Keeping My Hands to Myself Social Story

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 29 pages, 309 type-in fields

• 3 short social stories about keeping hands and body in one's own space — On the Rug, In Line, With Shared Toys and Tools — 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), plus a picture-key page (all 13 pictures once, as a preview or pre-teach reference) in both sets
• 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 the three stories' pictures, a read-at-home table and lines for what happened at home
• A hand-off page so a paraprofessional or another classroom reads the same story the same way
• A phrase bank for writing a new story: 24 starters in 6 groups (opening lines, what I can do, why it helps the people around 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 naming its card count, eight plain) and a spine strip
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

A social story that comes with its own data. Most story sets stop at the story; this one adds a practice page for each, a log that counts the moments the story is about, a weekly roll-up and a phrase bank for writing the next one, so "the student kept their hands to themselves" turns into a line on a page a case manager can bring to a meeting.

The Stories

• On the Rug — school, sit, read, look, raise hand, happy
• In Line — line up, backpack, walk, wait, look, door
• With Shared Toys and Tools — school, ball, wait, pencil, raise hand, happy

Six sentences each, one thing per sentence, in the first person and the present tense: what happens, what the student can do, and why it helps the people around them. There is no picture for "hands to myself" itself — no hand icon draws that behavior — so every sentence pictures a concrete, ordinary thing in the scene (a chair, a book, a backpack, a ball, a pencil, a door) and the sentence carries the meaning. The same picture means the same word in every story (the hourglass is "wait" in story 2 and story 3), and 13 pictures cover all 18 sentences. Every picture was chosen to be named in one word by a young child, in color AND in the black-and-white set.

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 classroom moment looks like and what they can do, and counts what happened. It is not a behavior plan, a lesson script or a program of any kind, 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 kept their hands and body to themselves.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals who read a short story with a student before the moment it is about, general education teachers who need one for a whole class routine, 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 Stories for Classroom Expectations (raising a hand, waiting a turn, a quiet voice, walking in the hallway), Feelings Chart and Check-In Cards and Calm-Down Choice Cards; 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.