Materials Wednesday: Teaching Flexible Thinking using Holiday Scenarios

I have quite a few kids on my caseload that understand what they *should* do in problem solving.  In fact, they often can solve a problem in theory, but they struggle in reality with being flexible in their problem solving.  They tend to see things in black and white- their way or everything is ruined.  This rigid thinking can be difficult when forming and maintaining relationships with peers and family members.

The holidays are a time when rigid thinking becomes very difficult. Schedules are less predictable, the number of social interactions tends to increase, and novel situations may pop up.

In preparation for the upcoming holidays, I developed a tool to help teach flexible thinking.  As you can see above, I start with information about rigid vs. flexible thinking.  I then give some examples of what flexible thinking might look like:

Then there are 16 situation cards that deal with things like getting a gift you don't like, not getting what you wanted, handling changes to the schedule,and other situations that might be disappointing/result in rigid thinking.  After each scenario, you can ask the students how they can change the thought to be more flexible.

If you are interested, this is for sale at my TpT store. The super cute clipart was created by Jeanette Baker of Jason's Online Classroom.

Do you have any tips for teaching Flexible Thinking?  I know the Superflex Curriculum has some pretty great stuff, unfortunately, our department's budget this year went to updating our testing materials, so it is a dream for another year for me.