Acting Antics

A Theatrical Approach to Teaching Social Understanding to Kids and Teens with Asperger Syndrome

Cindy Schneider

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781843108450
• eBook ISBN: 9781846425899
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

`The ideas are excellent and well laid out… This is an innovative approach to social skills training for students with Asperger's Syndrome who will tolerate acting, and for a group leader with energy and commitment to drama.'

-Speech and Language Therapy in Practice

`Schneider's enthusiasm for the subject and her passion to improve life skills of young people is very evident and encourages the reader to progress…As a catalogue of practical ideas with built-in resources, this is a useful book for support groups and families wishing to create a theatre group. Acting Antics has an easy-to-read format and includes activities that can be initiated with minimum preparation and resources.'

-Children Now Magazine, 2007

This fun and inspiring step-by-step program provides the full set of tools for developing social understanding in children with Asperger Syndrome (AS) through drama.

Cindy B. Schneider explains how the central processes in acting - including making and interpreting inferences from non-verbal cues, taking another's perspective, and formulating language - can be highly effective ways of addressing social cognition deficits in children with AS. Acting Antics contains a wide repertoire of activities and ideas for immediate application at home, in the classroom, in therapy workshops or social groups, ranging from initial warm up techniques, through paired activities, to larger group scenes and staging a show. Helpful appendices provide questionnaire forms to enable both the child and the program leader to assess and monitor the child's understanding of their roles, along with reproducible scripts and suitable scene designs.

This complete, practical program provides a wealth of enjoyable educational ideas for parents, teachers, and therapists of children with Asperger Syndrome.

Table of contents

• COVER
• Contents
• Acting Antics
• Foreword by Tony Attwood
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Who? What? Where?
• 3. Getting Started
• 4. Paired Activities
• 5. Scripted Partner and Group Scenes
• 6. Whose Line is it Anyhow?
• 7. Starting Your Own Troupe
• 8. Ready Or Not, Here They Come!
• 9. Antics Summer Camp
• 10. The “Really Big Show”
• 11. It’s a Wrap!
• Appendix A: Sample Schedules and Activity Lists
• Appendix B: Photocopiable Forms
• Appendix C: Photocopiable Partner Scripts
• Appendix D: Group Scripts
• References
• Resources
• Subject Index
• Author Index