“Social stories” describe a situation, explain what behaviors the learner will do in that setting, and help learners adjust to a new routine. Social stories* are a tool that is often used for neurodiverse folks, such as autistic people or people with developmental delays. However, I believe they can be helpful for all learners as they clearly explain what to expect and what’s expected of them.

I teach parent-child classes, and co-operative preschools, and I have created social stories for all my classes. I create a little book that reviews all the routines for the class, and covers the rules, all illustrated with pictures from my classrooms. I then make a video of the story as well. I send these to parents about a week before class starts, and encourage them to either read the story to their child, or watch the video together.

Here is a sample story, using random photos from the internet – you would, of course, use photos from your actual classroom, showing actual materials they would see.

I have found this to be an extremely helpful tool for getting a class off to a great start!

Kids come in the door already knowing a lot about the classroom rules and routines. They already know our transition songs. They are excited to see things that they saw in the book or video, and they recognize my voice and already feel more comfortable with me than they would if they were meeting me for the first time. The parents who read the book or watched the video with their child also have a much better knowledge of classroom routines than they ever had in the past when I just sent them parent orientation handouts. (I do still provide additional info that’s aimed at the parent, but it is reinforced and contextualized by the social story.)

How to create a social story orientation:

I do it in PowerPoint. I write out a simple story, then find pictures to illustrate it. If you have pictures of children in the classroom doing activities, that is fabulous as it’s more engaging. But if not, you can just walk around an empty classroom that’s set up for school, and take all the pictures you need. In PowerPoint, you can then record narrations, and save it as a video that you can upload to YouTube or upload to OneDrive or Google Drive to share with your students. If you prefer, you could write the story in anything (Word, Canva, etc.) and print out a copy, and then make a video of yourself reading it aloud to post.

It only takes an hour or two to make, and you can make it “evergreen” so you can use it every year, and it will just help everything go more smoothly for you!

* There are criteria for what makes a true social story, and I don’t follow all those in my example here, which is inspired by the idea of social stories but adapted to my needs.