
Social Skills - Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework
Social Skills / Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework

Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework
This homework assignment gives students further practice at interpreting non-verbal clues, including eye contact, facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. At the same time, this resource works on perspective taking by getting students to consider how others may feel, what others may think, and how the student may take action to help others out. Giving students this assignment really emphasizes the importance of thinking about others.

Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework
$ 4
Individuals on the autism spectrum are typically not adept at interpreting non-verbal communication. This is partly due to the fact that they usually do not observe others' behaviors nearly as often or as intently as neurotypical individuals do. That's why I give my students the homework task of observing others and interpreting non-verbal behaviors. I teach my students that "non-verbal communication" includes facial expression, body language, and tone of voice, and we work on interpretation in a number of ways before I give them the homework assignment. We may practice identifying non-verbal signs of various emotions in videos (such as clips of sitcoms, dramas, or reality TV) with the sound turned off. We use the activity Tone of Voice to work on using and interpreting tone of voice. We may use Kinesics: Interest vs. Disinterest to learn how non-verbal behaviors can indicate interest or a lack of interest. Notably, while the "Looking Out for Others' Feelings Homework" in Developing Empathy tasks students with guessing the perspectives of others mainly from context, Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework tasks students with interpreting others' perspectives from non-verbal behaviors. The last question of this homework task is significant because while it's important to start observing others more regularly (which I hope the assignment encourages) and to accurately identify how another person is feeling, it's equally important to respond in a helpful manner to another's feelings.
Related worksheets to Social Skills
These social skills worksheets and activities for individuals with Autism and Social Pragmatic Communication Disorders target a variety of social skills, including the development of empathy, perspective taking, kinesics, listener/reader presupposition, and conversational skills


Editing Verbal Narratives Worksheets
Ideal for anyone who gives too much information, this social skills activity works on the ability to regard one's listener when choosing which information to include in narratives.

Entering Conversations
An outline of the steps necessary to enter a conversation already in progress, including body proximity, verbal strategies, and determination of acceptance.

Social Skills Worksheets: Polite Wording
Using this social skills worksheet, students learn to regard others' feelings by incorporating given “softening” words and phrases into opinion statements and requests.

Social Skills Worksheets: Tact
Using this social skills worksheet, students discuss provided tactless statements, learning to identify properties of offensiveness, bragging, over-generalization, and prejudice.

Speaking to Different Communicative Partners
While theory of mind involves understanding others' perspectives and being able to “put yourself in their shoes”, the subsequent ability of adjusting your own behavior accordingly is...

Social Skills Worksheets: Perspective Taking
These social skills worksheets assign students the task of observing social interactions and speculating on the emotional effect of those interactions on the participants.

Social Skills Activities: Developing Empathy
This comprehensive social skills activity includes extensive discussion, an activity, homework, and therapeutic notes, all targeting the ability to regard others' feelings.

Social Skills Activities: Writing A Complaint Letter
Another favorite! Both a writing task and social skills activity, this product improves the ability to regard one's reader when choosing content and wording.

Social Skills Worksheets: Elaboration in Conversation
This conversation skills handout rates a variety of answers to the same question in terms of elaboration, teaching students how to keep a conversation going.

Social Skills Activities: Kinesics - Interest vs. Disinterest
This activity is a great resource for teaching kinesics (the ability to accurately interpret non-verbal social cues) and applying that skill to conversations.

Social Skills: Communication Skills Questionnaire
Using this questionnaire, students can check which social skills they'd like to work on in the areas of conversation, practical skills, non-verbal, dating, and conflict.

Set The Scene
This easy-to-use worksheet provides educators and speech language pathologists with an effective way to teach students to provide orienting details when starting a simple, conversational story.

Being a Good Conversationalist
Teaches students the key aspects needed to be an engaged and engaging conversational partner. Includes extensive therapeutic notes.

Choosing Conversation Topics
So many students worry about how to choose good topics for conversation. This resource provides an easy procedure to help them choose.

Interviewing Others
The qualities that make a good interviewer also make a good conversationalist. This resource gives students a lot of practice conducting interviews.

Post-Conversation Questionnaire
This simple-to-follow questionnaire gets students to improve their perspective taking skills along with their ability to be introspective.

Tone of Voice
Accurately interpreting others' emotions from their tone of voice is one of the essential skills for positive social interactions.

Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework
Generalization of skills taught during lessons is so important. This assignment gives students' further practice at reading non-verbal clues.

Impressions from Appearances
I've found this activity really illuminates for students just how appearances lead to impressions, and how those impressions may often be incorrect.

Attaining Targeted Impressions
Gets students to really think about what impressions they would like to give, to different people in different scenarios, and how they might attain desired impressions.

Impressions and Altruism
This resource targets not just how to attain desired impressions in interactions, but also how and why to consider another person's feelings.

Understanding Others Reference Sheet
By far one of my most helpful resources, this reference sheet is applicable whenever students are given a perspective taking task.

Greetings Worksheet
This resource is helpful when working on greeting skills and can serve as a user-friendly scripting tool for SLPs and other therapists.

Getting Someone's Attention
This activity helps students improve their ability to execute all the necessary aspects of the deceptively tricky task of gaining another's attention.

Restaurant Etiquette
As with all my materials, this handout includes instruction on perspective taking skills, along with all the dos and don'ts of eating out.

Answering Job Interview Questions
For older teens beginning to look for jobs, this detailed resource gives lots of instruction and practice at answering the four most common questions asked.

Passive Aggression
Not everyone our students run into has good intentions. This resource teaches adolescent students how to identify passive aggression and how to handle it.

Social Skills Activities Packet
A collection of all twenty eight social skills activities and worksheets covering conversation skills, perspective taking, empathy development, kinesics, and listener/reader presupposition.
