Topic > Teaching Strategies for Students with Disabilities

IndexSocial Story TrainingVideo ModelingGroup TrainingReferencesSocial skills are any skills, rules, and abilities that help you conduct interactions with others. Many people generally pick up on social cues over time and how one should react in certain situations. It is generally difficult for people with autism to develop these social skills. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a broad spectrum of conditions identified by challenges with repetitive behaviors, social skills, language, and nonverbal communication. Play is an important part of a child's cognitive development, children with autism have difficulty playing with peers. There are several practices that can help connect social and communicative interactions with peers, such as social stories, video modeling, and group training. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Play is part of how young children develop in social interactions with others. While most children discover these skills through play, children with autism spectrum disorder lack the ability to acquire the skills of the classic model of play development. One indication of autism spectrum disorder in the early years is a lack of pretend or imitation play. "Young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder tend to engage in more immature play (e.g., prolonged sensorimotor play), use toys and objects more rigidly or restrictively (e.g., repeatedly spin the tires of a toy car ) and have lower quality in their play skills.” Play is usually not observed in children with autism spectrum disorder because they do not have the skills of other children. Since children with autism spectrum disorder do not know how to interact in play, they usually choose something else to do besides playing with peers. There are ways in which the therapist can introduce play into different practices such as social stories Training when interacting and initiating certain meetings with other children, can become complicated for those with autism. Social stories or scripts are written patterns, examples or scenarios of interactions between classmates. Stories or scripts are read to students throughout the training process. They can be used to teach many social interactions between people and are particularly useful for introducing interactive play. Social shops for the game include statements, questions and answers in a given social situation. The stories are personalized for each student based on the assigned task and each story has an image to give additional support to the child. An experiment based on social stories questioned whether they were improving the social interaction of children with autism spectrum disorder during play. The social story intervention program was the best practice for educating students with autism spectrum disorder, and a single story was relevant for a group of children with autism spectrum disorder. There should be four types of sentences in social stories: descriptive, directive, prospective, and controlling sentences. Clear sentences can help identify what the child needs to do in that interaction. Social stories can help with all kinds of behaviors needed for children with autism spectrum disorder to achieve. Social stories give the child a real life situation he might encounter and give him the correct way to handle the situation. The success of historysocial depends on a number of factors such as targeted behaviors, reading level and motivation of the child. To get the best results from this type of intervention, children should have a first-grade reading level. Another way they can present social stories is through a virtual learning environment. This has been shown to make children with autism spectrum disorder more motivated and participate in a more enjoyable process. Illustrative cues can help them facilitate communication and also it is more interactive for students. Making virtual learning more interactive will hold students' attention better and stay with them longer. Children with autism spectrum disorder are more visual than anything else, which can also be demonstrated through video modeling. Video Modeling Video modeling is a practice that requires children to repeatedly watch a video on how to interact in play. It helps students with autism spectrum disorder because it can help capture attention on certain aspects of the task at hand. It is a favorite activity for students with autism spectrum disorder to use in interactions in a natural setting. The videos usually last from thirty seconds to four minutes. It has had a positive impact on a variety of skills including social communication, functional and motor skills. One way to encourage children with autism to play is through social skills training. An article “Teaching Functional Play Skills to a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder Through Video Self-Modeling” discusses the potential effects of video self-modeling and how it can increase functional play. The researcher set up toys for the child and encouraged him to play with them in a functional way. There were three sets of toys: farm animals, medical clinic and aid station. Every time the child played with them for the first time, it was recorded and edited. The final video was made for each toy and then all background noise was turned off. Before playing with each toy, the child was shown the video of it and then allowed to play. Based on Video Self-Modeling (VSM), the child showed improvement in his functional play. The VSM allowed the child to see himself playing with toys in correct functional play. He wasn't told how to play with the toys, he just watched the video. The VSM is effective in consistently increasing correct play actions when the child is presented with toys. No prompts were used in this practice and it has proven to be an effective source of intervention for a child with autism. Another study showed VSM to improve both social initiation and appropriate play with toys in a number of children with autism spectrum disorder. Imitation skills are important during a video modeling intervention. Children who do not possess adequate imitation skills are unable to play the game correctly. Social initiation is based on the child's imitation skills. “It may also be that more in-depth training in imitation skills is a prerequisite for successful performance.” To be able to carry out this type of practice, the ability to imitate must be present and in the study some children did not fully have that ability. Because some children did not fully master the imitation skill, the results of video modeling were not as positive. Group-Based Training Another way to teach social skills to children with autism spectrum disorder is10803-008-0628-9