Patience. Perseverance. Potty Training. Personal Space… These are just a few of the numerous topics related to social-emotional learning (SEL) skills that kids must learn to navigate life (and no, they don’t all start with “p”). While some SEL skills might feel like second nature, others don’t come as easy. 

Parents, Caregivers, Educators: we know how demoralizing it can feel to repeatedly teach a skill that just won’t stick with a child. But have no fear… we, along with our brilliant story-generating AI software, have the solution! 

Read the post below on social stories to learn about their key components and research-backed impact on social-emotional learning.  Once you get the basics, we’ll show you how Nookly seamlessly generates social stories personalized to your child in a flash ⚡!

Social Stories 101

A social story is a narrative that helps learners build out their social-emotional toolbox to navigate various life experiences. Just as teachers craft lesson plans around a learning objective, social story creators first determine the targeted social-emotional skill and then compose an engaging, coherent, and age-appropriate story for the audience to grasp that skill. 

Varying in length and complexity to accommodate the child’s needs, social stories present a narrative where the main character struggles with a certain skill and consequently learns the value of that skill and how to practice it. The story includes perspective sentences, so readers can understand why the character feels a certain way. 

Social stories most effectively teach a skill when the main character looks like the child reading the story. Nookly’s social stories are brought to life with visual aids that depict a main character whose gender, age, and ethnicity reflect those of the reader. To see more on how Nookly personalizes social stories to each of its readers, jump down to “Nookly’s Personalized Stories.”

Social Stories’ Impact

Carol Gray first devised social stories to support the social-emotional growth of her students on the autism spectrum . Research shows that social stories can better teach social-emotional skills to autistic students as compared to other methods of instruction such as positive behavior plans and repeated demonstrations.

While first catered to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), social stories have been proven to have a positive impact on all learners’ social-emotional growth. Any child, no matter his learning profile or developmental stage, can hone a life skill or understanding through a social story.

Social stories can transform a frustrating experience for both the child and the educating adult into a joyful and effective learning experience. Warning: your kid might love a social story SO much that they choose to reread it instead of rewatching Moana for the umpteenth time 🙂

Nookly’s Personalized Social Stories

At Nookly, we celebrate your child’s unique identity by personalizing every social story to their learning needs, demographics, and interests. All you need to do is simply log into Nookly, and:

1. Enter a learning goal
2. Personalize the story for your kid
3. Review the storyline we draft for you
4. Play the story generated by our AI

This quick and easy process will allow you to generate an engaging social story that teaches your child a key social-emotional skill with a main character whom they can relate to. 

We can’t wait for you and your child to learn and explore on Nookly!