Social Skill Story Going To The Supermarket

A first-person shopping trip told one sentence at a time across sixteen illustrated pages, from fetching a cart to putting the shopping away at home, supplied twice - once in American wording and once in British.

An educational teaching resource from SEN Resource Source entitled Going to the Grocery Store/Supermarket Social Story downloadable at Teach Simple.

Year groups: Not year specific
Pages: 16
File type: PDF
Preparation: Print ready

Updated Jan 14, 2024

Subject: Special Education Needs (SEN), Life Skills, Special Resources
Topic: Social Story, Shopping
Preparation: Print ready

From the author

About this resource

Social stories use a patient and reassuring tone to teach children about social situations in a way that can be easily understood. Social stories are particularly useful for children on the autistic spectrum for whom social cues can be challenging and who often suffer anxiety if they do not know what to expect from a situation however social stories can also be useful for any child who is struggling to understand a situation or concept or needs help to understand a social skill or social cue, expectations, perspectives, common responses or is troubled about an upcoming event.

This social story is about what you might expect when you visit the grocery store. It covers using a shopping list, not putting things in the cart without permission and helping to unpack the groceries when you get home. This is designed to ease some anxiety before going out to the store to help the child know what they should expect.

2 versions of the story are included - one using the word supermarket and one with grocery store.

These books should be used over and over to reinforce the point so I would suggest either putting the pages into a display book or laminating and binding them.

Clipart images courtesy of Kari Bolt.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Describe the order of a shopping trip, from arriving and getting a cart through to putting the shopping away at home
Ask permission before adding a wanted item to the cart, and say thank you when the answer is yes
Accept a no calmly, leaving the item on the shelf rather than becoming upset
Recognise what happens at the checkout - items on the conveyor belt, the cashier scanning, bagging and paying - before meeting it in person
Name a way to help after the trip by putting the shopping away where it goes

Teaching tips

Choose the version that matches the words the child hears at home; the two books are otherwise identical in sequence and pictures, so mixing them mid-story would swap cart for trolley
Read the story more than once in the days before an actual shop rather than only on the way there - a single sentence per page is designed for repeated, unhurried reading
The asking-and-being-told-no pages sit together in the middle of the book, so they can be reread on their own when that is the part a child finds hardest
Binding the pages into a display book or laminating them keeps the story available for repeated use across several trips
The checkout sequence is a natural place to pause and let the child name what happens next once the story is familiar

Skills covered

Sequencing a familiar routine - the sixteen pages run in trip order from arriving and getting a cart, through the list and the aisles, to the checkout and putting things away at home.
Asking permission - two consecutive pages script the request, "If I see something I want, I need to ask if I am allowed to have it", and the thank-you that follows a yes.
Managing disappointment - one page rehearses the no: leaving the item on the shelf and the reassurance that "I do not need to get upset because there will be lots of other things that we will buy".
Understanding the checkout - conveyor belt, scanning, bagging and paying are each given their own page, so an unfamiliar and noisy part of the trip is walked through in advance.
Contributing at home - the closing pages move from the car to putting the shopping away and end on a parent being proud, framing helping as part of the outing.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

How do the two versions of the story differ from each other?

They follow the same sequence and change only the shopping words. The American book says cart, cashier and grocery store; the British book says trolley, till and supermarket. One checkout page also differs in substance - in the American version the cashier helps put the shopping into bags, while in the British version the family bags it themselves.

What does the story tell a child to do when they are told they cannot have something?

Leave it on the shelf and stay calm. The page reads "If the answer is no I need to leave it on the shelf. I do not need to get upset because there will be lots of other things that we will buy", which gives a child a rehearsed response before the moment happens in a real aisle.

In Going to the Grocery Store/Supermarket Social Story, whose voice is the story told in?

The child's. Every page is first person - "I might need to go with them", "I need to ask if I am allowed to have it", "I can help to put the shopping away" - with the adult referred to throughout as mum or dad.