Schwedes,+Ashley+-+Social+Skills

Social Skills

Social skills are important and interesting to me because I have taught them for the last 3 years in an elementary school. This is an important life skill that teachers can not leave out of their lesson plans! Research in the last 20 years support the teaching of social skills to young children. In the 1987 article //Peer Relations and Later Personal Adjustment: Are low-accepted children at Risk?//, it was reported that children who fail to achieve minimal social competence during early years are at risk for social maladaptations including academic failure, school dropout, delinquency and mental health problems. Not only does current research continue to support and add to this list, teaching social skills has lifelong positive implications for students including gaining self confidence and self esteem, increasing their resilience, better performance at school and they may become better adjusted adults. Great teachers incorporate this subject into their classroom.

Top 5 Things I Learned While Researching

1. Students learn social skills through: observation, repetition and practice with their peers. 2. A huge part of social skills is creating a safe climate in your classroom community where students feel a sense of belonging. This is the one of the first steps to teaching social skills in your classroom. 3. Using the technique of "connect and redirect" we as teachers can relate to the response of our student (often emotional) and redirect them to possible problem solving and/or planning. 4. Teaching social skills in your classroom is not disrespectful toward parents or society. Society used to be set up in a way that children naturally learned these skills (example- going outside to play in the neighborhood, having numerous siblings, no other entertainment options other than people- no tv, video games, etc). Thus, these skills often need to be explicitly taught to some children. 5. As teachers of social skills, it is crucially important that we do our best to think and not react to situations within our classroom because afterall we should be setting a fantastic example of what good social skills look like. My #1 Resource It's So Much Work, By: Richard Lavoie media type="youtube" key="Ys_t-LpxnQw" height="315" width="420" align="center"

I truly appreciated this clip because I think it highlights how important social skills really are in school. He does an awesome correlation of how social skills can be broken down into sub-skills like reading can be broken down into comprehension, phonemic awareness, etc. Although Mr. Lavoie talks about how difficult social skills can be for children with disabilities, this skill is truly something that every child desires to be good at in school. We as teachers are responsible for helping all students develop the skills to have positive friendships and relationships in school.

8 Additional Resources

Each resource is rated 1 through 5 with 1 meaning the least effective/useful and 5 the most effective/useful.

1) Teaching with Love and Logic, By: Jim Fay & David Funk 

I believe this book gives teachers some phenomenal perspectives to consider in their classroom. As a teacher of social skills, it is important to show those skills in all of your actions which is not always easy to do. I believe this book does a fantastic job of explaining to teachers how to be effective while enhancing students' self-concept, sharing control, and using consequences with empathy. It encourages teachers to have classrooms where you think instead of react, and further makes your actions quick and effective.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">2) The Whole Brain Child, By: Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson <Rating: 5 out of 5>

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">This book is a phenomenal tool to begin to try to understand children. The left side of our brain is the logical and linguistic center. The right side of our brain is our emotional or non-verbal center. This book explains how children of different ages have dominant sides of the brain (a young child until the age of 3 generally functions on the right brain and when they begin to ask “Why” it is because the left brain has begun to activate.) This book explains 12 steps for integrating the left and right side of the brain together in children so they are not an emotional desert or an emotional flood. I think this book provides great background information for educators and parents alike to understand children’s developmental needs.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">3) Helping Children to Develop Social Skills in Class/School - Teacher, By: Dr. Ian Corban <Rating: 4 of 5>

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">media type="youtube" key="HLs33aAydOE" height="315" width="560"

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">Although this video is quick, it does a great job of highlighting some of the most important and basic social skills you can facilitate in your classroom. Dr. Corban also gives great explanations and examples for teachers to incorporate.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">4) Fostering Children's Social Competence: The Teacher's Role, By: Lilian G. Katz & Diane E. McClellan <Rating: 4 of 5>

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">Although this book is slightly dated (1997), it does a nice job of outlining the importance of teaching social skills to students aged 3 to 6 years old. It uses the term "social competence" to incorporate the skills: emotional regulation, social knowledge and understanding, social skills, and social dispositions. Although short, this book does a thorough job of explaining what the skills are, how to foster them in the context of school and teaching strategies. Overall it offers some nice skills is short, concise sections.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">5) Social and Emotional Learning in Toledo <Rating: 5 of 5>

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">media type="youtube" key="758YhFbEaOY" height="315" width="420"

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">This video provides some clips of a school that has incorporated social and emotional learning into the school's daily education. The first 20 minutes of school are spent acknowledging how students come to school feeling that day and classes have various activities they do. The school has seen overwhelming positive results (less detention, students are happier, etc) and students have gone home reporting school is more like a family in stead of a bunch of kids in the same room having to learn the same stuff.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">6) Getting Along: Teaching Social Skills to Children and Youth, By: Jim Ollhoff & Laurie Ollhoff <Rating: 5 of 5>

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">This comprehensive book begins with an overview of what social skills are and why we should teach them as educators. It then breaks social skills into the 7 Cs: Confidence, control, coping, curiosity, communcation, community building and conflict resolution. The authors recognizes that these skills build upon the previous ones and provides case studies and suggestions for how to teach these within your classroom. This book does a phenomenal job of providing a vast amount of information in such a concise way.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">7) Challenging Behavior in Young Children: Understanding, Preventing & Responding Effectively, By: Barbara Kaiser & Judy Sklar Rasminsky <Rating: 3 of 5>

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">This book offers a short section at the end about teaching social skills. It provides suggestions for several social situations and how to teach them in your classroom, but does not give very specific examples and seems to only be referring to very challenging studnets. Overall it may be more beneficial if you are looking for simple suggestions and ideas.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">8) Beyond Behavior Management: The Six Life Skills Children Need to Thrive in Today's World, By: Jenna Bilmes <Rating: 4 of 5>

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 200%;">While most texts offer you explicit ways on how to teach a social skill to chidren, this book does a great job of outlining how the six skills (attachment, affiliation, self-regulation, initiative, problem soliving/conflict resolution, and respect) can create positive beliefs for students to help them grow successfully in social situations. The thing I most appreciated about this book was that it provided specific prompts for adults/teachers to respond to at the end of each chapter along with numerous resources that were used within the text.