Thursday March 19, 2020
The Informal Dynamic Assessment and Core Treatment Strategies
ages 5 - young adult
Delve into the mind of a person with social learning challenges! Our Social Thinking Informal Dynamic Assessment includes four unique assessment tasks, shown through video, to uncover how individuals process and respond to social information in real time. Then, learn strategies to improve social competencies to use in treatment plans and/or at home. Finally, explore two core Social Thinking frameworks and strategies for use at home and school: Social Behavior Mapping and the Friendship Pyramid and related ideas for expanding treatment using these tools.We begin the day by exploring how to better understand the minds of individuals with social learning challenges when traditional standardized tests fall short. We introduce the Social Thinking Informal Dynamic Assessment (ST-IDA), a series of tasks with corresponding templates described in Michelle Garcia Winner's book Thinking About You Thinking About Me, 2nd Edition. The dynamic tasks included in the ST-IDA examine the way the individual approaches social communication, executive functioning, and problem solving in real time. The ST-IDA can be a useful tool for initial or three-year testing and can provide valuable insight to all members of the educational or support team.
Results of the ST-IDA can help to uncover the link between social thinking challenges and social and academic learning. We provide a detailed checklist for two assessment tasks, which serves as a catalyst to guide more meaningful observations. Deeper observations, in turn, lead to developing more meaningful treatment* programs. Discussion related to the video footage of the informal assessment tasks will highlight how stakeholders (e.g., parents, diagnosticians, paraprofessionals, teachers, counselors, therapists, etc.) can work more effectively with those we aim to help. Parents and professionals applaud the highly practical nature of this workshop.
In the afternoon, we will review two practical treatment frameworks. The first, Social Behavior Mapping (SBM), is a visual framework that teaches social responsibility by highlighting that social expectations occur in a given context based on the situation and people. SBM enables individuals to discover what is expected or unexpected in a social situation while also learning the impact their behavior has on others’ feelings. How others feel about our behavior also impacts how they treat us and ultimately affects our own feelings! SBM has been widely adopted for use with all ages. This core Social Thinking treatment framework reflects our cognitive behavioral teaching style. Audience members will create their own Social Behavior Map as part of the training.
To help individuals understand the difference between friendly and friendship we have a visual treatment framework called the Friendship Pyramid. We will delve into five different levels of relationship development starting with the importance of initiating and responding to greetings with people who are not “friends.”
To round out the day, we will describe a four-phase social competency pathway to guide our students as they engage in a social learning process.
*Treatment refers to using conceptual and strategy-based frameworks to help individuals improve their social competencies.
At this conference, earn continuing education units/credits/clock hours at no additional cost! Each course offers 6 hours of instruction and each attendee will be given a certificate of attendance and a course agenda for their records.
We are proud to be a continuing education provider for Speech-Language Pathologists, Social Workers, Marriage and Family Therapists, Clinical and School Psychologists, and Certified Counselors, such as Licensed Professional Counselors, Licensed Mental Health Counselors, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselors, and others.
We offer continuing education units/credits/clock hours through:
- ASHA: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
- CES: Commonwealth Educational Seminars
- NBCC: National Board for Certified Counselors
- And more!