Using Nice Words Social Story

Students will distinguish between kind words (greetings, please, thank you, compliments) and unkind words (insults, name-calling, telling someone to go away, whispering, swearing) using first-person examples.

Students will identify the emotional consequences of unkind words, including hurt feelings, sadness, anger, and lost friendships.

Students will apply a self-check strategy — pausing to ask "Are these words kind?" — before speaking.

Students will recognize that consistently using kind words leads to positive relationships with others.

Read this story one-on-one or in a small group rather than to a whole class, since its first-person narration is designed to model self-reflection for a child working on this specific social skill.

Pause after each of the six unkind-word examples (pages 7-13) to ask the child to name a kind alternative, reinforcing the contrast before moving to the consequences section.

Introduce the "Are these words kind?" self-check phrase (page 19) as a reusable tool the child can practice using in the moment, not just while reading the story.

Laminate or place the pages in a display book for repeated one-on-one use, since the story is built to be read multiple times as a social skills reinforcement tool.

Kind vs. unkind word recognition — students identify specific examples of both from the story's contrasted phrases and scenarios.

Emotional consequence awareness — students connect unkind words to specific feelings (sadness, anger) and social outcomes (losing friends).

Self-monitoring — students practice a concrete self-check question ("Are these words kind?") before speaking.

Perspective-taking — students consider how their words affect how other people feel.