I am a big fan of Social Thinking’s philosophy and materials. Today I am so happy to share a new APP from Social Thinking! The Social Detective app is the 1st level of the You are a Social Detective ! CD. Both are, you guessed it, based off of the teachings of Social Thinking’s book, You are a Social Detective! The app’s creators put together a nice video to explain the app, you can watch it HERE.
Each student must choose an avatar in the app. Then they can start.
Each level in the app, there are 3, has a pretest. Students must get 100% on the pretest before they can move on to the ‘test’ portion for each level.
First students work to earn their detective coat. In this level they target ‘expected’ and ‘unexpected’ concepts. Students are shown videos of children interacting and asked if the behavior shown was ‘expected’ or ‘unexpected’. The type of question increase in difficulty as the ‘test’ moves forward. Students go from stating if a behavior was ‘expected’ or ‘unexpected’ to identifying who is performing the ‘expected’ or ‘unexpected’ behavior, and finally choosing which behavior was ‘expected’ or ‘unexpected’. I really like how the questions and situations naturally progressed in difficulty. It made it easier to see where my students lacked understanding and where they had developed those skills.
Next, kids earn their hat. To do this, they must show they know and understand the difference between good thoughts and uncomfortable thoughts. Students must identify verbal and nonverbal clues from the videos to show if someone was having good thoughts or uncomfortable thoughts.
Finally, they earn their magnifying glass to complete their Social Detective ensemble by using all of their skills to make smart guesses. This was a neat level because there were two answers for the questions. There were about two questions per video. After the questions for the that video were answered you got to see how the situation played out.
I felt the situations in the videos were relevant for my kids both in and out of school. I really liked that they included both. A cool feature that that the app keeps data for the past 5 sessions per student per level. This is great for data tracking and progress monitoring. You can add this app for just $24.99 from iTunes.
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How do I get this app? I went to the app store and couldn’t find it. I want it!
Just click the link in the post, and it will take you right to it! 🙂