The superflex curriculum was developed to help students understand the concept of flexible thinking. This curriculum was developed by Michelle Garcia Winner

Many of our students are rigid in their thinking and have trouble shifting their thoughts or plans around the plans of others to adapt to the social world around them. This ultimately makes being part of a group that much more challenging.

We explain to students that as social beings, we are like superheroes in that we are always trying to use our brain powers to be flexible thinkers. By thinking about others and what they might need from us, we have the ability to shift and change our thinking any time to keep others feeling good.

However, we are always challenged by our “not- so- flexible thinking” and wanting to do simply what we want to do, when we want to do it. This “not-so-flexible” thinking ultimately becomes our nemesis because we constantly have to regulate and adjust around others even when one does not want to; hence, Social Thinking.

The first character to emerge is “Rock Brain”. Rock Brain is the character that gets into our brain and misguides us into thinking only about what we want to do and not be able to see things from someone else’s perspective; Rock Brain simply does not allow our brains to shift and adjust to the social world around us.

Superflex helps our students not only increase their awareness of social behaviors like flexible thinking, but also the other social skills that our students have difficulty with, such as keeping their body with the group, attending to the group with their brain, staying on topic, etc…Villainous names for each of these behaviors and the Team of Unthinkables were born!

The purpose of the Superhero Social Thinking Curriculum is to provide the social-thinking educator, teacher or parent with a fun, motivating, and non-threatening way for our students to explore social thinking while increasing their knowledge of social expectations, their awareness of their own behavior and how to modify their behaviors with Superflexible Strategies.

Our students have difficulty monitoring and regulating their own behaviors in the moment, and this curriculum provides a fun forum in which they can explore their own challenges and identify ways to modify their thoughts and related behaviors in different settings. For many students, this has become a very empowering way to help them help themselves.

Good social skills can be defined as “adapting efficiently in each context”, meaning we have to read the hidden social rules in each context and then regulate our physical presence, eyes, language, emotions, reactions, etc. This requires highly flexible thinking.

While some children learn to do this somewhat effortlessly, our students have challenges in recognizing and applying these concepts to demonstrate social cooperation. When we can incorporate all this information and regulate the body and mind to show we are effectively adapting to others across environmental contexts, we demonstrate that we are considering the perspectives of people across environments. We call this social smarts!

Students who do not learn this information intuitively, but who function with emerging meta-cognitive language, need to be taught these core concepts more explicitly. So the superhero named Superflex and the Team of Unthinkables to contrast for students when we are using our “social smarts,” versus when our brains are getting sidetracked in a less social way, the dominant thinking of a less flexible member of the Team of Unthinkables.

The kids enjoy the idea that they are superheroes in training and that they are tying to increase their social skills and Superflexible thinking to become the Ultimate Superhero!

There is an elaborate list of Social Thinking Vocabulary terms that have made “social” more explicit by providing a language and a way of exploring social information at a deeper level and across all environments.

These terms provide a concrete way for our students to explore social expectations when sharing space with others. Some of these terms include thinking with our eyes, rolling your body away from the group, and expected and unexpected behaviors.

The Social Thinking Vocabulary also allows for our students’ caregivers to understand what is introduced in the groups and reinforce these skills outside the group setting.

The Social Thinking Curriculum is divided into three levels:

Exploring social thinking concepts and vocabulary related to Superflex and the
Team of Unthinkables

Increasing awareness of the child’s own social behaviors he or she is modifying and appropriate strategies

Addressing self-monitoring and modifying behavior though the use of Superflex
Strategies

More Vocabulary!

Superflexible Thinking – Having the mental flexibility in your brain to interpret what people say and do based on different points of views or contexts. This is the opposite of having a Rigid Brain (Rock Brain) where one follows a rule all the time or cannot understand different meanings in language or expression.

Superflexible Strategies:

Thinking About Others (what someone else is thinking and feeling)
and the Expected Behaviors

Being Able to STOP What You are Doing and Follow What Others are
Asking You to Do

During Play, Shift and Adjust Thinking to Match What Others are
Thinking; Helping You Stay Connected

Shifting and Adjusting Our Thinking to Keep Others Sharing Their
Ideas and Having a Good Time

Being Able to stop and look at a Problem and the Variety of Choices
That One Can Use to Solve It

Thinking About What is Expected Depending on Where You Are,
What You Are Doing and Who is There

Keeping Your Body and Brain in the Group: Understanding that our bodies need to look interested and connected to the group and our brain needs to keep thinking about what the group is thinking in order to participate in the group. We also teach that people can see when your body or brain does not appear to be part of the group.

Your Body Rolled Out of the Group: A student’s body is turned or physically
moved away from the group, and the others notice that the student is not working as part of the group.

Your Brain Rolled Out of the Group: A student’s brain is distracted from what
the group is doing and the other people in the group notice that he does not
appear to be working as part of the group, even if his body is in the group.

Blue Thoughts (good), Red Thoughts (not so good/weird thoughts): Refer to how our actions, words and even physical dress or hygiene create good thoughts and weird thoughts in other’s brains (i.e., the impressions that we make). All people create good thoughts and weird thoughts across a day. People remember the thoughts they have, but if the student primarily implants good thoughts in people’s minds then that is what they think of him or her overall. If a person plants a majority of weird thoughts, then that is what people remember most. Behaving really well after producing a lot of weird thought behaviors still leaves people remembering the weird thoughts.

Thinking about Others: Idea that we are constantly considering what others are thinking and feeling in order to monitor and modify our behavior to keep people feeling good.

Whole Body Listening: Idea that the whole body (eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet, bottom, and brain) needs to be focused on the group in order to listen and show you are listening.

Hidden Rules – Not all rules are clearly announced. Most rules in our world are rules people figure out through observation and experience. If you are not sure of the rules, you can ask someone. For example: A hidden rule of being at school is that you are usually supposed to keep your shoes on, even if you take them off at home.

Doing what is expected – Understanding a range of hidden rules in every situation; we have to figure out what those rules are and then follow them in order to keep other people feeling good about us.

Doing what is unexpected – Failing to follow the set of rules, hidden or states, in the environment.

Social Smarts – Having the ability to read the hidden social rules in each context and the emotions and thoughts of others in order to regulate our physical presence, eyes, language, emotions, reactions, etc…

Science Smarts – Having the ability to easily understand more factually based information. These skills alone make it very challenging to negotiate within the social world because of its abstract nature.

Make a “Smart Guess”: Taking information you already know or have been taught and making an educated guess with the information.

A “Wacky Guess”: Making a guess when you have absolutely no information to help you figure out what the guess should be. In school we rarely ask for this type of guess-making, unless students are playing a game.

People-Files: Visual way to help our kids to understand that we all are continually learning information about others and filing it in an organized way in our brain, to recall it later when we see that person again.

Figuring Out Other People’s Plans: Determining what people are planning to do next based on their physical actions. We can also start to figure out what people are planning to do by interpreting their movement or eye direction (thinking with your eyes). One must also figure out the subtle meaning within spoken language; this is a higher-level skill.

Social Fake: Demonstrate an interest in someone else’s topic that he or she does not find inherently fascinating by looking interested and adding his or her thoughts to the conversation.

Boring Moment: A set of socially acceptable behaviors that one uses when he is not interested in what the group is doing at that moment.

Whopping Topic Change: When a comment is made and the listener cannot determine the thread of information that connects this comment to what was previously said, thereby providing a response that is off topic or so far removed from the main concept that it is off topic.

Tiny Problem vs. Big or Earthquake Problem – Understanding that problems differ in severity, which then assists in helping one to react appropriately to personal situations.