Understanding personal space
I currently work within a junior class with a lot of needs. A struggle I find that occurs a lot in terms of misunderstandings would be when my Autistic students continue to forget or not register personal space in regards to their peers. I have used some social stories in the past to describe this and physical representation, by asking two students to stand near each other and to let the other know where they feel their personal space line is. But I found my students could understand the concept only in that moment only to then forget again very quickly.
I find social stories very helpful when explaining social situations to children with exceptionalities. By using the Bing AI image generator I was able to create a series of images that I hoped would help a student in particular to visualize himself in the story. I then put the photos together with text to create a story book feel in the presentation program SWAY. My students liked the idea of personal space being represented as their own personal bubble that they carried around with them. Having the visual image of students with their bubbles created a more visual representation that my students can now go back to when they forget. However they don’t seem to be forgetting recently as the topic of bubbles is still constant in class and my students are doing a fantastic job of being mindful of each others bubble unless invited in. Creating images that represented the particular student within my class helped for him to visualize himself and his classmates in the situation more clearly.
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