Sharing

I wanted to talk a bit about how we're facilitating sharing in the classroom with our students, in light of talking about social interaction goals on IPPs. Sharing is a difficult skill, as it involves negotiation (asking for a turn, a peer responding yes or no, and sometimes accepting an alternative) and waiting (impulse control). In our classroom, we are using visuals to support turn taking with preferred toys or during preferred activities. For example, we use a sentence strip during circle time to visually display whose turn it is to pick a song during song choice time, as this is a preferred activity and some students find it challenging to wait their turn. The visual says "it is ____ turn", and in the blank space a student's photo can be placed to signal to everyone else whose turn it is. Along with turn taking visuals, waiting visuals and sharing solution visuals are also helpful (i.e. some solutions to sharing are to: use a timer, split up the toy, trade toys, or pick a different toy).

Another important tool we often utilize in the classroom is social stories, as they can give more information about social situations and what the expected behaviors are surrounding these situations. For example, a sharing social story that we read to some of our students talks about strategies for how to problem solve when 2 students want to play with the same toy, instead of arguing or grabbing. We try to practice sharing in many aspects of our school day, as we know this is a challenging skill that all of our students need support with.

Another strategy to support sharing that I want to incorporate into our classroom is turn taking projects. One project could be building with lego, with 2 students building a structure together from a photo. The structure would be made of 2 colors of lego but each student is only given one color of lego to add to the project. This would encourage the students to take turns building the structure together to complete the task.

Important dates this week:
Wednesday, October 16 is Spirit Day (Retro Day) & Fun Lunch.