Social Skills Class

Autism Spectrum Disorder Singapore

Social Skills Class

Social skills classes at Nurture Pods are designed in accordance to the evidence-based methodologies of Social Thinking® and Secret Agent Society.

We believe social competencies will develop when the underlying social cognitions and communication abilities are addressed. Hence in every class, social cognitions and language skills will be regularly practiced as we introduce a variety of weekly social skills themes.

What does it include?

In order to better target individual needs, the children are grouped into different classes based on their abilities and needs. At Nurture Pods, we have different programmes that caters to children of the different levels.

Spanning 12 weekly lessons

Small group settings

Weekly parent debrief

Video feedback

Sharing of resources

Social Language Club

  • Ages 4-10
  • Focus on socio-cognitive skills & language skills needed to navigate social interaction
  • E.g. Facial expression, prosody, turn-taking, teamwork

Social Thinking & Social Skills Club

  • Ages 7-13
  • Focus on more advanced conversation techniques and complex social situations
  • E.g. Asking for favours, rationalising criticisms, offering advices

Covered in All Classes

  • Auditory processing
  • Pragmatic
  • Prosody
  • Gesture
  • Social Language etc.
  • Problem solving
  • Inference
  • Predicting
  • Schema
  • Central Coherence etc
  • Identification of emotions
  • Joint attention
  • Theory of mind
  • Respecting others etc

Social thinking is the process by which we interpret the thoughts, beliefs, intentions, emotions, knowledge and actions of another person along with the context of the situation. These information will help shape our responses so as to achieve social goals.” Michelle Garcia Winner,
founder of Social Thinking ®

Based on the Social Thinking Methodology, Nurture Pods is proud to present the Social Language Club and the Social Thinking Club.

What are the differences between Social Language Club and Social Thinking Club?

The Social Language Club has a deeper focus on improving child’s social attention, initiation, non-verbal communication skills and spoken language skills. Whereas the Social Thinking Club works on the advance skills of Social Thinking such as understanding of intricate social cues, behaviour mapping and problem solving.

What is the class size?

Maximum 6 students in a class to 1 trainer and 2 therapist aids.

What are the timings?

Every Saturday, morning or afternoon classes.
1 hour group learning

A Revolutionary Social Skills programme for children
with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Nurture Pods is proud to be among the first here in Singapore to offer the renowned Secret Agent Society Programme – a revolutionary social skills programme for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. This is a breakthrough programme designed to improve the emotional understanding and social skills of children in a fun and engaging group setting.

Who will benefit from this programme?

This programme is catered specially for children of ages 3 to 12 years old. It is especially beneficial to children who demonstrates fundamental skill deficits such as:

  • Difficulties regulating non-verbal behaviours such as eye contact, facial expression and body postures.
  • Atypical prosody of speech such as speaking in a flat and monotonous voice.
  • Inability to understand pragmatic of speech hence failing to understand jokes or laughing inappropriately.
  • Difficulties in inferring people’s emotional states from facial, body and situation cues.
  • Difficulties identifying and reciprocating to others’ perspectives and emotions.
  • Issues in comprehending verbal responses.
  • Issues in deductive reasoning and problem solving to produce appropriate replies.
  • Difficulties in initiating and sustaining meaningful reciprocal conversation.

What Are The Skills Taught?

At the end of the programme, you child is expected to gain the following:

Fundamental Cognitive Skills:

  • Understanding of emotions
  • Perspective-taking
  • Inference skill
  • Deductive reasoning
  • Problem solving
  • Verbal comprehension
  • Conversation skill
  • Non-verbal conversation skill
  • Play initiation
  • Play behaviours

Social Skills:

  • Turn-taking
  • Requesting
  • Joining in
  • Greeting
  • Self-introducing
  • Sharing
  • Team-work
  • Dealing with winning and losing
  • Offering help
  • And more..

What is the Secret Agent Society Programme?

The Secret Agent Society (SAS) Programme is a multi-component social skills intervention designed to improve the emotional understanding and social skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) and other behavioural disorders.

The program is developed by Dr Renae Beaumont (PHD) who is an honourary research fellow at the Parenting and Support Centre, The University of Queensland. Dr Renae has over 10 years of clinical and research experience working with children with autism spectrum disorders and their families. The SAS Program has gone through effectiveness studies and is rapidly gaining international recognition.

In order to ensure the efficacy of the programme in local context, the program has been fine-tuned accordingly. The program will be managed by Mr Alex Liau (Clinical Director) and Ms Michelle Poh (Social Skills Training Consultant) who are both certified deliverer of programs under the Social Skills Training Institute.
* Mr. Alex Liau and Ms. Michelle Poh are the first certified practitioners to run this program in Singapore.

How is Secret Agent Society Programme different?

The SAS Programme is different from other social skills programmes in the market because it addresses fundamental skill deficits which in turn result in social inadequacies. These fundamental skills include reading of emotions, detecting of verbal and non-verbal cues, inferring from situations, deductive reasoning, verbal comprehension, appropriate communication and much more.

To ensure that skills picked up in the sessions will be generalised, we are also providing session updates and ‘homework’ for parents to work on:

What is the class size?

Maximum 6 students in a class to 1 trainer and 2 therapist aids.

What are the timings?

Every Saturday, morning or afternoon classes.
1 hour group learning

Testimonials from Parents

“The trainers in Nurture Pods show concerns to the kids’ development and are always happy to answer to parents’ queries. The debrief session after each lesson and the video clips taken during lesson time gave the parents a good grasp of the skills being taught and also provided good tips for the parents to follow up with the kids.

My son has shown improvement in his social skills after attending the lessons in Nurture Pods. According to his school teacher, he has opened up more and will interact with his classmates.Mr Lim

I have received positive feedback from the school teachers that my child is now more willing to open to other children. I am glad the sessions have helped him to understand how interaction with others work.Mrs Sim

I am able to track my child’s performance in class with the video clips sent weekly.Mrs Gray