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