So many great animations…

but which ones has this group seen already?

There’s nothing like plowing through therapy notes trying to determine whether a student or group has already watched a particular animated video. And what work was done with that specific video. And even more frustrating (for me) is not being able to recall the name of a video I know is a great pick for a session, but I just can’t remember what it’s called. If only I could see the title, I’d recognize it in a flash!

For these reasons, I sat down and developed the Maca & Roni Super Social Learning Spreadsheet. As many of you know, I love using this series, which has broad age appeal and can be used to jumpstart lots of social learning discussions.

It’s easy to individualize the spreadsheet. First of all, you can save the original under a different name to be the record for a student or group. Then write the date in the cell as you work. That keeps all the info in 1 place. No more students reminding you “we already did this with this video…” Here’s a sample of part of the spreadsheet:

Easy to find, easy to record, easy to see where you can go next.

Another option is to delete the columns your students don’t need. For this high school group, we don’t need to focus on identifying feelings and thoughts – they’re already pretty good at that. But right now, we are really focusing on mental state verbs and working on recognizing and tolerating mistakes in themselves and others. So, for this group, I deleted the columns I didn’t need – it’s easy, I promise! Just right click on the column, delete, column, ok. I also didn’t like all the color, so I just filled the spreadsheet with “no fill” using that paint bucket in the toolbar. Here’s what that looked like:

Sometimes I want to share animations with families. Parents like getting video recommendations that the whole family can watch, talk about, and draw about together. Again, just delete what isn’t necessary. In this example, I focused on feelings. This way, parents had some guidance about what to look for (and could keep all the titles straight!) It took about 1 minute to make, and, of course, Maca & Roni became a family favorite: