Power Cards

So in college we learned about power cards and every school I have worked in has never heard of them, so I took the opportunity to introduce them.  I think they are great!  They are kindof like social stories which most of you may have heard of (I will post some of those later) but they are smaller (on 4x6 or 3x5 cards) and shorter (word wise). 

A powercard basically just bullet points important behaviors to remember for specific situations.  This particular power card was created for a student who had trouble with competition.  I bulleted some of the important things he needed to remember when playing competitive games.  As you can probably gather this student was very motivated by characters from Mario Video Games.  We took his favorite characters and used them to our advantage.  They work best for students who can read.  But you can also use pictures to create sentences for students who have less of a reading vocabulary.

This is a character powercard.  You can also use a basic powercard for students who need rules to refer to themselves and need pro-nouns like I and me to be used. Some students need the rules to say, I WILL...... but others work better when they can relate to someone else (Mario and Luigi) following the same rules.

I really like putting all of the powercards for a specific student on a little ring and pulling up the one that refers to the specific situation we are in.  Its a great way to quickly review the rules and use priming to help a child anticipate a situation before it occurs. 

Some other things I have made powercards for:

Taking Turns
How to behave on the bus
Buying Lunch at School
Calming Down

Thats enough for now...I might decide to post some more so I don't want to spoil that for you!!  Enjoy!