Using the 4 Steps of Communication and the Social Thinking–Social Competency Model as a backdrop, attendees will learn about the role of social attention, interpretation, problem solving, and social responses as part of navigating the social world. We will explore how to teach and learn the evidence base for core teaching frameworks and a handful of unique and practical strategies based on the Social Thinking Vocabulary. Attendees will learn how one’s social attention to what is happening and the people in the situation can encourage understanding of the unspoken expectations for that social context. We also describe ways to teach interpreting and responding by making smart guesses and the relationship to social emotional learning.

Attendees will explore specific treatment strategies for how our bodies establish physical presence in a group (body in the group) and how we think with our eyes to gain awareness of the social environment, whether interacting or simply sharing space. Throughout the course, we emphasize how to make abstract concepts more concrete through clinical examples.

We’ll investigate how to teach conversational language by deconstructing the components, including how people share an imagination in the process. Attendees will also take a deeper look at how thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions are linked to social situations, the people present, and what is happening through the framework called Social Behavior Mapping. Attendees will also learn strategies for dealing with the size of the problem, flexible thinking, and self-regulation as we consider how to think more deeply about social concepts required for navigation and regulation in school, home, and online learning environments.

Content Disclosure: This course does not teach about any other methodologies or programs aside from the Social Thinking Methodology.

1. Describe an activity for teaching toward the first step of the Four Steps of Communication (e.g., thinking about others).
2. Describe an activity that uses visual supports for teaching individuals the three language components of a conversation: add-a-thought, ask questions, and supportive comments.
3. Explain what is meant by the Social Emotional Chain Reaction and give one example of how to teach it.

This agenda may change without notice.

Interventionists supporting ages 5 - young adult. At our conferences we share our latest frameworks, lessons, and strategies for teaching social thinking with a wide variety of interventionists, including: speech-language pathologists, special and general education teachers, social workers, counselors, clinical and school psychologists, occupational therapists, behavior specialists, and school administrators to name a few. It’s also used by family members and caregivers across settings.