Managing Anxiety with Coping Skills, Social Stories, & Visuals Supports for Self-Regulation

Product Description

Are your students struggling with anxiety-driven behaviors? This Managing Anxiety Toolkit is designed to help them build self-regulation skills through social stories, relaxation techniques, and coping strategies to reduce anxiety-related challenges.

This resource includes two social stories that teach students how to recognize anxiety and use helpful strategies like deep breathing, sensory input, and taking breaks to manage their emotions. With customizable elements, this toolkit can be tailored to meet the unique needs of each student, making it a practical support for fostering emotional well-being in the classroom.

Included in this anxiety coping skills toolkit:

• 2 Social Stories focused on strategies for managing anxiety. 
• 2 formats of 5-point scales to use to help students begin to understand self-regulation.
• 4 Pre-Made (and 2 blank) contingency maps to help students see the outcomes of choices in response to anxiety
• 12 Pre-Made Option Cards and 3 blank cards that students can use to remind themselves of strategies to use when they are feeling anxious. Includes 16 visuals to create your own option cards.
• A sensory choice board with 15 common fidget and sensory choices
• A break options board (or individual visuals) with 18 common break activities to help remain calm when anxious.
• A square breathing visual and 2 calm deep breathing visual sequences
• Detailed directions on how to use each of the tools

This toolkit can complement a PBIS or RTI program to help students learn to manage their anxiety and their own behavior in this way. It provides the tools and the directions for taking students from a beginning relaxation technique with deep breathing, through understanding how their anxiety may be impacting their behavior. And finally, they can use the self-regulation tools to begin to understand when the anxiety is happening and how to reduce their anxious feeling.

Managing Anxiety Social Stories Included:

1. I Can Use Strategies on Worried Days focuses on generalized anxiety with no specific focus. It provides reminders of strategies students can use to reduce anxiety and remain calm.
2. Staying Calm When Things Change focuses on anxiety that occurs due to common changes. It reviews strategies that can be used to help cope with change.

These managing anxiety behavioral tools and strategies have been used successfully with a wide variety of students in a variety of situations and settings including those with autism, developmental delays, emotional disabilities, in general education, in special education, being served as part of PBIS programs, and being assessed or treated through RTI.

Features you will LOVE:

❤️Pre-made and customizable options for tools

❤️Extensive directions showing how to get started for students who cannot currently self-regulate to students who are ready to start monitoring their own behavior

❤️Each social story is included in 2 formats (1-page and book format). 

❤️Each social story book (1 page per idea) format is also included in a PowerPoint version so that you can easily remove pages you don’t need and has an extra page with the same border so that you can add pages and personal pictures to the story as needed.

❤️The toolkit includes a variety of ways to customize each of them including PowerPoint versions with extra visuals. 

❤️And, to save you time and help you implement the program, directions and suggestions of how I use the tools are also included.

Students love these stories because it helps them learn how and why using strategies to prevent bigger problems from their anxious feelings is important. They also help them learn alternatives to their immediate habitual reaction to the anxiety. The tools are part of an overall teaching protocol that is discussed in the directions. But many students can easily be successful at learning self regulation of their behavior with the tools included.

This product is copyrighted to Autism Classroom Resources-Christine Reeve for use in one classroom. They may not be copied for additional classes without purchasing extra licenses.