Power Cards with Pic Collage

Power Cards are a form of Social Narrative intervention first described by Elisa Gagnon in her book about the topic. Social Narratives are the umbrella that encompasses Carol Gray's Social Stories™ approach and are considered evidence-based. The Autism EBP Review Group of Chapel Hill describes them well:  “Narratives that describe social situations in some detail by highlighting relevant cues and offering examples of appropriate responding. Social narratives are individualized according to learner needs and typically are quite short, perhaps including pictures or other visual aids." As students get older and, honestly, sometimes tire of our direct teaching, Power Cards provide a hook to their areas of interest and secure the critical factor of engagement with the material we are attempting to present. This resource review provides a great overview of using a Power Card in conjunction with a student's interest in the TV show Survivor in order to teach sportsmanship behaviors.

I recently have been working with a middle school student who is interested in mermaids and The Little Mermaid in particular, and needs some assistance in a number of social learning areas. She's quick to roll her eyes and object when language presented to her is too "teachy." I discovered that the app Pic Collage (you know, one of my faves) was a good place to make a few Power Card samples for her team in a quick manner, particularly because of the Web Search feature that allowed me to search for engaging images. It is a little difficult to type at length in Pic Collage because of its small text field, so I typed into the Notes app and cut/pasted. This app allowed me to make 4 Power Cards efficiently, incorporating some concepts from Social Thinking® and Sarah Ward and Kristin Jacobsen's situational awareness mnemonic. I was then able to send them to the team for "rollout" over a series of weeks, as we never want to bombard students with too many social narratives at once. Pic Collage products can be printed or shown on a device for review. You can also consider making the same in Book Creator.

I wanted to share these examples, you can download from Google Drive here.