Inspiration and "Try outs" from the "Faustlos Program"

The programme "Faustlos" has several recognizable aspects from our schools´ curriculum; from the topic "Social Teaching".
It was therefore exciting to participate in a lesson of "Faustlos learning" at the school in Hennstedt; where we were warmly welcomed by teachers and students . To work towards a greater understanding and management of social competences involves supporting the students´ ability to see a greater link between  emotion, body language and communication - as well as acting adequate  and "Fauslos" upon this insight. We were impressed by the accept, assertiveness and helpfulness among the students - combined with the teachers´ creative and warm-hearted approach to the teaching.
We got motivated to work with two themes from the programme which we planned and tried out in a period of eight lessons over four weeks at Ullerødskolen. The students participating in the project were all between 8 and 11 years old.

"Motivation scores".
The students in Hennstedt started their Faustlos lesson by signalling via a set of colour charts how they felt and talked about  what possibly could effect their commitment in the teaching, e.g. bad sleep, missed their parents or expectations of something good happening later in the day.   When we tried the above at Ullerødskolen we had to change the colour charts to a number scale (1- 10 instead. Our preschool classes allready use a system with the colours red, yellow and green as a way of behavioural modification and general awareness of students own behaviour. This grading scale is familiar to the students in an all autistic environment as an assessment tool for e.g strength of an emotion, an expectations or experiences had. The purpose of "the motivation score" was for the students to get a greater awareness of their own commitment for a lesson/teaching period and also difficulties preventing a successful involvement. After eight weeks the students evaluated that they found it easier to score and describe their expectations or uncertainty facing a lesson/teaching period. A few of the students suggested ways of support to overcome difficulties in the future. 

To express and decode emotions through bodylanguage".
The class we visited in Hennstedt worked with decoding facial expressions and body language through a game working with a partner. The played a miming game where one student started by miming a situation the partner student had to guess what was played. Since one of the challenges with an autistic diagnose is non-verbal communication we were inspired to work structured with body language through miming.
At Ullerødskolen we divided the game in three parts – each part consisted of three lessons.:
1) A student draw a card with a every-day situation on and mime it. The class tries to guess the situation.

2) Two students cooperate on miming an everyday situation where roles are split between the two partners beforehand. The class tries to guess the situation.

3) Two students cooperate on miming an everyday situation. Not only do the students chose the roles themselves but also try to create an ending to the situation. The class tries to guess the situation and also discuss the chosen ending; was it a constructive choice, was there an alternative choice etc.

The students enjoyed the game and in the following period the student found situations themselves for miming. For some of the students it was also a useful tool in conflict management where students saw a link between the played situations and real life situations with its use of body language, emotions and options for dealing with a problem.

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