Lesson to teach social skills to kindergarten autistic support students about sharing

I'd love to help you build a highly effective, structured lesson plan for teaching sharing! To make sure this is perfectly tailored to your classroom, let's start with a quick question.

Could you tell me a bit about your current setting? For example, are you a classroom teacher, an aide, or working in a different capacity? Also, do you have any specific challenges you've noticed with your students regarding sharing?

I'm a classroom teacher; my students struggle with transitions when a turn ends.

It's incredibly common for kindergarteners in an autistic support setting to struggle when a turn ends. For many autistic children, the abstract concept of "sharing" feels like their favorite toy is simply disappearing forever, which naturally triggers intense anxiety. To make this abstract idea manageable, we have to start by using to make the passage of time and the ownership of the toy completely concrete.

The Power of Visual Predictability

When we tell a child "it's almost time to give that to Leo," the transition is invisible and unpredictable. By introducing concrete, visual cues, we map out the social interaction so they can literally see how sharing works. Before we dive into the specific visual tools you can design—like visual timers and first/then boards—we need to look at how we actually define "sharing" to a five-year-old.

Make me a diagram of a visual sharing schedule

I would be happy to design a visual schedule for your classroom! Building a custom layout for this makes a world of difference because it turns a highly stressful, invisible transition into a clear, predictable sequence of events. Let's get that visual drafted for you.

A three-step horizontal visual schedule card sequence for kindergarten transition support.

This kind of layout helps because it anchors the child's expectations. When they can look at the schedule and see that handing the toy over is simply "Step 3" rather than an abrupt ending, it significantly lowers their anxiety.

Now, to make this diagram even more powerful in your classroom, we want to make sure the way we actually define "sharing" matches this predictable flow. In our next step, we will look at how we can define sharing in concrete, that five-year-olds can easily digest.