‘Talking About’ Mobile App – Supporting students to develop social skills

Download the app and purchase each topic as you need it.

Children and young people are required to respond to a wide range of challenging social situations that occur in their daily lives. Successful management of these situations is dependent on the young person’s social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal problem-solving capacity, as well as the response of others and the context of the event. Many children and young people can find the management of everyday situations difficult, particularly if they are on the autistic spectrum or have a learning difficulty.

• Black Sheep Press ‘Talking About’ App gives children the opportunity to discuss with a relevant adult (teacher/therapist/parent), common situations and difficulties they may face.
• Topics are suitable for a wide age range (4 -11+ years). Purchase each topic as you need it or buy multiple topics for the age group you are working with.
• Each topic shows different scenarios. Response pictures illustrate ways of behaving which will encourage discussion about the ‘right’ thing to do and prompt children and young people to make their own suggestions.
• For children or young people who have not learnt to read or who have reading difficulties, there is optional audio. The background to the text can also be changed to yellow which may help some children read the text.
• The app can record the child’s responses and discussions. This makes it ideal for role play and ‘rehearsal’ of social conversations. The teacher/therapist/parent using the app can make notes and email these together with the recordings.
• The app is perfect for one-to-one or small-group work. By linking the device to a whiteboard the app can be used for whole class work.

The app covers a range of topics including:

Talking About Classroom Behaviour: depicts challenging classroom behaviour and communication breakdown and suggests alternative ways of dealing with them. Aimed at a primary school age group, it includes many real-life situations encountered in classrooms  – for example taking turns, feeling anxious, staying on topic and playing together.

Talking About Friends: this topic concerns relationships with friends. Scenarios include feeling left out, negotiation, saying sorry, bullying (4 years. – 7 years.)

Talking About School: depicts a range of challenging social and educational situations for the younger, or less mature, age group (4 years. – 7 years). Scenarios include a child who has no one to play with; older children ask a child to do something ‘naughty’.

Talking About Social and Emotional Skills: illustrations of challenging scenarios, leading to a variety of positive and negative emotions and/or personal qualities such as jealousy, loneliness, ambition and courage. Each scenario shows four ways to deal with the situation, some appropriate and some not. Prompt questions to be used by teaching staff or speech and language therapists are included. Suitable for developmental ages 11-13 years.

Talking About Conversation: designed to develop social skills, verbal reasoning skills, situational understanding & inferencing skills in children (11 years. – 16 years.). To help teach the skills required to be a good conversational partner, the scenarios include identifying the appropriate moment to start a conversation, selecting appropriate topics for conversation, asking to join in, offering assistance.

Talking About Community: ideal to help teach young people (age 11 years. – 16 years) social skills, specifically aimed at supporting the transfer of these skills into everyday settings out and about in the local community.  This topic discusses challenging social situations they might face and is almost entirely based on the experiences and difficulties of a group of Year 9 students. Scenarios include waiting in a queue, travelling on a bus, buying something in a small shop, and what to do in an emergency.

Talking About Secondary School: developing situational understanding and verbal reasoning focusing on the transition to secondary school.  Designed for children who are about to move to Secondary School, or who have transferred and are struggling with the transition. Children discuss 14 large pictures which show a situation relevant to their experiences at school. Each scenario has four associated pictures which provide appropriate – and some inappropriate –  solutions. For example, mixing with older children at the bus stop and forgetting your homework.