n.d.). Positive reinforcements range from verbal praise to coaching, token economies (in which students earn tokens that are accumulated and later exchanged for rewards), and extrinsic rewards, like self-selecting items at the school store or from a classroom “treasure chest.” Effective rewards are student specific and based on interests, learner levels, prior experiences, age, and skills.
An example of social-skills instruction is using social scripts and stories with students who have autism to increase their game-playing skills (Gray, n.d.; Quirmbach, Lincoln, Feinberg-Gizzo, Ingersoll, & Andrews, 2008). Social scripts offer students conversation starters with right and wrong models as examples and nonexamples of what to do or say or not to say to initiate and continue dialogue and how to effectively interact with peers and adults. Social stories are often accompanied with visuals, such as clip art or actual photos, and checklists that are personalized to specific situations and environments with a discrete task analysis of each expectation. For example, if a student was going on a field trip, he or she might receive a social story to remove anxious feelings experienced by unfamiliar sights, sounds, people, and expectations from a different environment.
A teacher might also offer a student a social story to help him or her know what to do when entering or exiting the classroom or transitioning from one class subject to the next. Students may benefit from a social script that delineates how to interact with peers in a cooperative group, at lunch, on a school bus, or at an assembly. Social stories and comic strip conversations help students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) understand more about others’ perspectives.
Author Jed Baker (2001) offers examples of how social pictures visually outline appropriate behaviors in his Social Skills Picture Book: Teaching Play, Emotion, and Communication to Children With Autism. Another Baker (2008) publication, No More Meltdowns: Positive Strategies for Managing and Preventing Out-of-Control Behavior, helps students better manage their emotions through visuals that increase awareness of the ABCs—antecedents (what happens before), behaviors (actions), and consequences (results of the behavior). Read, Write, Think, a website from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE; www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/comic-creator-30021.html) has resources students and teachers can use to offer dialogue across settings. Students can view picture prompts and models for schedules, directions, transitions from one activity to the next, and unfamiliar learning content.
It is important for educators to teach and assess social skills in caring, structured, and restorative learning environments. Teachers should not draw undue attention to students in front of peers. Private conferences and inconspicuous hand signals increase students’ awareness and avoid embarrassments and self-consciousness. A nonverbal hand cue or signal can be as simple as a thumbs up or dropping a palm to indicate that a student needs to lower his or her voice volume. A student with behavioral and emotional differences needs increased self-reflection and feedback to improve his or her behavior, whether that involves taking turns, lining up for lunch, or finding ways to better handle stress and anxiety. Students with disabilities, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, or mood dysregulation disorder do not deliberately exhibit “wrong” behavior. These students require outside regulation, teacher-guided practice and modeling, and then more self-regulation to understand and improve their social skills.
When students have social deficits, it is crucial for educators to accept and effectively apply the evidence-based practices to help them gain increased social and behavioral acumens, specifically targeting social needs with appropriate interventions (Barton-Arwood, Murrow, Lane, & Jolivette, 2005; Miller, n.d.). These interventions involve establishing specialized programs in school settings and general education environments that promote success with consistent teacher attention and positive reinforcement of appropriate behavior. Interventions may also include setting up a calming room that offers a supportive or quieter environment if students are feeling anxious or stressed. More or less stimuli, or even a therapy dog, can offer students a healthy release to regulate their emotions and moods.
Collaboration includes consultation with school psychologists, guidance counselors, social workers, behavioral interventionists, and inclusion coaches to review the data and problem solve the next intervention steps. A team approach also includes developing strong school-home connections with families who have an interactive influence to further affect a student’s behavior and development (McCormick, Capella, O’Connor, & McClowry, 2013).
Within schools that implement an MTSS framework, all students receive embedded behavioral mental health screening and services, which include screening scales and questionnaires (Hoff, Peterson, Strawhen, & Fluke, 2015). Social competencies spill over into all school and personal endeavors and therefore warrant instruction and individualized adaptations.
Physical, cultural, gender, or disability differences can result in social isolation. A schoolwide zero-tolerance policy is necessary for deterring bullying—whether in a classroom, on a school bus, or in the lunchroom—and cyberbullying on social media. School staff must consistently monitor all platforms and reinforce positive behaviors. They can become more inclusive by cultivating how acceptance, respect, and adaptability replace negative language and behaviors. For example, programs such as Know Your Classmates (https://knowyourclassmates.org), No One Eats Alone (https://nooneeatsalone.org), and Be Kind Online (https://bekindonline.com) explore how to propagate concepts such as identity, belonging, and inclusion (Beyond Differences, n.d.).
It is imperative that teachers receive professional development and training to know how to appropriately provide and reinforce safe physical, social, and emotional inclusion classrooms and school environments that help students recognize and manage their emotions and behavior (Markowitz, Thowdis, & Gallagher, 2018).
Communication
There are many aspects of communication in education and thus, many possible areas of difficulty. Receptive language refers to understanding or interpreting what others say. Expressive language allows people to communicate their understanding in a multitude of ways, such as oral and written language, body gestures, and interactions. Pragmatic language uses speech for socialization, including holding conversations, organizing speech, waiting to speak when someone else is talking, and staying on topic. Communication affects interactions with peers and teachers as well as academic advancements.
Students with learning, sensory, perceptual, communication, developmental, emotional, and behavioral differences process information and communicate differently. Students with disabilities often have difficulties expressing their thoughts in conventional ways (such as speaking and writing) and display a range of abilities under each disability category. For example, some students who fall under the autism spectrum disorder umbrella have symptoms ranging from mild to severe. Students with autism may have limited ability to communicate and interact with others, while other students, depending on their developmental levels, may have rich vocabularies but have difficulties understanding nonverbal communication or are more rigid in their speech (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders [NIDCD], 2016).
Some students also need to learn how to communicate in nonverbal ways using concrete objects, pictures, gestures, and body language. For these students, decoding, encoding, and comprehension issues affect reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, which in turn influence understanding. According to Wrightslaw (2014), a special education law and advocacy organization, “Public schools are responsible for ensuring that communication with students who have hearing, vision, or speech disabilities is as effective as communication with all other students.”
Inclusion
