Social Thinking at UMS

This year the entire school is using the common language of Social Thinking, a curriculum about perspective taking.  Each grade has been learning about what it means to be social and to use your "social smarts".  Social smarts is understanding that people have thoughts about you and you have thoughts about others even when you are not with them.

Below is a brief overview of what students are learning:

Expected behaviors (doing the right thing for the time and place) give others good thoughts about what we are doing.  We give these thoughts the color of green.  Expected behaviors give others "Happy Green Thoughts" about us and cause them to feel happy.  When others have good thoughts about us they like being with us.

Unexpected behaviors (doing the wrong thing for the time and place) give others uncomfortable thoughts about what we are doing.  We give these thoughts the color yellow.  Unexpected behaviors give others "Yellow Uncomfortable Thoughts" about us and cause them to feel sad, angry, annoyed, etc.  When others have uncomfortable thoughts about us they don't want to spend time with us.

Whole Body Listening - listening with calm hands and feet, eyes on the speaker, brain thinking about what the person is saying, and a caring heart.  Whole body listening is expected at school and at home!

Too much, Too little, and Just right - when it comes to knowing how your body and voice should be for a given situation we think about having a "just right" body and voice.  "Just right" is expected.  If you are at a football game yelling and moving around that might be "just right".  If you are at the library with the same behavior that would be "too much"!  You have to look at the time and place to decide what's "just right".

You can see how knowing this information can help a person understand other people's perspective and allow then to modify their own behavior in order to give happy green thoughts and get along better with others.  All the students are familiar with these terms.  Using them at home can help clue your child into what they are doing that's expected!

If you have any question about social thinking please feel free to call or email and I can give you more information.

Students talk about Whole Body Listening by building Mr Potato Head