Michelle Garcia Winner

Michelle is a US Congressional-award winning speech-language pathologist who specializes in treating students who are experiencing social and communication challenges. Twleve years ago, Michelle coined the term 'social thinking' and developed her unique treatment approach. The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders published research supporting her Social Thinking approach.

Workshop Day 1, 19th March 2010

Implementing Social Thinking Concepts and Vocabulary Into Our School & Home

This workshop is about teaching social thinking and related skills. We explore how social thinking concepts develop the infrastructure to help children to meet educational standards and provide a key to reading comprehension, written expression, etc.

We define many social thinking concepts and how to apply the "social thinking vocabulary" across the day. Participants work in teams to develop new creative social thinking lessons to fit their particular environments. The focus of the day is on making the teaching achievable across a variety of environments, and on helping children to carry the concepts into their real lives. Furthermore, we explore how to work as part of an educational team and how to share the workload when helping these children.

Workshop Day 2, 20 March 2010 - Informal Dynamic Social Thinking Assessment & Core Treatment Strategies 

This workshop teaches how to gain insight by using the Dynamic Informal Social Thinking Assessment. We learn about the inner mind and why tailored treatment strategies are needed. We look at how doing the "expected" or "unexpected" in social situations alters how others feel about our behaviour, how they treat us, and how we feel about ourselves.

We discuss Social Thinking groups and explore strategies to make the abstractions of the world more concrete! We examine how we make friends, distinguishing between "being friendly", developing a friendship and having a "bonded friend". We discuss how conversational skills are only one component to keeping friends; "hanging out" means we share space without necessarily talking!