1. IDENTIFYING OBSTACLES Advanced Social Communication Middle School: Lesson Two

2. Objective: ■Students will become familiar with how to identify obstacles in a variety of contexts as well as be able to evaluate each obstacle for its’ intensity and impact.

3. SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING STANDARDS ■Analyze why one achieved or did not achieve a goal. ■Analyze factors that create stress or motivate successful performance. ■Analyze similarities and differences between one’s own and others’ perspectives.

4. SCERTS Key Skills ■Follows the rules of conversation (initiation, maintaining, ending conversation). ■Understands and uses appropriate nonverbal behavior/ gestures. ■Self- regulates emotions and recovers from emotional melt-downs.

5. Evidence Based Practices (EBPs) ■Cognitive behavioral intervention (CBI): Instruction on management or control of cognitive processes that lead to changes in overt behavior. ■Social narratives (SN): Narratives that describe social situations in some detail by highlighting relevant cues and offering examples of appropriate responding. Social narratives are individualized according to learner needs and typically are quite short, perhaps including pictures or other visual aids.

6. California Common Core Standards ■Speaking Listening Standard; SL 2, Grade 6: Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study. ■Writing Standard; W6, Grade 8: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

7. Task One: Discussion ■Questions: ■What is an Obstacle? ■When Something doesn’t workout the way you intend, do you keep attempting to make it happen, or are you more likely to stop trying? Why? ■Do you try try to identify things that need to change in order to improve a situation, or do you wait for someone to fix it for you? Why?

8. Task One Continued: ■As a whole group create a thinking map / graphic organizer, for each category below, of the types of obstacles that… ■1. students deal with at school ■2. Kids deal with at home ■3. People have interacting with one another ■4. Individuals have getting things done ■5. People have communicating with one another ■6. People have addressing a problem.

9. Task Two: Group work ■Students will be placed into groups and use the graphic organizer form on of the six categories from the previous task; each group will arrange the identified obstacles into categories based on intensity and impact. ■Category One: (green)Easy to resolve, can be addressed by the individuals within the situation ■Category Two: (Blue) May need support from others to overcome the obstacle, There may have to be a shift in mindset or flexibility on the part of one ore more people in the situation ■Category Three: (yellow) Will need supports from others, most often the help of an adult or someone who has overcome the obstacle in the past ■Category Four: (red) Will need expert or professional supports to overcome

10. Task Three: Group Project ■Each group will create a poster or a power-point that identifies the obstacles in their appropriate categories and details suggestions on how to go about getting supports. ■The group does not need to address all obstacles in the graphic organizer, but should have two examples from each category identified in lesson two. ■The power-point or poster should be well organized and provide visuals of what the actual obstacle may look like in reality ■Once the power-point or poster is complete, the group should choose one obstacle from each of their four categories to focus a role-play on

11. Task Four: Role-play ■Each group will choose one obstacle from each category to create a role-play to perform in front of the class. ■The role-plays should start of by demonstrating how the chosen obstacle is impacting one or more of the actors. ■Once the Obstacle is identified in the role-play, the students should create a realistic response to identifying and obtaining the appropriate supports to produce a more expected and/or successful outcome. ■Remember, your group is modelling both identifying the obstacle, seeking a support, and applying suggested support…. ■Creating a storyboard and/or script will be helpful in organizing each role-play

12. Task Four Continued: Practice and Rehearse ■Each group member should know how to say all the words in their speaking parts. ■Each group member should know when and how to execute their role; make sure you are aware of your body position within the scenario…Do not block other actors or your audience from seeing the interaction. ■Remember Voice Projection is very important when you are in front of a large group…Make sure you talk loud enough so that everyone, even people in the back of the room can hear you. ■Focus on your groups interaction, do not get distracted and wonder away from the scenario, that will be very distracting to your audience, and they may miss valuable information.

13. Task Five: Presentation and Performance ■Your group will present the power-point or poster they created…Everyone in the group should have at least one slide or section of the poster to present. ■Your group will then perform their four role-plays for the class ■Questions can be asked and comments made after the group is done with all their role-plays. ■Questions can be for clarification and should stay focused on the information, not on any one individuals performance skills. ■Comments should be positive in nature and should not be used to critique any one individual.

14. Evaluation: Council ■Questions: ■Do you think this project helped you to better be able to identify obstacles that may come up in your future? Why?...Why Not? ■What is one obstacle your group had to overcome to be able to complete the project or role-play? ■What did you learn from another groups’ presentation? ■What is something you thought your group did really well? ■What was one thing you did that helped your group achieve its’ goal?