About Michelle

Michelle Garcia Winner, MA, CCC-SLP. is the founder of Social Thinking® which specializes in developing treatment strategies for helping persons with social cognitive learning challenges. She runs and works in her clinic, has authored numerous books and speaks internationally. She was awarded a Congressional Certificate of Special Recognition in 2008.

Workshop Day 1, 19 August 2011 - Informal Dynamic Social Thinking Assessment and Core Treatment and Goal Writing Strategies for Use at Home and School

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 develip new creative social thinking lessons to fit their particular environments. The focus of the day is on making the teaching chievable across a variety of environments, and on helping chilren 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 August 2011 - Organized Thinking: Dealing with the dreaded homework assignment and everything else a student wants to postpone!

This workshop focuses on executive functioning skilss and related strategies to track and tackle homework and other deadline based duties.

The impack of poor organizational skills is immense, affecting outcomes in school, at home, and work. The vast majority of students with social cognitive deficits have immense difficulty developing organizational skills. RElatively little support is given to teach students to develop these critical skills that carry over into their future.

The workshop will explore the different types of organizational skills and explore strategies to improve planning and establish structure.

Participants will learn how to recognize different organizational difficulties and develop better systems. It will identify strategies to help with planning, goal setting, and time management.