Musical social stories and the preschool child with autism spectrum disorder

A growing number of preschool students are being diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) each year. The use of social stories and music therapy have been proven to be effective strategies when working with preschool students who are diagnosed with ASD (National Autism Center, 2009). Research has also been done on combining social stories with music. The objective of this project was to provide special educators with background information on how to write effective social stories and how to set these stories to music in the classroom setting during challenging times of the day with their preschool students with ASD. Based on a review of current literature about evidence-based social stories and music therapy and input from other professionals, an inservice training was developed. Prior to the training, experts in the field of ASD reviewed the components of the training and gave input on the musical social stories. Revisions were then made to the inservice, handouts, and musical social stories. Then two inservices were conducted with preschool special education teachers and support staff to review the literature on social stories and music therapy. At these trainings the author's three musical social stories were reviewed. Participants created their own musical social stories using PowerPoint, and Autism applications available for the iPad 2 were also reviewed. The goal of this training was to provide the special education preschool teachers and support staff with a resource for writing their own musical social stories. These musical social stories were then shared amongst the different special educators. This will allow for the development of a new strategy for managing behavior issues in the special education preschool classroom.