232. How to Create a Weekly Group for You Kiddos with Social Communication Challenges
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[00:00:00] Today I'm pulling back the curtain, and I'm gonna show you behind the scenes how I'm gonna create a pragmatic communication group for my kiddos with pragmatic communication challenges. So I'm sure you probably have children on your caseload that have pragmatic communication challenges, and you find your general speech and language groups are just simply not meeting their needs.
Well, what's neat is that we've had the wonderful opportunity this year to form a social communication group. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna share with you behind the scenes the components of the group that I that I see as being extremely important. So maybe you can take this information and create your own pragmatic communication group.
Now, the group I'm gonna describe to you is for three to four-year-olds, and it's gonna be a once weekly two-hour group. So what I want you to keep in mind is I wanna keep it the same every week. This is trauma-informed practice that's good for every single [00:01:00] kiddo we work with. We want that predictability of routine so that children feel safe and secure.
Only when children are feeling safe and secure can they operate in that prefrontal cortex, and they can think these higher level communication, social goals, logical reasoning, executive function. We can work on these challenging, complex skills. So it's very important that you map out, this is what we want it to look like every day.
This is the routine that we're gonna follow, not every day, but every week when we do this two-hour group. We're gonna follow this consistent routine. So it's really important that this routine, before you set it in stone, you've put a lot of thought behind what you're gonna cover and what you're not gonna cover, what you're gonna cut, 'cause you only have two hours.
And it's really important that the skills you select are game changers. These are life-changing skills. You want to also think, am [00:02:00] I covering executive function? Am I covering self-management? Am I covering understanding others' feelings? Am I covering social skills? Am I covering understanding your own feelings and your own perspective?
So there's a lot to cover in a little bit of time, and what we had to do is we had to go through with the social worker, with another speech pathologist collaborating, and with a wonderful special education teacher and say, what are we gonna keep and what is going to hit the chopping bo- board? I'm gonna share with you what I would keep and what I'm gonna try out for this school year, and we're gonna find out if it works or not for if I were to create, which I am doing, or if you were to create a social communication group.
So where are we gonna start? We're starting with the emotions. How are you feeling today? So the song that I made up, 'cause it's really, really simple, is, "Ho, hey, what do you say? How [00:03:00] are you feeling today?" And then I will have a circle, and it's gonna have the emotions on that circle. The children are gonna take a clothespin, and they are going to clothespin how they're feeling.
Now, am I just gonna have happy, sad, mad? No. No. Scared. No, I'm not gonna have four emotions. It's really important that they have all those gradations of those emotions. Because if they're able to describe it, they're more able to feel those gradations, and not go from zero to 100, the black and white, I'm mad, I'm happy.
Instead, I want them to say, "I'm nervous," "I'm disappointed." I want them to learn that gray terminology. "I feel anxious," "I feel calm," "I feel worried." All of those terms that are those in-betweens, in which maybe we're not at our optimal state, but we're not also down in the dumps either, okay? So it's really important to teach that gray [00:04:00] vocabulary explicitly.
So I'm going to start off with the, "Ho, hey, what do you say? How are you feeling today?" So in our Google Slide stack in the SIS membership, you're gonna see that slide as an opening slide, so that you can sing that song, and you can pick a feeling that they're feeling. So then after that, we're going to want to go ahead and have, and they're gonna p- pin on their clothespin.
Then after that, we're going to wanna have a little bit of a movement activity because we've sat and we've gone through the group with everyone telling how they feel. That's gonna take a bit of time. And then I'm gonna do a feeling song. So it's going to be something along the lines like, If You're Happy and You Know It, and then you're gonna just do the basic feelings, right?
Clap your hands. So stomp your feet, you know, something of that nature just to get music and movement going so the child isn't sitting for an extended period of time. They're only three to four years of age. Then after that, our social worker's gonna come in, and she uses the SPOT [00:05:00] curriculum. You could use any curriculum out there.
I know Zones of Regulation used to be popular. Now SPOT is really popular, especially on Teacher Pay Teacher. And she's gonna go ahead and read a book about emotions. She's going to go ahead and a koosh ball of that emotion so that they can feel the different emotions. So if it's red, maybe it's angry, you know, and they can talk about that color connection with the emotion to make that visual, that feeling, and then also have that tactile, that koosh, so you can describe it in that manner, and how emotions can get big and out of control, and how we can make them smaller, and we can make them w- with our, with our breathing techniques, you know, manageable when we regulate them.
Then after that, she's gonna go through a breathing technique. So every month, we're gonna focus on a different emotion. So this month, we're gonna focus on the emotion yellow. What I'm gonna do in the Google Slides deck in my SIS membership is for this month, I'm gonna make them all Yellow, the slides. And I'm gonna have the theme be happy, [00:06:00] which is that emotion.
So the happy theme is going to be embedded in the elements of the story, the narrative story intervention that you're gonna see for that month. So the children are gonna get repeated practice throughout this entire month with the emotion yellow, being happy. So then after that, she's going to sh- m- model breathing techniques that they're gonna practice together.
It could be countdown to calm, where they do 10 calming breaths. They could blow out candles. They can blow on hot coffee. There's lots of different techniques that you could do. You can give yourself big, a hug. You could open your arms up, breathe in, and give a big ha- hug. So there's many different ways that she can practice the breathing technique.
But what you're gonna see is we're gonna do the same thing every single week. It's that predictable routine so that children feel safe and secure, and you also have that explicit practice repeatedly occurring again and again. We're always [00:07:00] gonna open the group with, "Oh, hey, what do you say? How do you feel today?"
And they're gonna put the clothespin on every week. Then after that, we're always going to go and do our movement song, where we get up and shake our body. We move their body depending on the emotions in the song. Then after that, we're always going to go and sit down, and we're going to talk about what the color of the, the week is and the emotion of the week, and we're gonna read the book on it.
We're gonna go and have a squish ball and feel it, you know, and see it really big, and then also see it really small, how we can manage it through breathing. And we're gonna practice the breathing technique every week. So if the breathing technique, for instance, is going to be blowing out birthday candles, for the entire month, we're gonna practice blowing out birthday candles as we count down to 10 ~and count...~
~and, ~and do 10 birthday candles. That will be the breathing technique we practice that month. It's explicitly and repeatedly taught and practiced. And as you can see, it's very [00:08:00] multimodal. We're using print. We're using song. We're using movement. We're using 3D visuals, which you're holding them, three dimensions.
So we're going to have the visuals as well. It's all there, universal design for learning. So then after that, we're gonna break off into our stations. So these are small groups in which we'll have the kids, you can have them paired in groups of two to four. We're gonna start off with two. It's gonna be a small group.
We're also gonna invite neurotypical peers, of course, to join for being peer, good peer models. So you have these small pairs of groups, and you're gonna have four different stations. So let me explain what each of the stations is gonna be. So I have a teaching assistant, we have a social worker, we have a special education teacher, and you have me, the speech pathologist.
So if you're like me, you might have only two stations. Maybe you only have a teaching assistant you're working with. You work with what you have. I am lucky enough to have four stations. So I'm gonna keep those [00:09:00] stations the same place every week, and it's going to be the same adult that's responsible for that station.
Once again, when you have these groups that are only once a week, you want that predictability of routine. You really want the children to feel safe and secure, and you want them to use their capacity on focusing on the target, focusing on the communication, focusing on the storytelling. These are really complex skills we're practicing here.
We don't want them thinking about, "Where am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be? Who am I supposed to be with?" That should not be what their capacity is wasted on So let's talk about the four stations, because all of them are very important when it comes to social-emotional literacy, and they all address different skills that are all very important discreetly but explicitly.
So the first station is going to be a pretend play station. Now, when you're working with three to four-year-olds, it might be more of a cooperative play station in which it [00:10:00] might have to be a bit more structured than dramatic play, because many of our kiddos that are parallel play level, so it might be very hard if you're in a dramatic open play area for it to get much interaction.
You may have to structure it a bit and have a task to complete. So for instance, you might have cups, and you say, "Okay, we're gonna have these cups here, and we're gonna see if we can build a really tall tower by working together." And then you're going to have the two kids working together and building a tall tower and deciding how they're gonna build the tower and making the biggest tower ever.
So it's these kind of cooperative tasks. That's what I would recommend at age three, four. When you're going to age four, five, you can do more open dramatic play area, like, "Okay, guys, let's go make, I have a birthday party, and we're gonna make a cake, and we're gonna have pizza, too." And it can be a little bit more open-ended because the children are at a stage in which pretend play and symbolic play is already there.
So you're not doing hard upon [00:11:00] hard where there's that peer interaction piece, and you also have complex skills, play skills that you're practicing. So I think that you'll have to decide for yourself, and we're gonna figure that out with the special education teacher, about how much structure we wanna provide, how much direction do we wanna provide in order to facilitate explicit practice of turn-taking skills, of sharing skills, of skills such as passing items, that kind, those kind of basic interaction skills and working together to achieve a goal.
So I'm th- I almost think a, a good thing would be called, called a teamwork task or a cooperative play task instead of dramatic play at this level. So that'll be one of the stations. So the next station, the child will have each station be about eight to 10 minutes in length. They're playing and they're doing that task.
Maybe they're playing basketball and shooting hoops, you know, and taking turns shooting hoops. They're doing some kind of cooperative play task, and the idea is, okay, we're gonna [00:12:00] shoot hoops, and we're gonna wait, and we're gonna, we're gonna try to get 10 points, right? So we have to work together. Okay, can we do it together and get 10 points, our goal?
And if we get 10 points, there's a great reward, at the end. So then you go over to the next station. So the children will rotate in these stations, and the next station then, the reason we are going to have, that pretend play is to build those relationship skills.
So the next station would be the social worker, and the social worker can do an emotion activity in which you're doing some activity in which you're explicitly making the emotion clear, what the emotion is, and you're talking about, what do we do when we feel these emotions? How can we regulate it? So for instance, in the SPOT curriculum, they talk about spot it, identifying what the emotion is, and the second aspect is to regulate it.
I almost think of it like spot it and tame it, you know, when I say regulate it. It's easier to, for kiddos to remember, let's spot it and let's tame it. We're gonna [00:13:00] make it smaller. It's a, it's a little bit too big, this feeling is right now. So that's what the social worker is going to work with them on.
She's gonna do some sort of emotion activity in which the children are ex- they're labeling the emotions, they're talking about the emotions. They're talking about, what do you do when you those, feel those emotions? So it's really explicitly taught what their emotions are that they're feeling, and how they can tame it, name it and tame it, or how they can regulate that emotion when they're feeling it.
Then they're going to go to the next station, and the next station is going to be with me. And I'm going to use the task-oriented movement activity. Now, what I'm gonna focus on here is not the speech and language targets, but I'm gonna focus on self-management skills.
We talked about im- the improving executive function, improving the cerebellum, increasing the gray matter after only 10 weeks, and also improving movement and [00:14:00] motor function through, going through this four-step process. What is the problem? What's our plan? What actions are we gonna take? And how are we gonna check it to completion?
I want them to explicitly know those four steps. We are explicitly teaching it, explicitly practicing at a preschool level, and this is something that's going to make them better off at jobs they do in the future, at college, all the way through their life. This ability to identify problems, to make a plan to solve tho- that problem, to take action, and to check it all the way through completion, this is an important key to success in any aspect in life.
So this is something that I wanna focus on, and I'm going to do that with one of my task-oriented movement activities from the SIS membership. I'm gonna use that, and we're gonna talk, instead of we're going through the speech target or we're going through the language target, and then we go through the activity, [00:15:00] it's all gonna be about, what is the problem here?
What's gonna be our plan? What actions are you gonna take? And how are you gonna check it to completion? I'm gonna stop talking as soon as possible and only use the gestures, and they're gonna say, "The," when I make the gesture, "problem is this." And then I make a gesture, "The plan," and later on I'm not even gonna make the gesture.
They will go through the four-step process independently. This is the key to lifelong success. You only have so much time to spend. With those two hours, I wanna think about, I could have a two-hour group that's all about emotions, right? That would be great. Or I could have a two-hour group that's taking a multifaceted approach, in which I'm saying, "Let them build their relationship skills through the teamwork task.
Okay, now let's build their awareness of their selves, their awareness of their own emotions, and their ability to self-regulate through emotional tasks where they're learning about emotions and they're learning about [00:16:00] strategies to tame those emotions.
Name them and tame them. Then we can also look at the, the area that I'm working on, executive function and self-management, in which, what do you do when you have a problem? Well, you make a plan. You take action. You check it to completion. You're managing yourself, and that four-step process is explicitly being taught.
Now there is the fourth station. Now, the fourth station is going to be the elements of the story. Now, many of you have the story champs. That would work right here. You're naming what the elements of the story is, and the reason that is so important is that's where you can take empathy, and you can look at the perspective of others, the emotions that others have.
So we always, in the elements of the story, when we go through it, you have the character. You have the setting, and then you have the problem, and then you have the emotion. So there's always that emotion as one of the elements of the story. How does the child [00:17:00] feel as a result of that problem?
And then after that, we have, what actions are they gonna take? What is the consequence? And then afterwards, we can talk about how they feel after the consequence. So when we talk about their feelings during these stories, we don't wanna just say, "He felt really happy. He felt really sad. He felt really mad."
I want to use synonyms for happy. I want to say different things like, "Wow, he, that made him feel a lot of joy." Maybe I'm going to go ahead and use the word joy, but different synonyms where, "He felt very peaceful at the end." You know, it's just... Or very safe. You know, think about different words that you can describe instead of just happy, mad, sad, and angry, okay?
Think about those gray words that we can build into their vocabulary So those are the four stations, and they all have very unique, very important purposes. And what I want you to think about, if you're forming a social emotional literacy group of [00:18:00] yourself, is to be multifaceted in nature. So when I'm talking about being multifaceted in nature, I don't want you to say, "I'm gonna do a two-hour emotion group."
I think that's great if you're doing a two-hour emotion group. But we know our children with communication impairments have challenges in executive function. We know our children with communication impairments have ch- challenges in social co- ne- relationships and in cooperating with peers, cooperative communication.
We know that they have difficulty oftentimes with empathy and taking others' perspectives. We know they have difficulty also identifying their own emotions. So if we can look at how we can treat the whole child and look at how that the social emotional issues are multifaceted in nature, we can take a multifaceted, explicit approach in which we're improving these pivotal areas of skill.
So what I'm gonna do is every single week, [00:19:00] those are gonna be the four stations. I'm going to have the stations in, like I said before, the same teacher, same place, and the child is going to move in a conto- counterclockwise manner across the room. The timer's going to go. Every eight to ten minutes, it's going to go off, and they're going to go to the next station, and then they're going to learn explicitly about another social communication skill.
So it's about improving their own executive function, their own self-regulation, as well as improving their ability to interact with others. So how do we all close it out? At the end, we're all going to come together, and we're going to, of course, have our bye-bye song.
Well, first of all, I think it would be, before we get to the mirror, 'cause I would do that for the bye-bye. I'm sorry. I'm gonna take one step back. I think we'd practice a calming technique that we've learned, right? So I was talking to the social worker today, and I like this word she said. Said, "If you, if you have big feelings, then you know it."
So it's like [00:20:00] big feelings, all feelings are good, but sometimes our feelings get too big, and when they're too big, it can be overwhelming, right? So what, whe- you mean, you can be too happy, right? And then you're so happy that you can't function, right? You're too excited. So what we're going to do is we're gonna talk about if you have big feelings, then you know it, and then we can talk about what you can do.
Take a deep breath. Ah. You know. And then we can say, "If you have big feelings and you know it, take a deep breath. Ah." So that week we're gonna practice just, "If you have big feelings and you know it and you really oughta show it. If you have big feelings and you know it, take a big breath." And then we can do take a big breath.
And then maybe the next week we're gonna have big feelings and you know it, give yourself a hug. So we're going to go ahead and practice that over and over again. Whatever that calming technique is, they're always going to sing that same song, If You Have Big Feelings and You [00:21:00] Know It, and then we're gonna practice repeatedly these breathing strategies, these relaxation strategies.
So I'm really excited to practice those on a repeated basis. So the idea is when they do have these big feelings, it's just gonna come automatic, take a deep breath, you know. So that we're gonna sing as a closing song, and then after that we can sing our bye-bye song. And we can do the feeling of the face of the day with a mirror.
We say, "Okay, today we're looking for a happy face," you know. So we can sing, "Bye bye." You can take a mirror around and you can stop it where you have a happy face, and then you say the child's name. And then you say, then, "Who has a happy face?" And then you can go and look it around. Bye bye. And you got the mirror going around all the faces, and you look for that happy face that, that...
because that's the feeling that you're practicing that week. Who has a happy [00:22:00] face? And you can go to the next one. So the reward is they get to look in the mirror and make a happy face, but that'll be a really, really fun way to close it out and practice the feeling again. So and that's the end of the two-hour group.
So that is basically what a two-hour group would look like that I'm putting together with our team, and it's really important, that you really map it out because you're committing to it. After you've put this is the time, this is what we're gonna do first, next, then, this is gonna be for 15 minutes, this is gonna be for 10 minutes, this is gonna be for this, and then we're gonna da da da da da da, that's the order.
That's the sequence you're gonna follow. That's what you're gonna do every week this school year. I'm gonna start this group next Friday, and we'll see what happens. But I want you to do what you do best, is just to roll up your sleeves and make the world a better place one child at a time.
You are always gonna be first.
