December 15, 2017

Hello Families!
We have had a busy couple of months! Our lunch group is learning amazing skills. One of our new targets is called, "Idiom of the Week." Often, students who have difficulty with social cognitive skills have a hard time understanding ambiguous language. Idioms and other figures of speech can be difficult to interpret. So, we are working on one idiom each week so we can practice identifying language that might not mean what it says.

Feel free to enforce this skills at home and talk about the meanings of each idiom you use! I know this winter break I am going to be a "couch potato!"

Also, we are working on our social filters! Superflex visited Mrs. Hintz's room in November and we talked about filtering our thoughts. It is okay to have positive and negative thoughts, but some of the thoughts we have we need to filter, or keep in our minds. We do this because our thoughts might hurt someone else's feelings or create negative consequences for us such as losing friends. Not COOL! Her is the anchor chart we used in class. We worked with partners to decide if the sentences we received were thoughts that we should just "think it" or "think it and say it." We will continue reinforcing these skills with students as sometimes we forget to turn on our social filters.

We have continued our work with conversational skills and brought back the conversation tree from last year. This tree helps us to see how much we are talking compared to other friends in the group. It helps us remember to avoid BOREDOM ALERTS by talking too much about our own topics. It also helps us to remember to ask friends questions (defeat UnWonderer!).

Lastly, we have been a bit distracted lately and have wanted to talk about all the things that are making us excited...SNOW! HOLIDAYS! SNOW! VACATION! CHOCOLATE! A couple of Unthinkables are working together (yes, they are TEAMING up now!) to try to get us distracted! It's Brain Eater and One Sided Sid!  Nooooooo!  So, Superflex visited Mrs. Hintz's room and we discussed some strategies we need to start using to make sure we are keeping our brains in the group and getting our work done. This is tricky, but we know we can do it! Here are the strategies we developed as a class!

Overall, you should be very proud of your superheros! Their brains are becoming more and more flexible each day! Have a wonderful Holiday season families!
-Mrs. Meinecke and Mrs. Dusel

October 16, 2017

Hello Families!
We're sorry it took so long to get this post out. It has been a very busy start to the school year! Mrs. Dusel and I are excited that the third graders wanted to continue their lunch group and were very excited to continue!  They agreed that we have many Unthinkables, which we are still learning strategies on how to defeat! We started off our lunch group by coming up with our Lunch Group Norms. Students decided together on awesome skills such as listening to the speaker, taking turns talking, using manners, and keeping your brain in the group! We decided that we should start by practicing our conversational skills. After all, we need these skills to have book group discussions, math group discussions, and just chats with friends. We talked about how conversation is a lot like a "tennis game." You and your partner have to share something in a back-and-forth manner. If one partner talks all the time (One Sided Sid ALERT!), the other partner will have a total BOREDOM ALERT!  So, we have been using this anchor chart...

...to help us remember the rules of conversation.
We have discussed the importance of asking friends questions (Defeating Un-Wonderer) and recalling the facts they tell us about themselves. By remembering information about friends, we can ask them questions on other days to start a conversation. It helps us add to our "People Files" or "Friendship Files" (see right) about our friends. This also makes our friends feel good about us and want to continue to be our friends. Ask your third grader about playing "spaghetti and meatballs" in lunch group. They are doing a great job asking friends questions, recalling fact about friends, and sharing out to the group what they have learned about their friends. Practicing this during dinner time or family time would be a great way to carry-over these skills into the home setting. I bet there is a lot about Mom, Dad, and siblings that your third graders don't know. 

Have a superflexible week! 
-Mrs. Meinecke and Mrs. Dusel

June 7, 2017

Hello Families!
This has been a busy month focusing on how to defeat One-Sided Sid and Un-Wonderer!  These Unthinkables work together to make sure we forget to ask friends questions to get to know more about them.  They also make us keep talking about ourselves...on and on and on...Oh NO!  This can create a Boredom Alert!!  One of our favorite activities to help us learn to defeat these Unthinkables was an activity called "Conversation Tree. During a conversation, we each place our colored sticks on the tree to show when we contributed to the conversation (with a comment or a question). This helped us visually see who was talking too much or perhaps, not enough. We learned a lot about what kinds of questions are "juicy questions." We certainly wouldn't want to ask friends about washing machines...we had a big laugh about this one! Here is a picture of one of our conversation trees (each student represents a different color).


This has been a great year in lunch group!! The kids have worked so hard to improve their social cognitive skills and are excited to continue to grow those skills next year. They have asked if we will continue to have Superflex lunch group and I told them we will! Please let them know this to ease any worries over the summer. Mostly, have a wonderfully social summer! Remember to use the social cognitive language we have been practicing. Some of the big ideas include:

• expected or unexpected?
• big/medium/little problem or just a glitch?
• does my reaction match the size of my problem?
• being flexible...defeating Rock Brain when our plan needs to change
• using calming strategies after identifying what Zone you are in
• what is the group plan? use your eyes/ears/brain to figure this out
• brain in the group (thinking about what the group is doing)
• body in the group (keeping your body in the group)
• conversational skills: ask-a-question and add-a-comment strategies
• build your friendship file by asking friends questions
• think it, say it?  (some things we can think, but we shouldn't say because it could hurt someone's feelings)

Take care and have a SUPER FLEXIBLE summer!!  

April 13, 2017

Hello Families!
We have had a very busy month working to defeat Un-Wonderer and One Sided Sid!  Did you know they are sister and brother and often work together?  This was a big shocker!  We started our the month practicing asking each other questions to develop friendship files about our friends.  We use these "files" in our brain to recall facts about our friends so that we can strike up a conversation with them.  For example, if I know my friend likes soccer, I can ask him a question about soccer.  This is sure to get the conversation going.

We also discussed 2 BIG strategies taught in the book. Add-A-Thought and Ask-A-Question. This is a skill that we are still working on and will continue to practice this year!  For example, if I say, "Next week is my birthday" you would follow up with comments or questions about that topic to keep the conversation going.  We are learning what are good questions (What do you want? Where are you going?  Who will you celebrate with?) versus questions that make the conversation go flat (What date were you born? Where do you live? What type of washing machine to you have?). We are also going to be discussing the next chapter called "Boredom Alert?" after break. This helps us sue our social thinking tools to determine if our conversational partner is interested in our topic or disinterested.  We will practice the 2-3 idea rule.  That is, we share 2-3 ideas about the topic and then Ask-A-Question or Add-A-Thought to keep the conversation going. Otherwise we turn into "ONE SIDED SID!"

Lastly, Superflex visited Mrs. Whalen's room to discuss the Unthinkable, "Worry Wall."  Worry Wall makes us worry too much about small things or about social situations. We talked about some of the things that make us all worry. The students did a nice job sharing with each other and the group some of their own worries. We also discussed some strategies for defeating Worry Wall. Here is the anchor chart we created as a class.  We also read the book, When My Worries Get Too Big, which addresses some strategies kids can use when they have worries.
       

Overall, the students should be very proud of how far they have come with their social thinking skills. Have a wonderful, flexible, and relaxing spring break!!

March 19, 2017

Hello Families and Teachers!
We have had an exciting month practicing some of our "Think It, Say It" skills. Sometimes we forget in the moment that a comment might be a "think it" rather than a "say it," but that is why we keep reviewing these skills. This month we also discussed the importance of tone of voice again.  We can say the same sentence in many different ways depending on what kind of tone we are using.  This is a skill we will continue to work on during Superflex lessons.  We may remind each other to use kind tones rather than bossy (Mean Jean) or angry (Glassman) tones. We have also been working on tuning in to other's tones to determine how they may be feeling.

This month, Mrs. Dusel has re-introduced Mrs. Whalen's class to the Zones of Regulation!  These four Zones help us to figure out what emotions we are having in the moment and what strategies we can use to get back to the green zone, which is the zone where we feel calm, happy and can get the best work done. Student have recently been working on which Unthinkables fit in which Zones and have talked about using those strategies to get back to the green zone.

This past week, Superflex visited Mrs. Whalen's room and introduced 2 Unthinkables who happen to work together and are brother and sister!  They are Un-Wonderer and One Sided-Sid.  One-Sided Sid is just that, one-sided.  He looks flat because he always only talks about himself and never talks about others or shows interest in others.  Un-Wonderer is his sister, who makes us not socially wonder about others.  Each day, we wonder about those who we care about and are friends with.  If we forget to wonder about others, we forget to ask them questions and check in with them. This month in lunch group, we will be reading the book, Superflex Takes on One-Sided Sid and Un-Wonderer.

We will be practicing several strategies to defeat these Unthinkables.  Here is the anchor chart that we developed in class. Students are very excited to continue to develop their social thinking skills by practicing using some of these strategies!

February 20th, 2017

Hello Families!
We have had a busy few months since my last post!  We have been working hard on several concepts. As a follow-up activity to our work with "big problem" vs. "little problem," students have been playing "Double Dice!" In this engaging game they roll a dice and are read a social situation for the matching shape on the dice.  They have to read the social situation, decide whether there is a big problem, medium problem, little problem, or just a glitch.  Then, they have to discuss what they would do to solve the problem in an expected way. The students love playing "Double Dice" and helping each other talk about the problems we face everyday and how we can solve them calmly while keeping our bodies in the "green" zone.
    Here is a picture of our Double Dice game.

Also, we have read Julia Cook's book entitled I Can't Believe You Said That!"  Julia Cook is one of my favorite author's and writes books for all sorts of social cognitive behaviors we see in school that we need to work on.  In this story RJ, the main character, is learning about his "social filter."  We each have a social filter, which helps us decide which thoughts we can think in our brains and which thoughts we can also say out loud.  Some thoughts need to be filtered and kept in our heads.  For example, you would want to filter this thought, "My Mom's spaghetti is gross!" We could think this thought, but perhaps not SAY IT to our Mom so that we wouldn't hurt her feelings. Funny, I had to have this lesson with my own children recently.  Superflex also appeared in Mrs. Whalen's room to teach this lesson whole class. Students were asked to pair up and read a statement. Then, they had to decide if it was a "Think It" or a "Say It" and explain why.  They did an amazing job!  Here is a picture of the anchor chart we used to teach this concept.



Lastly, we have learned about Brain Eater and reviewed how to defeat him.  Brain Eater gets us distracted during class and makes us think about our favorite things (e.g. cats, chocolate, video games, etc.).  These are called "internal" or "in-the-brain" distractors.  We can also get distracted by "external" or "outside-the-brain" distractors. This might be the clock, my pencil, my shoelace.  We talked about strategies for defeating Brain Eater and made another anchor chart with those.



Overall, it has been a wonderful few months learning more social cognitive strategies with wonderful students!  Onward!