Autism Social Stories are a visual teaching tool intended to help teach social skills to children with autism.
They provide the individual with autism spectrum an explanation and visual framework of the skill or situation that they may find difficult or confusing.
Research suggests Autism Social Stories as a visual teaching tool can be used to help reduce stress and inappropriate behaviours in some children with an ASD. The social story will increase social understanding and therefore help children with an ASD reach their full potential.
The goal of a social skills story is to increase the child’s understanding of skills and social situations. By making the child more comfortable with and in the situation, and suggest possible responses they may receive from others.
Social skills stories follow specific sentence types: descriptive, perspective, directive and control. Introduced around twenty years ago as a means of communication, Autism Social Stories have grown into a very popular visual strategy that can be used with all autistic individuals regardless of age and ability.
Generally social skills stories are written by experts, teachers and parents to help teach social and communication skills to autistic individuals. Autism Social Stories can be edited to suit all needs, personalized, printed and are portable, making them convenient and easy to use.
A social skills story can be introduced to help deal with any situation or skill that the child needs help with. No formal training is needed to use social skills stories, site which offer support and expertly written Autism Social Stories can be found using search engines such as Google.
Sites that offer Autism Social Stories intended to support children with autism like http://www.autismsocialstories.com offer support, and downloads of social skills stories.
A social skills story should be visual and use first person text, like a role model the social skills story will help with transitions, and changes to routines as well as teach and support social skills and communication difficulties.
For more information on this visual strategy visit any of the following sites and find Autism Social Stories intended to support children with autism
http://www.autismsocialstories.com
