Kwiatkowski,+Therese.+Teaching+social+skills.

Hello! My name is Therese Bagley Kwiatkowski and I am in the 2 year Masters Program.I graduated from SOU with my B.S. in Elementary Education in 2010. I hope to teach kindergarten somewhere in the world once I graduate. I love teaching young children! I love thier never ending curiosity, sweet innocence and excitement about discovering the world around them. I am honored that teaching chose me to be part of this amazing journey alongside students. Currently I teach at an after-school progam at Helman Elementary in Ashland and feel very fortunate to have all the experiences and opprotunities there before I have a classroom of my own. It is like my very own laboratory! I get a lot of practice with many important aspects of teaching and get to spend my days with great kids.I have always wanted to be a teacher, I have never even considered another career. Through my own journey as a student I had many stuggles and difficulties learning certain subjects. With these experiences I have the opprotunity to understand what it feels like to be a struggling student. Remembering this view helps me remind myself how to be a compassionate teacher advocating for each students learning needs. Every child is different and unique and wonderful in their own way.As I grow as a person, a teacher and a mother I am amazed with how much I know, as well as how much I have to learn.This is the greatest time in my life. I have a 2 year old son, Elliot, and a husband, Jamal. We bought a little fixer-upper in Ashland and are always working on it! I thought it would be more fun....when we are not working on our house we spend much of our time in the outdoors doing things like camping or hunting for morel mushrooms. I love Southern Oregon, but don't really feel "at home" here. I am in the process of convincing my husband to move to Hawai'i for a year or two to fulfill my dream of teaching there before our son is ready for kindergarten. I love being a Mother more than anything in the world. My son is so much fun and amazes me with his rapid development and adorable personality. I have a lot to juggle but somehow am pulling it off! At times I struggle keeping all my ducks in a row. I am getting better and better at it. My golden ticket to success is organization and an early bedtime. I am enjoying my time in the MAT program and am glad I have the support and comradery of a cohort. Cheers to another great term!

Teaching Social Skills I chose to research the topic of teaching social skills because it is an interest of mine. I was a “late bloomer” in the socializing department so I have first-hand knowledge of the effect this can have on an elementary school student. I will begin my presentation with a quick activity of facial expression recognition in pairs. The skill of recognizing an expression on another person’s face and then maneuvering socially according to their “mood” is something we all do daily. I see this skill lacking in a lot of students and explicitly practicing and discussing facial expressions and their meanings seems to be the best way I have found to develop this skill in an authentic way with young children. It is also pretty fun to do!

5 Things I Learned:


 * 1) Teaching social skills is fun! And children like to learn fun things.
 * 2) It is important to teach social skills both implicitly and explicitly to young children.
 * 3) School is a social experience. Becoming a social being is an important aspect of succeeding in education and the “real world.”
 * 4) There is a plethora of materials available for teaching social skills. I found everything from worksheets about making friends to an i-phone app to help children understand and process social situations to movement exercises focusing on social skills development.
 * 5) I think that all young children need to be taught appropriate social skills in the classroom. Researching this supports my belief that each and every child is still developing their social skills all year, every year. It is not just the children with special needs who require extra work socializing, but all children in the classroom. Having good social skills is the foundation to becoming a productive member of society, and isn’t that what the aim of our public education is?

media type="youtube" key="LsjIONVIAOQ" height="315" width="420" This is an interesting little video about “making meaning” while learning social skills in the classroom. That is, //__why__// the social skills they are working on are important and meaningful to their lives. The video shows a classroom of students working with partners very closely and working together to discover and discuss as a pair, all while learning to act appropriately and positively in a social situation. I rate this a 5 out of 5.

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This is an educational and entertaining video about the importance of having social skills. It gives children and adults examples of what it looks like and sounds like to not have social skills, or to be a bully. I like it because it is humorous and showcases a group of students, who I assume helped develop the film and worked on the idea for “Be a Buddy, not a Bully.” I rate it a 5 out of 5. I would use this as an anticipatory set before beginning a lesson on social skills and anti-bullying.

Below is a short video from complete connection parenting. The man in the video is a little creepy, but he has some great information for parents and teachers alike. I really like the point he makes about children “globalizing” ideas. That is learning a new idea in one setting and applying it to a different setting. He is sharing great ideas on how to explicitly teach social skills to children who have some issues in their ability to socialize “normally.” I rate this video a 4.5 out of 5. He has many other neat videos too! media type="youtube" key="WMjqvw_zpHc" height="315" width="420"media type="youtube" key="CgVhmHKIk7w" height="315" width="560" A neat app for children with lacking social skills and access to an iphone in the classroom......I rate it a 4 out of 5 because it is pretty cool and uses technology to manuever through a situation that may be uncomfortable for student by using a tool they are likely to be proficiant with.

[] This is an awesome webpage all about building social skills in children. It has a lot of great information, ideas, points of view and best of all fun activities to develope and practice social skills in your classroom. I rate this webpage a 5 out of 5.

[] This is another helpful website, but for parents of children who are still developing their social skills, it is the top 6 tips to help children make friends. I really feel that a friend can make ALL the difference in the world for a child. This is a top priority to me with primary grades, school is a social experience and I think students need to learn to make friends and manuever the ups and downs of relationships with peers to be successful in their educational experience. I rate this website a 5 out of 5. It is a good resource for parents and teachers alike.

[] This website is a social skills training programs homepage. Ultimatley they are trying to sell you dvd's about their progams of training children to develop social skills based on cognative behavior therapy program meant for children on the autism spectrum. On the left side of the page their are short descriptions of the training sections that I found to be a great jumping off point to think of activities to use or skills to work on in my own class without purchasing hundreds of dollars worth of dvds. I rate this a 4 out of 5.