to implement peer mediated instruction intervention, you can go directly to the Website
and find more resources that will help you to implement it.
For this we are going to look at the step by step instructions, because that is what
we would look at if we decided to implement this evidence based practice.
If you look at this list, this is right from the Website. One of the first steps is selecting
the peers. If you want them to find a peer, just watch them throughout the day. Watch
who they interact with naturally, who looks at them or who tries to tap them on the shoulder,
who do they smile at or grab at or what type of things do they do with other students in
the hallway, in the lunchroom, even in their very classroom.
Those are going to be our students that we target, because we already see that there
is some type of, maybe nonverbal relationship going on with them. They may look at them
a certain way, or if it's a student that helps them in the hallway, that is the student you
want to target for your intervention. Once you have selected your peers and you
see they have the good skills that you are looking for to teach your child with autism,
then you want to teach that peer. You have to train the peers. That is an important step
that goes back to that fidelity that we talked about. If you follow the steps for implementation,
you are going to see success with evidence based practices.
Once you train the student without autism, you go on to the next steps of the implementation.
If you go to the Website, you can see all of the steps for implementation.
Another great thing about the Website is that they have data sheets for you. You are going
to try to take a baseline data first. Remember you don't know where you are going unless
you know where you are coming from. First we have to decide where do we start?
How do they get hidden needs met now? Do they do that through verbal interaction? Through
touching someone? How do they get their needs met now?
What type of tools do we need to give them to be successful? Because in order for them
to have a social interaction, we may have to first help them have some language or teach
the typical peer how to understand how they use their picture book or how they use their
voice output device. All those things have to be taken into consideration when you are
beginning to implement the program. Another great resource that's just been a
great tool in a lot of schools across Virginia and across the nation, is the angst modules.
These are training modules to assist you with implementation, and I direct you to this Website.
When you go there, you go to the modules list. You can see all, there are about 41 modules
that are listed to help you learn to implement evidence based practices and to help you learn
from various experts across the U.S. how students with autism learn.
For instance, the peer mediated instruction intervention, there is an entire module on
line that can help you learn to implement that. They have videos embedded on there.
They use the exact steps for implementation that come from the NPDC Website. It is a great
tool. I urge you to go there. It is absolutely free.
Once you go on there and find out, create yourself an account, it is free and a great
resource for you to share with others. As we are targeting skills for our students
with autism, we want to make sure the skills are age appropriate which are valuable to
their peers and others around their age. I want to make sure we are teaching them those
type of skills that they are going to need to have successful relationships. Because
if we think about why we are teaching social skills, social skills need to move forward
to social competence. So you begin with just those basic greetings
of, hello, how are you, and high five and all that kind of stuff. But then you move
towards playing together and actually having social interactions.
That is where we want our students to move towards, and go beyond those basic social
skills. If you look at students who are age 4 through
7, some of the social expectations they have of their peers is they want to play with them.
They want you to share and care about them and play dress up or hug each other. Those
are things that their peers are going to expect from them.
When you are teaching them social situations or social skills, these are the type of settings
you want to teach them in. You want to teach them while playing how to have a social interaction.
You want to teach them how to share. That is a social interaction, because if you are
with someone who never shares and always hogs the one Thomas tank engine in the classroom,
no one is going to want to play with you or will take the Thomas before you get there.
Age 8 through 10, you want to be nice and trustworthy and playing with them and helping
each other and sharing. A lot of the foundation skills that you start teaching when a child
as a toddler, they move on to middle school and elementary school and help those children
to have successful relationships. As you move up to 11 15, your peers wants
you be respectful and trustworthy, funny, cool and nice. A lot of times you wonder how
can you define respectful? You can't define that, because what is respectful to one person
may not be respectful to another. But if you work with students and teach them
some of the skills they need to demonstrate respect, then they will be able to exhibit
those in various situations. Respect will be something as simple as holding the door.
How many times do you make eye contact with somebody because they hold the door for you?
And you say, thank you, if you have good social skills. How many times have you held the door
for someone and they just walked through and you look back and say, well, you're welcome.
Because you realize that they don't have the social skills to say thank you for you holding
the door for them. Age 16 through 18 and moving into college,
you want your friends to be trustworthy and have similar interests as you and listen to
things and be dependable and fun and kind. When you look at the similar interests, that
is important for students with autism as they begin to move into later adulthood and adolescence
even, because they oftentimes don't have similar interests that some of their peers.
Sometimes we need to create those or introduce them to various things so they can have things
to talk about, because if my favorite thing is strawberry shortcake and I'm in college,
that is going to be hard for me to find another person on campus who wants to talk about strawberry
shortcake. The same with a lot of the doors and things like that. So you find strategic
ways to try to introduce and create interest to other things that are age appropriate for
our students. That is to help them have peer valid social
skills because we think we are cool, but we are really not that cool, especially to middle
and high school students. We are not that cool. Go to the peers and find out, what type
of things are you guys interested in? What are you playing these days? What are you watching
on TV? All those type of things are going to be things that you can try to introduce
to your students. And perhaps they will find interest in one of them or even they will
engage with them to receive some type of reinforcement. So make sure you are consulting with peers
and getting input on goals and priorities that you want to teach. Those peers around
your students in the general classroom or typical developing peers are a great resource
for you when you are trying to build social skills in students with autism.
Back to the evidence based practices, there is a long list of them. I want to emphasize
with you as much as possible, make sure that you go to the NPDC Website and see what type
of students these are best for, so that you are implementing something that is going to
be great for that student, because it takes a lot of time to implement evidence based
practice with fidelity. I don't want to encourage you to waste your
time or spend time implementing something that you are going to have to go back and
redo. There will be times that you will try things
and it won't go the way that you want it to go, like the peer mediated instruction intervention
may not be successful initially. But if you pair evidence based practice with another
evidence based practice, you can be more successful. If you have a student who loves visual supports,
I can use visual supports to teach them how to interact with their peers. That is one
example of how you can pair evidence based practices. If I have a student who is not
thrilled on the situation of interacting with their peers, but they love to look at their
iPad and look at videos, maybe I create video models of peers interacting, and then I show
them that example, and then I take them into the setting and actually expect them to interact
with their peers. You can find different ways to use one, two,
three evidence based practices to help our students be more successful.
You want to match the social interaction programs to the students' needs and settings. You don't
want to expect them to order a cup of coffee in the cafeteria. They need to go to Dunkin'
Donuts or McDonalds to order a cup of coffee. Teach them those skills that they need in
the environment they are going to use them, because then they will be more likely to learn
them and generalize them and actually use them.
Socially competent students and children differ in many ways. Schools and classrooms, they
can vary in various circumstances and with various needs.
You have to look at what is the circumstance, what are their needs, how do I target? You
want to establish reasonable social interactions. I can't expect that today you sit in a corner,
you don't speak to anyone, and tomorrow you will be in the cafeteria socializing with
three people at one time. That is going to overwhelm anybody and make
them shut down, and then we are going to have a hard time getting you back into the cafeteria.
We have to have reasonable expectations and go back to that one slide we talked about
task analysis. What are the step by step instructions that we need to provide for the student to
get them to the level that they need to get to.
We have to be sensitive to local social interaction, norms and conditions. A lot of times with
our students, we may not know what their social norms are at home in their culture. We have
to make sure we talk to parents. So this may be a social expectation we are placing on
our student that is just not a norm for them. We expect them to perform it, but there is
no way for them to generalize it or practice it in other environments at home.
We talk to parents and others around the students to determine what are the norms for this student?
What are the norms for their culture for them, for social interaction?
Programs for interaction, quality as well as quantity. I don't want you high fiving
every single child in the hallway, because half of those students aren't even going to
recognize you or make eye contact with you. I want to look for quality relationships.
If we think about ourselves, think back to you, how many really good friends do you have
that you are able to depend on always? Probably not that many. You can probably get them all
on one hand. But with our students with autism we want them to be friends with every single
person in the school. That is not the case. If we can build them a social interaction
and a friendship or relationship with one student, they now have almost as many as I
have. So you really want to make sure that you are looking at the quality as opposed
to quantity. Select the peers carefully. I can't emphasize
this enough, because we don't want to select those peers that have behaviors that you are
not excited about, or that student who is being sent to your room because they have
behaviors in another room. You want to select peers of great quality.
Not to say some of those students that have behaviors, they can really turn it around
when they are put in a position to be a role model for other students. But you want to
make sure that that is the case prior to you putting them with that student, because that
student is now in a situation where they are peer model for the student with autism, and
in the hallway, no matter what they are doing, the student with autism is going to look at
that student as a model. Make sure you select peers very carefully.
Reduce problem behaviors in advance. Make sure you get all behaviors down as low as
possible that could interfere with social interaction. If I'm constantly hitting or
kicking or screaming, I'm not going to be able to have a social interaction with anyone.
Provide ongoing support and monitoring. Once you teach a skill, you have to continue to
teach that skill or expect that skill, so that you can maintain it. The reason that
we lose a lot of the skills that we learn in middle school and high school and even
college, in regards to academics, is because we don't maintain them. We don't use them
ever again. With students with autism, if there are social
skills that you teach them and you want to try to maintain 'em, expect them often. Once
the child learned to greet you when they walk in your door, that is the expectation every
day. You don't allow them to go weeks and weeks without displaying that expectation,
then all of a sudden decide I want you to speak to me today.
That is going to be hard, because I haven't used that skill in a month. You want to make
sure that you are continuing to support them and monitoring them to see if they are able
to display those skills. Remember to task analyze the skills. You have
to break them down into small steps and teach them in different ways; as you differentiate
for academic skills, you want to differentiate for social skills.
Go back to your data before. You want to take data before, and you want to take data after
and decide how is the skill going. Are they actually making progress? Do I need to go
back to the drawing board and select a different evidence based practice?
Those problem behaviors, I can't emphasize it enough, have to be reduced first. Until
you reduce those problem behaviors, you are going to have a hard time with teaching a
child any other skills. If I constantly have my hands in front of my face or I'm moving
or can't be still, it is going to be hard to get me to sit down and shake someone's
hand or sit down and make eye contact with someone.
The first thing you have to do is get problem behaviors out of the way that are interfering,
because they can be like this, a big problem in the way.
People with strong social skills are, often have more meaningful relationships. They are
happier and have greater self esteem. One of the things you always think about when
you go somewhere new or when you change jobs or move or, who am I going to talk to? Who
am I going to hang out with? What are the type of things I'll be doing? That is the
same with students with autism. We want them to have someone to hang out with, something
to do. We want to help them have greater happiness and greater self esteem. They have desire
to participate in social situations. Sometimes they don't have the skill. Some students do.
We have students on both sides of the spectrum. Some have a lot of social skills and may want
to be very social, but a greater portion of them don't have the social skills. We have
to look at the student and determine do they not have the skill and truly want friendships
and relationships, and how can I give them an overall better quality of life?
I love this cartoon, because that is what we do a lot of times with our students in
special education in general, with all types of disabilities. We put big expectations in
place for them, and then they get left behind. We don't want to leave our students with autism
behind when it comes to social skills. It's going to help them build social relationships
and move on to a greater place in life with the self esteem and their self awareness.
Social skills is something so important to target with students with autism. Don't miss
the boat with your students with autism. These are the references I used. Thank you
so much for joining me for this webcast, especially for a subject that is near and dear to my
heart. I encourage you to continue working with our students with autism and trying to
increase their social skills. There is a great resource attached. Download
that resource and decide how you can use it when you begin to implement social skills
for your students with autism. Also I'm going to be available after this presentation on
the web board, so that you can ask questions and I'll get back to you with the answers.