Teaching SEL skills in simple social narratives
For students who have challenges with social‑emotional learning and communication, social narratives can teach a lasting lesson and improve peer interactions. Using accessible, relevant language and visuals students easily relate to—including images of themselves—these narratives help the reader learn and generalize social skills.
Instill new skills, replace negative behaviors
Use the social narrative strategy in Positivity as an explicit way to teach a targeted skill or help a student develop a new behavior to replace an inappropriate one. Topics for a social narrative might include following a schedule, transitioning to a new event, appropriate social interactions, or knowing when and how to take a break.
Create a
successful outcome
Positivity makes it simple to create a narrative for delivering to a student at just the right time—whenever the story will have the greatest impact. Once you’ve identified a behavior to target, just select and customize a templated narrative within the program or create your own story and easily save it to your strategy library for repeated use.
To enhance your student’s comprehension, use simple, repetitive language and directives combined with the SymbolStix symbols provided within the system, and even include photos from your classroom to make the story more relevant to the student.
Implement with fidelity
and best practices
- When you’ve determined the most relevant times and frequency to have your student read the social narrative, Positivity will help you pre-schedule and deliver it to the student’s device, to a classroom device, or as a printout.
- Monitor the student’s behavior for progress and use the robust data collection within the system to help you assess whether the strategy is producing the desired change or whether modifications to the story or timing might be required.
- For added reinforcement, pair the social story with other strategies in Positivity—like calming breaths or incentives—and model the behavior in the classroom while the narrative is being used so the student can see it in other contexts.
Are you ready to see it in action?
The time is now! See for yourself why educators across the country rely on n2y’s products and vision to elevate the quality of education for students with unique learning needs.
