Do you like Elephants? I want an Orange!...

.... No, do you like elephants? Orange please!

Does that sound all too familiar to you? Are you attempting to have conversations with students who just struggle and struggle to stay on topic? If you are at all familiar with someone with autism, you know that social skills are an area that they struggle in. And for some, staying on topic during a conversation is an even bigger struggle.

They can't help it. They know what they like and they want to talk about what they like. Irregardless of whether or not you have any interest at all in the topic. :) So they need our help in developing these social skills.

I have students who don't necessarily only want to talk about one subject, but who get preoccupied with one thing (like maybe oranges) and no matter how hard you try to redirect the conversation, they are still stuck on the other topic. (the oranges!)

I'm working on creating visual supports to practice on topic conversations. I know this idea exists already, but for my younger students I needed something that offered more visual supports throughout the conversation exchanges than what I could find.

I'm offering this first one to you for free! I'd love your feedback on it. Any suggestions for improvement, or what worked or didn't work for your students when you tried using this visual.

The student I've had in mind while making these really likes elephants. I wanted our first visual support for on topic conversations to be a topic that he likes. This way he is better able to follow the visual support before we start working on topics he might not care about.

Do you have any topic suggestions you'd like to see for these? 

Click {here} to download this one for free!