Superflex®: A Superhero Social Thinking Curriculum Package

by Stephanie Madrigal and Michelle Garcia Winner
Comic Book by Stephanie Madrigal/Illustrated by Kelly Knopp

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Superflex®: A Superhero Social Thinking Curriculum provides educators, parents and therapists fun and motivating ways to teach students with Asperger Syndrome, high-functioning autism, ADHD and other diagnosed and undiagnosed social difficulties how to build social thinking skills. Superflex combines a book, comic book and CD to create a curriculum that develops in each student's brain their own superheroic thinking processes that can overcome the challenges in different social situations that arrive across the school and home day.

The curriculum works best with elementary school children (grades K-5) as well as with immature older students who respond to visual books. Prerequisite books to make this tool most effective include Thinking About You Thinking About Me and You Are A Social Detective.

The Superflex curriculum offers clear lesson plans to help educators, SLPs, other therapists and parents create a personalized Superflex Superhero Training Academy for their students. The students learn how each of them have Superflexible capacities in their brains that can overcome a Team of Unthinkables, such as Rock Brain, Topic Twister Meister and Mean Jean. And many parents and educators have found success allowing students to expand this team to address specific challenges.

The curriculum comes with a colorful 21-page storybook, Superflex Takes on Rock Brain and the Team of Unthinkables. This book tells the story of how Superflex came to be. The children will enter Superflex's town, Social Town, and learn about the cast of Unthinkables who are trying to overtake and rid the town of Superflex forever. Superflex and his sidekick dog, Bark, go on their first mission to try to save the citizens of Social Town. The curriculum package includes the Superflex curriculum, the storybook to be read and shown to students and a CD of all the worksheets and handouts to allow for easy printing of the colorful and engaging materials for your lessons.

SUPERFLEX IS ON HIS NEXT MISSION: Superflex and Bark (and the rubber chicken) are excited to announce... Superflex Takes on Glassman and the Team of Unthinkables! The curriculum package below provides the basis from which to teach the lessons in this new comic book! Prerequisite books to make Superflex most effective include Thinking About You Thinking About Me and You Are A Social Detective.

Superflex in the News!

oldtv
"Autism specialists...say it appears to be making a difference."
View Portland TV station feature on Superflex!

Why this curriculum has been so successful

Children with autism spectrum disorders, Asperger's, ADHD and like challenges have difficulty regulating their own behaviors in the moment. Superflex provides a fun forum in which they can explore their challenges and identify ways to modify their thoughts and related behaviors in different settings. Superflex empowers students to help themselves--reducing meltdowns and anxiety as the students flex their superhero powers.

Good social skills can be defined as "adapting efficiently in each context," meaning we have to read the hidden social rules in each social situation and then regulate our physical presence, eyes, language, emotions, reactions.

This requires highly flexible thinking. While some children learn to do this somewhat effortlessly, students with autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger Syndrome, ADHD, NLD and even advanced, so-called normal-thinking students, have challenges in recognizing and applying these concepts needed for social cooperation. "Social smarts" only occur when students incorporate all this information and regulate their bodies and minds to show he or she can effectively adapt to others across environmental contexts, demonstrating they are considering other people.

Students who do not learn this information intuitively, but who function with emerging language-thinking skills, need to be taught these core concepts more explicitly. Superflex and the Team of Unthinkables shows students when they are using their own "social smarts" versus when their brains are getting sidetracked in less social ways, as illustrated in the dominant thinking in the Team Of Unthinkables. Kids enjoy being superheroes in training, flexing and building their social thinking and social skills.

How is Superflex Taught?

Superflex is to be used after the instructor (teacher, parent, etc.) is familiar with the social thinking vocabulary. Our book, You Are A Social Detective, introduces much of this vocabulary. Superflex is to be read in smaller sections to students. It will take 2-3 days of reading 20 minutes at a time or so. The concepts of Superflex and the team of Unthinkables are taught across a series of many lessons starting with lessons about how the brain works, how social information is part of the brain, how we change behavior, what our brain is expected to do socially (Superflex) and then the thoughts that challenge our brains from doing our best (the Unthinkables). Each lesson stands on its own... and each lesson can take multiple sessions for the kids to really process and respond to. There is no endpoint for working on these concepts once they are introduced within the 15 or so lessons; the information is then considered, applied and worked on for the rest of time. While the lessons should be taught at a discrete time (20-40 minutes), the application of the lessons is 24/7 in teachable moments. The teacher will want to reinforce how much Superflex is showing up in the kids brains, rather than just talk about when the Unthinkables are lurking about. More on how to teach is explained in the curriculum. Superflex is part of the larger comprehensive program taught through Social Thinking.

Superflex has received praise in the field:

"Visiting a foreign country is full of challenges for the person who does not speak the language or know the customs. The hurdle is much the same everyday for persons who have social thinking problems, such as those with Asperger's Syndrome. The teacher, parent or other provider can find in `Superflex' a vehicle for explaining those invisible thoughts that `get in the way of getting along.'"
Betty R. Stockton, behavior intervention consultant, Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Special Education.

"`Superflex' is absolutely brilliant. My students are thoroughly enjoying the process of exploring their own world through the events and discussions we have had regarding `Social Town' and the `Team of Unthinkables.' From the very first therapy session I introduced `Superflex,' my students related to the characters and were able to openly and honestly discuss their own `Team of Unthinkables' in an extremely nonthreatening and meaningful manner."
Ann S. Meuel, a speech-language pathologist in the San Francisco Bay Area

ISBN-10: 0-9792922-4-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-9792922-4-8
Published by: Think Social Publishing, 2008
Superflex Curriculum Package: 106 pages plus CD
Superflex Comic Book: 21 pages

For those who bought the first run of Superflex (through May of 2008), the Un-Wonderer handout was missing from the curriculum. This can be downloaded here for free. Sorry for our error! All copies printed after May 2008 have the handout included in the book and CD.