Social Story Asking Before I Take Things

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 29 pages

• 3 short social stories about asking before using something that belongs to someone else: Asking a Classmate First; Asking Before I Use a Shared Supply; Asking at Home, Before I Borrow — 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 "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 the three stories' pictures, a read-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 order for who to ask about a shared object, if there is one
• 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

• Asking a Classmate First — teddy bear, hand, question, wait, handshake, happy
• Asking Before I Use a Shared Supply — crayon, hand, question, adult, handshake, happy
• Asking at Home, Before I Borrow — book, hand, question, wait, handshake, happy

Six sentences each, one thing per sentence, in the first person and the present tense: the object the student wants to use, the ask, the wait, the answer, and the agreement. The same three pictures (a raised hand, a question mark, a handshake) carry "ask," "ask out loud" and "permission granted" in every story, in the same order, so what changes from story to story is WHO is asked and WHAT the object is, never the shape of the habit. Every picture is a concrete object or gesture a young child can name in one word — a raised hand, a question mark, two hands clasped, a teddy bear, a crayon, an adult figure, an open book — never a drawn judgment about taking something without asking.

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, and it is NOT a lesson about ownership rules, consequences or any legal or clinical procedure — it makes no claim beyond "ask first," and it never frames a moment where asking did not happen as "stealing" or "wrong."

It tells a student, in pictures, what asking first looks like, and counts what happened. It is not a behavior plan, 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 asked first.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals who read a short story with a student before a shared-object moment comes up, general education teachers who need one for a whole class, 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: Asking for Help, Social Stories: When Someone Is Unkind to Me, Keeping My Hands to Myself: A Social Story and the free Visual Supports Starter Set; 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.