hey youtube in today's video i'm going to teach you how to answer the first next best type of questions using a method i created called the serial method a lot of people that have taken the lsw exam or the lcsw exam have reported you know studying wrong at times because they thought the test would look one way when in actuality it looked another way i created the serial method because i want to help people learn how to answer the first next best type of questions so that they can pass the lsw and lcsw exam and get licensed the majority of the exam are made up of reasoning based questions or the first next best type of questions the reasoning based questions places you the social worker within a given scenario and from there you have to pick the first next best possible answer choice within that given scenario that the question places you the social worker in you want to answer the question in chronological order while taking into account any red flags that pop up sometimes the red flags can be addressed appropriately within a question itself and don't worry i know it may sound a little bit confusing but i'm gonna clear it all up stay tuned okay so um in front of us is the serial method with some examples and explanations of how to kind of apply this method when taking the exam so there are four steps to making a bowl of cereal we have the bowl the cereal the milk and the spoon just like there are four answer choices on the exam of a b c and d right so just like when you make a bowl of cereal in chronological order you want to answer whatever the questions is asking in chronological order as well which is the first and next and the overall best answer the exam doesn't always place the social worker at the beginning of the scenario and that's what confuses a lot of people um think of it like if i ask what happens next in this movie seeing if let's say you saw the movie already right and you told me something that happened already or first or something that doesn't take place until later that's not accurately answering the question the exam is testing your ability as the social worker to address whatever the situation is in chronological order while making sure any red flags are addressed appropriately first example during an individual session a client states i'm going to let my boss have it tomorrow the social worker asks the client what do you mean when you say that you're going to let my boss have it tomorrow the client now pause for a second this is where um the red flags come into play right the the red flag alert you want to pick the answer choice that clarifies the client's vague statement of i'm going to let my boss have it tomorrow right because we don't necessarily know what the client means by that do they mean they're going to physically harm their boss do they mean that they're going to let them have it in some other way shape or form that has nothing to do with physical harm or right so if the social worker addressed the client statement within the question scenario itself by asking the client what do you mean when you say that you're going to let my boss have it tomorrow and the client brushes off the social worker's response by saying something like don't worry about it or if the client simply just ignores the question and they just start talking about something else we want to pick the answer choice that attempts to clarify again right although the red flag was addressed within the question itself the red flag was not appropriately addressed since we still don't know what the client meant by i'm going to let my boss have it tomorrow if the social worker asks what do you mean by i'm going to let my boss have it and within the question uh the client clarifies their statement by saying they are not going to harm their boss i'm going to let them have it by not volunteering to do extra work around the office that red flag has been addressed appropriately within the question itself since the red flag has been addressed appropriately you can now proceed with answering what the question is asking by identifying what part of the quote unquote movie you are at within the given scenario and do what's being asked in chronological order so remember within the question itself there are times where a red flag may pop up and if it's addressed appropriately within the question itself is like good we're all good to go we clarified it and we're going to continue moving forward but if it was not addressed appropriately then we're going to pause for the calls and do what needs to be done and these are some of the questions to keep in mind um when reading the scenario slash reasoning based questions on the on the both exams are there any red flags in the given scenario so like the question that's being asked yes or no two if a red flag has been identified has the red flag been addressed appropriately within the question itself yes or no and then three if the red flags are addressed appropriately within the question itself continue answering the questions in chronological order of what's being asked of the question if the red flags have not been addressed appropriately or at all within the question itself ask yourself this out of the four answer choices that i have which answer choice addresses the red flag or flags identified in the most appropriate manner because remember when we're going through the scenario if any of those uh quote-unquote red flags pop up as a social worker we have to address them first that comes first and becomes the priority so i have a list of examples here um and we're going to apply the serial method so an example number one a social worker wants to make a bowl of cereal for breakfast what should the social worker do first a get a bowl b pour cereal into the bowl c pour milk into the bowl or d place the spoon into the bowl if you picked a then you are correct although a b c and d are all important for achieving the social workers goal of making a bowl of cereal for breakfast the question is specifically asking what should the social worker do first which would be a getting a bowl because if we didn't have a bowl it would um be challenging eating this cereal without a bowl um so now let's look at this question um example number two a social worker wants to make a bowl of cereal for breakfast after obtaining a bowl and pouring cereal into the bowl what should the social worker do next a get a bowl b pour cereal into the bowl c pour milk into the bowl or d place the spoon into the bowl and for the explanation if you picked c then you're correct in this question the scenario told us that the social worker already completed steps one and two of uh getting a bowl and pouring cereal into the bowl because placing a spoon into the bowl is considered the last step when making a bowl of cereal the next step would be c pouring milk into the bowl so that's really speaking to the chronological order when making a bowl of cereal but also the chronological order when we're addressing um the questions on the exams within uh with all the social work details if you will now let's look at a question with red flags thrown into the mix red flags are details that are mentioned in the question that need to be addressed appropriately before we can move forward and addressing whatever the question is asking red flags include things such as safety concerns reporting referring out clarifying clients vague statements etc and that can really trip up a lot of people when taking these exams because you know we can think we have a really good handle on it and then it's like oh shoot we forgot to answer or excuse me we forgot to address the red flags that were present where if the red flags weren't there we may have had the right answer so in example 3 a social worker wants to make a bowl of cereal for breakfast after obtaining a bowl the social worker notices residue on the inside of the bowl the social worker has no other clean bowls at this time and the social worker stomach begins to growl definitely doesn't sound like a great a great spot to be in uh what should the social worker do next so we have our answer choices of a make pancakes b pour cereal into the bowl c wash the bowl or d place the spoon into the bowl and for the explanation if you picked c then you are correct notice how the additional information of the bull having residue on it the social worker having no other clean bowls and the social worker's stomach beginning to growl makes us pause for a second right keep the keep the goal in mind the goal of what the social worker wants to do is to make themselves a bowl of cereal for breakfast as it states in the first sentence a social worker wants to make a bowl of cereal for breakfast so why not a right so i put here i'm a waffle guy i don't really prefer pancakes when i'm just playing um while making pancakes does sound delicious and one can argue that a bowl is not required to make pancakes so that can address the issue of the social worker not having any clean bowls there is a better answer choice available for us to pick from answer c of washing the bowl allows the social worker to achieve their original goal of making a bowl of cereal for breakfast answer a of making pancakes is not what the social worker originally wanted and making pancakes would take longer and washing a single bowl as the social worker is hungry evidenced by their stomach beginning to growl so while option a makes sense option c makes more sense to do in this given scenario although option b of pouring cereal into the bowl is and there's a uh emphasis on is the next chronological step in preparing a bowl of cereal remember the red flags we have identified a red flag of the bowl having residue on it that has not been addressed appropriately within the question that means we stop address the red flag appropriately then proceed to move forward in addressing the question in chronological order because social workers have to address these red flags option c makes more sense to do than option b of pouring cereal into an unclean bowl and for option d of placing the spoon into the bowl it does not account for the red flag identified and skips two other steps so option c makes more sense to do than option d and just as a quick side note on the exam technically you have a 25 chance of getting it right if you were to guess because a b c and d out of a hundred percent um broken up into four 25 percent uh chance if you were to just randomly pick usually there's at least one answer that we can automatically rule out so now our chances even if we don't necessarily know it goes up to a 33.3 chance of getting it right and then if we can eliminate one more of those options then now we have a 50 50 shot at it so now let's look at example four a social worker wants to make a bowl of cereal for breakfast after obtaining a bowl the social worker notices residue on the inside of the bowl the social worker has no other clean bowls at this time the social worker's stomach begins to growl the social worker decides to wash that single bowl what should the social worker do next a make pancakes b pour cereal into the bowl c wash all the dishes or d place the spoon into the bowl explanation if you pick b then you're correct notice how the additional information of everything that was stated within the question of the bull having residue on it um social worker having no other clean bowls the social work stomach beginning to growl again it makes us pause right keep the goal in mind the goal of what the social worker originally wants to do is make themselves a bowl of cereal for breakfast as it states in the first sentence um where it says a social worker wants to make a bowl of cereal for breakfast so why not a again making pancakes sounds delicious and amazing and all that good stuff but the question the social worker wants um or excuse me uh the question states that the social worker wants to make a bowl of cereal for breakfast not an alternative since the question stated that the social worker decided to wash that one bowl within the question the social worker is able to continue moving forward and working towards their goal of making a bowl of cereal for breakfast option b makes more sense than option a answer c of washing all the dishes while important and definitely it needs to be done if there's no other clean dishes uh in the social workers household um it makes less sense to do that particular scenario to do in that particular scenario since the question itself has addressed the uh the quote-unquote red flag of not having any clean bulls by stating the social worker cleaned the one bowl since the red flag has been addressed in an appropriate manner you can now continue to address the question in chronological order of option b pouring cereal into the bowl as that's the next step when making a bowl of cereal as a result the social worker can address their growling stomach in less time compared to the time-consuming option of making pancakes and washing all of the dishes which would prolong the social workers growling stomach and can now achieve their original goal of having a bowl of cereal for breakfast option b makes more sense than option c option d of placing the spoon into the bowl skips two other steps so option b makes more sense than option d so that's why we would go to uh pouring the cereal into the bowl now that i explained the cereal method keep the cereal method in mind when answering the scenario slash reason based type of questions on the exam and that's the majority of the exam the ls for the lsw and the lcsw um same formula just with the details of the profession of social work instead of the process of making cereal keep in mind you got this thank you for tuning in i'm gonna be dropping more videos to help you pass the lsw and lcsw exams so stick around don't forget to like comment and subscribe and see you soon you