Module 7: Chapters 8 and 10 Stephanie Forbes Karen Stewart

Importance of play and friendship  Presents opportunities to learn to socialize and form meaningful relationships  Students on the Autism Spectrum face challenges with developing relationships  Without appropriate supports, they may become neglected, rejected and possibly bullied by peers

Culture  Peer culture-Play with children cannot be duplicated by play with adults  Students with ASD have a unique “play culture,” which describes the worlds children create and live their social and imaginary lives.

Friend 2 Friend (F2F) Model  Designed to foster mutual friendships for children with ASD by building awareness, empathy and understanding in their peers, siblings and classmates.  Teaching process:  Modeling : children can formulate a concept of autism and help develop an understanding  Labeling : Provides a name for what is not understood  Explaining : Providing answers for questions  Normalizing : “walk in the other person’s shoes.”

Five Key Learning Goals  These goals underline the learning and provide a basis for future learning when follow-up activities take place Five Key Learning Goals Recognize and accept differences in themselves and others Recognize individuals with autism and different kinds of minds as valuable friends Recognize that it is important to ask questions and express feelings Empathize with what it feels like to have autism and different kinds of minds Promotes positive relationships with all peers

Seven Basic Friendship Tips 1. Get your friend’s attention 2. Use small sentences and gestures, and wait 3. Watch your friend 4. Give your friend choices 5. Ask your friend to talk 6. Use friendly words 7. Accept differences

Tips for Fostering Peer Play and Friendships in the Classroom Demystifying Autism for other students (F2F)  Make it fun AND educational-use games, story books and other fun activities  Emphasize that we are ALL different-use words like “we” and “us” instead of “they” or “them”  Teach that autism is not a four-letter word, it is a word NOT a person.

Tips for Fostering Peer Play and Friendships in the Classroom cont… Guiding children with Autism in Peer Play  Distribute attention among the players-make sure everyone is included in the group!  Reflect on your practice-Think about what is and what is not working.  Go with the flow-be flexible, follow the children’s lead  Set the tone for the group-influence the students to treat each other fairly without taking over.

Emotion Recognition  Facial emotion recognition  Difficulty recognizing “basic” emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust)  Vocal recognition or emotion  Less frequently studied that facial emotion recognition  There are some indications that people with ASD are less capable of recognizing emotions based on vocal intonation  Contextual recognition of emotion  Difficulties understanding white lies, sarcasm, jokes or any non-literal statements  Multimodal recognition of emotion  Encompasses facial, vocal and contextual recognition or emotions  Have to focus on the “whole picture”

Ways to help teach emotion recognition  Using computers has several advantages  Predictable, consistent and free from social demands  Self-pacing, work at own level of understanding  Lessons can be repeated until mastery is achieved  Interest/motivation can be maintained through rewards This link shows a video of a computer program to help students with ASD identify facial expressions… FACELAND Video Demo

Mind Reading  Interactive guide to emotions and mental states  Teaching tool for emotion recognition for learners with Autism Spectrum Disorders  Three ways to use it:  Emotion library (browse through different faces and listen to different voices)  Learning Center (quizzes, make your own quizzes, computerized rewards)  Game zone (5 educational games to help study emotions-pairs, matching, thought bubbles)

Tips for systemizing emotions in the classroom  Choose key emotions to work on (based on developmental stages)  Don’t work on every emotion at once!  Discuss emotion groups, emotion causes and consequences, and emotional valence and intensity  Which emotions are grouped together?  How can situations change how we feel?  Can emotions be positive sometimes and negative at other times?  Analyze facial expressions  Have students identify common features  Mimic faces  Analyze vocal expressions  Emphasize importance of intonation  Present body language  This can be done outside or in the gym  Practice walking styles and hand gestures  Combine facial, vocal and body language

Tips cont….  Introduce display rules, insincerity, and mixed emotions  Examples of hidden emotions  Discuss mixed emotions  Display degrees of emotion  Use charts, scales and meters