Tag Archives: Problem Solving

Pick of the Week: Save 20% off Inferencing Tools!

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Inference POW

Strengthen your students’ inference skills with these workbooks and flashcards!

We’ve got all the tools you need to teach and develop students’ logical thinking and problem solving skills in the classroom or at home.

This week only, save 20% on your purchase of these select inferencing tools by using promo code INFER2017 at checkout!

*Promotion is valid until March 20, 2016 at 11:59pm ET. Offer cannot be applied to previous purchases, combined with any other offers, transferred, refunded, or redeemed and/or exchanged for cash or credit. Different Roads to Learning reserves the right to change or cancel this promotion at any time. To redeem offer at differentroads.com, enter promo code INFER2017 at checkout.

Pick of the Week: NEW! Cooperative Games — Teach teamwork and group problem-solving

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NEW to our catalog are a set of cooperative games that foster teamwork, shared decision-making, and many more valuable skills, as learners work together to solve a common obstacle in the games. This week, you can save 15% on these cooperative games by using our promo code TEAMWORK at check-out.

Cooperative Games Subheader

In cooperative games, everyone plays together, no one is left out, and everyone has fun! Players work together as a team against a common obstacle, not against each other. Cooperative games emphasize play, not competition. Kids work together, they help each other and, most importantly, they play for fun! Cooperative games teach:

  • Emotional development
  • Shared decision making
  • Creative problem solving
  • A sense of community
  • Positive self-esteem
  • Playfulness
  • Cooperation

For kids who love dinosaurs, the Dinosaur Escape Game is a perfect way to teach strategy, memory, problem-solving, and following directions, as players work together to move all three dinosaurs safely to Dinosaur Island before the volcano erupts. Roll the die, move the dinosaurs around the board, uncover the matching dinosaurs under the fern tokens. But if you turn over the T-Rex, run! If players can find and help all three lost dinosaurs escape to Dinosaur Island before completing the 3-D volcano puzzle, everyone wins!

DRG_014_Dinosaur_Escape_Game_Board

The game comes with 1 game board, 3 dinosaur movers, 1 die, 12 fern tokens, 5 volcano puzzle pieces and volcano stand.

Younger learners will have an enjoyable time with the Friends and Neighbors Helping Game, as they work together to make matches between characters in distress and ways to help them!  Can players help a little girl who’s sad because she’s standing out in the rain, or a boy who’s afraid of the dark? Children encounter characters with a problem and reach into the Helping Bag to pull out a token — can the token help someone on the game board? If so, it’s a match!

In playing the game and reading about the feelings and needs of the characters, parents can help their children recognize feelings in others — the first step to building empathy. The game comes with 4 game boards, 14 tokens, 1 Helping Bag, 1 Stop Sign board, parent guide, and a Friends and Neighbors book.

Don’t forget! You can take 15% off either of these new cooperative games by applying our promo code TEAMWORK when you place your order online or over the phone with us at (800) 853-1057.

*Promotion is valid until July 5, 2016 at 11:59pm ET. Offer cannot be applied to previous purchases, combined with any other offers, transferred, refunded, or redeemed and/or exchanged for cash or credit. Different Roads to Learning reserves the right to change or cancel this promotion at any time. To redeem offer at differentroads.com, enter promo code TEAMWORK at checkout.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Social Independence – Part I

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This week, in continuing the spirit of Autism Awareness, we’re excited to feature a two-part expert article on a social problem-solving intervention method by Steven Gordon, PhD, ABPP, and Michael Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D, who are the founder and directors of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A.  Here in Part I, Drs. Gordon and Selbst have addressed the outcomes of different types of social skills training and what an effective social skills teaching program encompasses in order to promote independence in learners.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Independence – Part I
Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP & Michael C. Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D

Students with social skills deficits often have difficulty in many of the following areas: sharing, handling frustration, controlling their temper, ending arguments, responding to bullying and teasing, making friends, and complying with requests.

These impairments require direct instruction to address the deficits. In addition, these impairments are exacerbated for those with a mental health diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Nonverbal Learning Disorder.

A large body of research indicates that social skills training produces short and long term positive outcomes. The improvement in social skills has many benefits: an increase in students’ positive behavior, reduction in negative behavior, improvements in academic performance, more positive attitudes toward school, and increase preparation for success in adulthood.

 

Social skills learning programs have yielded significant benefits in many studies conducted to date. “The ultimate goal of a social skills program is to teach the interpersonal, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills that students need relative to interpersonal, problem-solving, and conflict resolution interactions. In a generic sense, then, students with good social skills are unlikely to engage in inappropriate internalizing or externalizing behaviors” (Knoff, 2014). In one important meta-analysis by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), it was concluded that social and emotional programs are effective in both school and after-school settings, for students with and without behavioral and emotional problems, for racially and ethnically diverse students from urban, rural, and suburban settings across the K-12 grade range.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions improve students’ social-emotional skills, attitudes about self and others, connection to school, and increase positive social behavior while reducing conduct problems and emotional distress. CASEL’s review also indicates that school-based programs are most effectively conducted by school staff (e.g., teachers, student support staff) and suggest that they can be effectively incorporated into routine educational practice. In light of CASEL’s positive findings, it has recommend that federal, state, and local policies and practices encourage the broad implementation of well-designed, evidence-based social and emotional programs in schools. Continue reading →

Pick of the Week: “Introducing Inference” Workbook

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Teach inferencing and problem-solving skills to young learners with this comprehensive workbook by Marilyn M. Toomey! Our ability to infer or to draw conclusions given partial information is a cornerstone of our reasoning process. Guessing, implying, hinting, suggesting, supposing and reasoning are just a few of the mental processes in which we draw inference. Throughout Introducing Inference, students are encouraged not only to draw conclusions using inference, but to explain how they solved the problem at hand. The aim is to teach students that using inference in their reasoning process is using their best judgment.

The book starts out with pictures of objects, each with an obvious part missing and moves to sequenced events, with a part of the sequence missing. Finally, questions requiring answers that tell what is missing complete the path to learning this basic skill. For example, an image of bike with a missing wheel is accompanied by: “A bicycle is supposed to have two ____, but this bicycle has only one. One ____ is missing.”

Introducing Inference covers topics in:

  • Missing parts: animals, objects
  • Sequenced events
  • Missing parts: sequenced events
  • Predicting outcomes
  • Identifying intermediate events
  • Analyzing outcomes
  • Inferring causal events
  • and more!

Use our promotional code INFER15 at check-out this week to take 15% off* your copy of the Introducing Inference workbook!

*Offer expires on Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 11:59pm EST. Promotion does not apply to past purchases. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in your code INFER15 at check-out! Call our friendly customer service team at (800) 853-1057 with any inquiries.

Pick of the Week: More What’s Wrong? ColorCards – Develop skills in problem-solving, storytelling, and more!

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Help students develop skills in observation, deduction, problem solving, anticipation, storytelling, insight, and more with the More What’s Wrong? ColorCards. This set of 36 photographic cards shows a range of activities and situations with incorrect, unusual, or unexpected elements to identify and discuss, and even induce a few chuckles! Save 15%* this week on the More What’s Wrong? ColorCards by applying promo code WHATSWRONG at check-out!

The open-ended nature of the problems posed also enables different levels of application ranging from single identification of what’s wrong to understanding and explaining how to fix the situation and the potential consequences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

An instruction booklet with possible discussion points and ways to structure a session is also included, with pages that identify which cards show mistakes with clothes, wrong objects, wrong methods, or impossible/unlikely events. Don’t forget – you can take 15%* off your order of the More What’s Wrong? ColorCards by using promo code WHATSWRONG at check-out this week!

Pick of the Week: NEW! Question Challenge Card Game

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The Question Challenge Card Game is an expressive and receptive language card game that targets social and reasoning skills in young learners. This game will target skills in staying calm through self-talk, predicting, questioning in conversation, determining perspective, inferencing, cognitive flexibility, intonation, body language, and more. As they play the game, students will practice skills necessary for effective communication and problem solving.

To play the game, one player turns over a Challenge Card and reads it out loud, stating which player will answer and how many questions he or she will answer. The player asked to answer then flips over a Question Card and answers the question on it. If the student answers appropriately, he or she spins the electronic spinner and receives the lighted number of tokens. The player with the most tokens at the end of the game wins!

This week, you can also save 15%* on your set of the Question Challenge Card Game by using our promo code QCGAME at check-out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Includes 300 color-coded Question Cards, 50 Challenge Cards, 225 Bingo Chips, and 1 Electronic Spinner.

Don’t forget to save 15%* this week on the Question Challenge Card Game by using promo code QCGAME when you check out online or over the phone with us!

*Offer is valid until 11:59pm EST on March 31st, 2015. Not compatible with any other offers. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in your code at check out!