Tuesday April 23, 2019
Teaching Social Thinking to Early Learners through Stories and Play-Based Activities
ages 4 - 7
Guide children’s early social learning and play experiences to strengthen social competencies and classroom learning. Using video examples, multisensory lessons, and play, we provide strategies to teach children core Social Thinking concepts to help them learn in a group, think about others, use their whole body to listen, etc. This course teaches parents and professionals to implement with fidelity our award-winning curriculum, storybooks, and music collection: We Thinkers! Volume 1 Social Explorers (formerly The Incredible Flexible You!). The vocabulary and strategies are adaptable for use with other activities and age-appropriate literature.This course introduces professionals and parents to the many important facets of development that underlie social learning in preschool- and early elementary-age children. What looks like pure fun to us has important social consequences for the developing mind. The ability to participate in collaborative play and learn as part of a group depends upon having a flexible brain, competent language ability, self-regulation, and solid social-emotional development as well as the executive functioning skills to multitask the use of it all. Educational standards highlight the importance of classroom listening and collaboration, which are hallmarks of developmental learning in preschool and early elementary years. This course is designed to give participants knowledge of the key researched components of social-cognitive development from birth to age 5 as they connect to the core concepts taught through our curriculum. Social-emotional growth and executive functioning/self-regulation—and their interactive impact on socio-communicative abilities—will also be explored from a research perspective. This course will focus on how to put the research and best practices of teaching social information into action. We will introduce five Social Thinking Vocabulary concepts that have been adapted for children ages 4-7: thoughts and feelings, the group plan, thinking with your eyes, body in the group, and whole body listening. We will explore methods to teach these concepts through storybooks, music, structured activities, and play. We will also look at different strategies for service delivery in a variety of settings. Strategies for home and school are designed for young children with average to strong language and learning abilities.
*Treatment refers to using conceptual and strategy-based frameworks to help individuals improve their social thinking, skills, and 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!