How to Teach Students to Solve Conflicts with Peers

So many of our students with ASD have some sort of goal around learning social skills.  One social skill many of my students struggled to deal with was conflicts with their peers.  And trying to put on my teacher mediator hat and teach them how to deal with it in the moment wasn't enough.  They needed pre-teaching of the skills prior to being able to utilize them in real life scenarios.  Which brings me to today's post on a couple, simple teaching tools that are differentiated to individual student levels to help them learn how to identify what bothers them and how to problem solve with a peer.

You can make any of the tools shown in this post on Boardmaker or with real pictures from your classroom or the internet.  If your student can read, you may just write it out on a piece of paper or a white board.  If you want the actual tools shown in this post, you can purchase them in my store as well. 

The first step in dealing with teaching your students to problem solve peer conflicts is to help students increase their SELF-AWARENESS.  Do they even know what their peers are doing that is bothering them? This simple worksheet helps kids start to identify what bothers them. 

Next up, students need to identify what they can do to solve the problem or remain calm in the face of a problem.  I like to include the "inappropriate" responses as well to help students truly differentiate between what they "should" and "should not" do.  

Here are the same concepts in a simple format without pictures for your older or more advance learners.

I also had this visual posted in my classroom for easy access and as a constant reminder.  When a problem arose, we could easily grab this and use it to reinforce what we had worked on when I pre-taught the skills.  You could have these hanging in a variety of environments around your building (gen ed classroom, gym, cafeteria, etc.) so all the adults interacting with your students use the same lingo and have access to the same visuals you have used to pre-teach these skills.

What do you do to help students problem solve conflicts with peers?