Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs: social stories

Showing posts with label social stories. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2011

AnyBook Reader -Off the Shelf Adaptable AT

The Franklin AnyBook Reader is designed to make any book and interactive, "read to me" book. Essentially you attach special stickers to the pages of books and then when you touch the pen to the sticker it plays back a self-recorded message.

The Franklin AnyBook reader could be used in so many ways for learners with multiple special needs. Here are a few I have thought of:

use with manual communication boards as a mid-tech AAC device
use with visual schedules or task strips as a prompting device
use with social stories as a means of independent access to text for non- or early readers
use with a cookbook to read recipes
use to say the Pledge of Alligiance
use for sequencing activities - be it math, phonemes or story sequencing
use to label colors for those with visual impairments
use to record messages from home to school and back

The Franklin AnyBook Reader come in a 15 or 60 hour edition, costing about forty to fifty five dollars. It uses double AA batteries to run and comes with 400 reusable, removable stickers.

You can even check out the AnyBook Reader Blog.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Comic Books for Social Stories

While at CEC I saw many social stories created in the twenty dollar program "Comic Life" (available win and mac). I loved the idea of creating social stories with photographs in a comic strip set-up but I was constantly thinking about all of the free comic book creation sites online (like My Comic Strip, Make Beliefs Comix, ToonDoo and more). Why was there not a free web 2.0 application that made comic books with photographs that could be used for this purpose?

Finally I found two online (with a little help from Go 2 Web 2.0). PikiKids and Comiqs. They may not be as fancy as Comic Life (I don't know I have never used Comic Life), but it does the job. I haven't had any time to really try these out (also comic based social stories aren't really appropriate for any of my current students), but I hope that you all will check them out and comment on how it goes.

Sample (not a social story, just a sample) of Comiqs:

The Sippy Cup from Jimslam on Comiqs

And here is a random sample from PikiKids (note that while this does not have speech bubbles you CAN put speech bubbles in):

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Social Stories Site

When I was an undergrad Social Stories were the new, hot technique for teaching students with Autism to hand different situations, especially social situations. I ran across this website, from the originator of Social Stories today and want to share it.

I found the sample social stories to be particularly useful in showing me some new ideas for ways to use them. There are also some ideas for writing your own and items for purchase.

Reading the site made me think about one particular time that using a version of a social story worked when nothing else had. The student was having a hard time differentiating between real and pretend, as well as talking about age appropriate topics. Note that the story was changed from 3rd to 2nd person for confidentiality, stories should not generally be in 2nd person. The story is below (or download in MSWord with pictures*):

Real and Pretend for _____.

Some things are real and some things are pretend.

REAL

PRETEND

Read the word real.

Read the word pretend.

You are real.

Batman and Spiderman are pretend.

College wrestling is real.

Pro-wrestling is pretend.

Our school is real.

Angel Grove School is pretend.

Karate teachers are real.

Ninjas are pretend.

Orcas are real.

Free Willy is pretend.

Power lifting is real.

Power Rangers are very pretend.

Adults learn that things that are real can be fun!

Babies and little kids like to think about pretend things.

Which one do you want to be?

We talk about things that are real in high school.

*file download available for 30 days, after which comment for the file to be e-mailed

Monday, November 20, 2006

Alternate Format Books and Stories

Here is a collection of links to adapted and alternative format books. Most are free, some have a fee. The type of format varies. For pay interactive books like Tumblebooks and Bookflix and professionally read audio book downloads check your local libraries web site; free access may be available with your library card. (This perma post updated March 4, 2010.) Another excellent list of online alternate format books is here.

Symbol Books