Social Stories: Hero Cards & Rules

Teaching Social Skills and Rules

Social stories are a tried and tested way of teaching social skills. However, for some learners, they are too much. I needed a way to remind a student of the rules but in a way that didn’t single them out as being the focus of the story. Some people will say this won’t work as autistic children can’t generalise. Anyone who has worked with autistic children knows a lot of what people say is actually a myth or just does not apply to that individual.

Social Story Cards (Hero Cards)

So I needed a motivating, engaging, obvious and visual way of reinforcing expected behavior in the classroom. The student I was working with is a great fan of lego and superheroes so HERO CARDS were born. These use simple language to allow the child to process just that fact. This is different from the concept of social stories where specific situations are outlined. If they would find the wording patronising let them create these themselves!

Here is spiderman modelling expected interactions. as with anything these can be laminated and cut out individually. I used Inprint 3  from Widgit software to make these. the File is here but you will need the program to open it.

This version is clearly just an excuse to write about Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Ed Sheeran to add some celebrity to my blog. But this might be more age-appropriate for some children. Like social stories choosing the wording is key to success. If the language is too simplistic or complex for your child adapt it. The free powerpoint below is fully editable.

Download the file: Teaching social skills to Autistic children with the help of Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Beyonce here.

Whilst I don’t like to plant the idea of negative behaviour sometimes we need to be upfront about what Batman does not do. unfortunately he does hit people so we wont use him to model that expected behaviour!

If you would like me to create something for you let me know in the comments and I will try and add it! Or if you have any suggestions on improvements.

Update September 2019:

Some Avengers Rules.