Social Fortune or Social Fate: A Social Thinking Graphic Novel Map for Social Quest Seekers

I was fortunate to be provided with a copy of Pamela Crooke & Michelle Garcia Winner’s book, Social Fortune or Social Fate: A Social Thinking Graphic Novel Map for Social Quest Seekers.  This is a two-in-one book.  If you open it one way, you view it as a “Social Fortune,” and if you flip the book over, you view it as “Social Fate.”   With this book, students will be able to “watch their destinies unfold based on the choices they make.”

For both versions of this book, you will find:

• Tables of contents: this looks the same on each version.  The difference is with the content of the stories based on the decisions displayed.
• This book contains: graphics, maps, hidden letters, emotional meters, and more.
• Tons of social choices children make and why they matter.

What is a social situation? The following is described in great detail in this book:

• What you are expected to do and say based on where you are, what’s happening around you, and who you are with.
• Each time you are expected to use a different set of social behaviors based on what’s happening around you.
• In every social situation, there are things that people do and say that are OK (expected) and NOT OK (unexpected).
•  There are obvious rules and hidden rules.
• Every choice one makes around others affects how those people feel about the behavior they observe.

Social Behavior Map: 

• There are three characters find themselves using this map during every situation.
• Social Fortune: if a person makes choices that are expected for that social situation
• Social Fate: if the choices made are unexpected for the social situation.
• In this book you get to see the same characters make choices that lead them down both roads for each different social situation.
• The map starts with the social situation.

Emotion Meters:

• These are found throughout the book
•  All the decisions that the three characters make leave others around them feeling a type of emotion.
• This book has them on each page during the situation situations to show students at that particular moment how people feel.  It also shows as the situations plays out further, the emotions can change.

How can you read this book/comic with your students?

• There are many ways!  All ways are described in detail in the book!
• If you read fortunte first, than the fate side, then your students will see how the characters are social thinkers.
• If you read the fate side first, then students will learn what it means by the power of “choice.”
• You can read both sides side by side and not tell your students which one is which let them figure it out!
•  You can read one way, and have your students make guesses on what the other comic will look like!
•  For each social situation presented, on one side is the comic (with the emotion meters included) and then on the opposite page is the social behavior map and goes into detail for students about what happened and why the choices made were expected or unexpected.
• You can read the description of the social situation to your students before or after reading the comic.  It describes “what happened?”
• Each social situation page provides a “quest tip.”  For example, students are taught to “think, move, listen, and guess” what they are presented with a social situation when it is easier to avoid people rather than trying to figure out what to say.
• Can your students come up with their own comics or examples of the social situations presented?  Can they make their “expected” and “unexpected” versions of this?!  There are so many GREAT follow-up activities you can do just by presenting one comic 2 ways for one social situation.

What I like about this book:

•  The comics are motivating and help students see visually the social situations and how decisions one makes can affect the outcome and how others perceive them/the situation.
• I like that each situation is presented in two ways.  It is easy to follow and implement with students.
• Graphic organizers/worksheets are provided such as the problem solving thermometer.  Students can determine the size of the problem and rate it.  I love how everything in this book is visual and elicits conversation/thoughts/emotions.
• Hidden letters throughout each comic.  Students can work throughout a year, course, period of time you are using this book to try and determine the hidden message.  Hey, extra way to  reinforce built in!
• Who would I recommend this for?  SLPs, social workers, guidance counselors, school psychologists or anyone working on social skills and social/emotions.  I would use this with my higher elementary through high school aged students.
•  So many follow up activities that you can do with this book!

Learn more about this $24 book by visiting their WEBSITE!  That will be an “expected” choice!