Flexible Thinking Picture Cards and Social Story

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 29 pages

• 3 short social stories about three kinds of stuck moments: When My Plan Changes; When My Answer Is Different; When a Game's Rules Change — 6 plain, present-tense sentences each (18 in all), with a picture beside every sentence and a type-in name line
• Every story twice: a full-color set and a black-and-white ink-saver set for the photocopier
• Pocket story strips: each story's 6 pictures as numbered cut-apart cards (18 cards per set, in color and in ink-saver), for a pocket, a keyring or a desk, plus a "what every story's pictures have in common" card, a "four quick ways to use a strip" card and a printing/cutting tip card
• A write-your-own story page: 6 numbered panels, each with a draw-or-glue picture box and two type-in sentence lines
• 3 practice pages, one per story: three "what can I do?" moments from that story with a type-in answer and a Y/N box, a Monday-to-Friday "I read the story / I did what the story says" strip, six put-the-story-in-order slots for the strip cards, three things to try with an adult, and lines for the student's own words
• A how-to page: before the first read, reading a story the same way every time, which story first, the practice pages, what counts on the log, the strips and the blank page, what the stories are and are not, sending home and handing off
• A Story and Moments Log (16 rows: date, story read, read by, moments seen, used it, initials)
• A weekly roll-up (8 weeks: story, days read, moments seen, used it, percent, notes) with a percent-of-moments graph
• A filled example — an invented student, one week on the log and three weeks on the roll-up, every percent re-counted from its own row
• A family page naming the story of the week, with a picture from that story, a tried-a-flexible-idea-at-home table and lines for what happened at home
• A hand-off page so a paraprofessional, a coach or another classroom reads the same story the same way, with a blank line for a team's own expectations if it has any
• A phrase bank for writing a new story: 24 starters in 6 groups (opening lines, what I can do, why it helps me, closing lines, writing the log and roll-up, the family page and hand-off) plus a 4-point check before a new story is printed
• A storage and binder label sheet: 11 labels (one per story, with its pictures, plus 8 plain section labels) and a spine strip
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

The Stories

• When My Plan Changes — chair, puzzle, look, bulb, calm, happy
• When My Answer Is Different — pencil, puzzle, look, bulb, calm, happy
• When a Game's Rules Change — ball, puzzle, look, bulb, calm, happy

Six sentences each, one thing per sentence, in the first person and the present tense: the moment (a chair someone else is sitting in, an answer that came out different, a game's rules changing), feeling stuck for a moment, looking for another way to think about it, trying an idea, and feeling happy again. Only the opening picture changes story to story (chair, pencil or ball); the same five pictures after it (puzzle, look, bulb, calm, happy) repeat in every story because it is the same flexible-thinking routine each time — the full sentences, not the pictures alone, are what tells the three stories apart. Every picture is a concrete object a young child can name in one word — a chair, a pencil, a soccer ball, a puzzle piece, a pair of eyes, a light bulb — never a drawn judgment about the moment itself.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the story name lines, the practice pages, the blank story, the log, the roll-up, the family page and the hand-off page, or print and use a pen. The story and strip pages print on cardstock or plain paper; strips cut along dashed lines. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document.

It tells a student, in pictures, what a stuck moment can look like and one way to try something different, and counts what happened. It is not a behavior plan or any other legal or clinical procedure, and it promises no outcome. It carries no prompt hierarchy, fading schedule or mastery rule; which story a student reads first, for how many days, and when the next one starts are your team's decisions. The goal line and the criterion field are blanks for your district's own wording and your team's own number. The log counts two things: whether the story was read, and in how many of the day's moments the student tried a flexible idea.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers, paraprofessionals and general education teachers who read a short story with a student after a plan changes, an answer comes out different, or a game's rules shift, case managers who need that reading to show up as data, and the families who get the home page sent home.

More In The Collection

Part of the Visual Supports Collection, alongside Social Story: It's OK to Make a Mistake, Social Story: Asking for Help, Stop-Think-Act Impulse Control Picture Cards and Log and Friendship Skills Cue Cards and Log; more picture sets are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same pictures-plus-data shape.

Pictures (color pages): Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0. Pictures (ink-saver pages): Fluent Emoji, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, MIT License.