When Work Is Hard Picture Cards and Social Story

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 29 pages

• 3 short social stories about three kinds of hard moments: When a Worksheet Is Hard; When the Task Gets Harder; When a Game Is Hard to Do — 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-strategy-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 a Worksheet Is Hard — worksheet, thinking, calm, idea, again, check
• When the Task Gets Harder — book, thinking, calm, idea, again, check
• When a Game Is Hard to Do — basketball, thinking, calm, idea, again, check

Six sentences each, one thing per sentence, in the first person and the present tense: the hard moment (a worksheet too hard to finish, a task getting harder partway through, a game or skill not yet right), feeling frustrated and wanting to give up, taking a breath, trying a strategy, trying again if it does not work the first time, and closing on trying being something the student can do. Only the opening picture changes story to story (worksheet, book or basketball); the same four pictures after it (thinking, calm, idea, again) and the closing check mark repeat in every story because it is the same sticking-with-it 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 worksheet, a book, a basketball, a thinking face, a relieved face, a light bulb, two circling arrows, a check mark — never a drawn judgment about the moment itself. No story ever claims that trying a strategy makes the work easy or guarantees it works; the closing sentence of every story says only that trying is something the student can do.

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 hard task can look like and one way to keep trying, and counts what happened — never that the strategy made the work easy. 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 strategy.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers, paraprofessionals and general education teachers who read a short story with a student after a worksheet feels too hard, a task gets harder partway through, or a game or skill is still not right, 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 Flexible Thinking Picture Cards and Social Story, Stop-Think-Act Impulse Control Picture Cards and Log, Social Story: It's OK to Make a Mistake and Social Story: Asking for Help; 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.