Social Thinking Program
The Michelle Garcia Winner Social Thinking program is designed to teach social-emotional concepts and skills to children who struggle with social communication and interaction.
The program’s philosophy is based on the idea that social thinking is a cognitive process that involves interpreting and responding to social cues and context. This approach, views social skills not just a set of behaviours to be learned and memorised, but rather a way of thinking about social situations and making sense of them.
The Social Thinking program uses a variety of teaching strategies, such as stories, visual aids, games, and role-playing, to help individuals develop a range of social-emotional competencies:
The weekly program covers the following:
Developing Friendships: Building and maintaining meaningful connections with others.
Conversation skills: Supporting all the elements of a conversation to facilitate effective communication and interactions with others
Social awareness: Understanding social cues and nonverbal communication.
Executive functioning: planning, organising, problem solving and thinking about one’s own social behaviour and communication
Social communication: Learning to communicate effectively with others.
Flexible thinking: Developing the ability to adapt to changing situations and contexts.
Emotional self-regulation: recognising and managing one’s own emotions and responses to social situations
Social problem-solving: Developing strategies for navigating social conflicts and challenges.
Perspective-taking: understanding others’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions based on their context and social cues
These concepts are taught through a variety of interactive activities, including games, role-playing, and group discussions. Program includes mid and end of term individual progress notes.
Group 1: Age 5-7 years
Group 2: Age 8-11 years
Cost: $150 per week.
Duration: 45 minutes