Social skills can be confusing to many. What is it, why is it important, and whats social skills group like? Keep reading for what this group looks like, why a group setting is important, and what is worked on.
Define Social Skills
Let’s start basic. One would define social thinking skills as a person’s ability to interact and communicate with others.
Communication here comes in two forms. Verbal communication and nonverbal communication. Verbal is things someone says. Nonverbal is everything else. This can include body gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice.
What Does Social Skills Help With
So why are these skills important? What do social skills help with?
These skills are important because they help people interact with others. Interactions with other people happen all throughout the day. Helping a child have interactions that are more fitting of a situation can make everyone involved feel better.
Whether we want it or not, people are constantly having thoughts about others and what they are saying/doing. They want to be able to predict what someone is going to say/do next. This makes them feel comfortable around the person. Social skills can help a child react in a way that fosters this feeling around their peers.
What Are Social Skills For A Child That Are Necessary
So what social skills are important?
There are 13 basic social skills that are necessary.
These skills are:
- Listening
- Sharing
- Making eye contact
- Following directions
- Working well with others
- Respecting personal space
- Using manners & polite words
- Taking turns
- Being a good sport
- Waiting and having patience
- Focusing on what you are doing
- Having an appropriate reaction to the problem
- Good hygiene
Each of these different areas is important in its own right.
For more detailed information on each of these skills, click here.
What Are Social Skills Groups
Now that you know what they are and why they matter, let’s focus on training.
Social skills training is direct instruction and practice to help someone who is struggling with displaying wanted social skills.
This type of training is often done in small groups. The group size is ideally 3-5 students. This helps keep things small but still allows plenty of opportunities to practice skills with other people. Trying to learn social skills in a one-on-one setting because it often isn’t “social” enough for the student to practice the skills.
A group is also nice because if a student is stuck on something, their peers can help. They can answer a certain question or re-explain something. Another way that is helpful is peers can come up with ways that specific skill fits into their life, which can help a struggling child apply it to their own life. When this type of application happens, it is called generalization. Generalization of taught skills makes the skills more apt to stick.
Teachers will often do this type of group as part of a behavior plan. If you are looking for an easy step-by-step process to writing an amazing behavior plan, I got you covered. Tell me where to send this guide to and it will be delivered straight to your inbox.
What Is A Social Skills Lesson Plan
To help your students better understand why they are in this group, start off with a lesson on just what social skills are. This lesson should include a few key parts.
First, define what social skills is. Make sure to use language that is appropriate for the students you are working with. Also, discuss the different types of smarts we have. These are academic smarts and social smarts. Compare this to social skills.
Second, talk about how people around us have thoughts about others. These thoughts can be about what people say and how they act. People guess what kind of thoughts others are having using social tools. Social tools include your brain, eyes, ears, and heart. Tell students about these tools we all have. Then go into how they help us to guess what others are thinking.
Third, give students some possible scenarios to practice guessing what others are thinking. This can be done with pictures or with written-down situations.
Don’t have time to make your own lesson plan? Then grab this beginning school social skills resource. You’ll get 2 lesson plans. First is on what is social skills and the tools needed to be a super social skills secret agent. The second lesson is on thinking with your eyes. Both lessons come with a scripted lesson plan as well as all materials needed for the lesson – it’s as simple as print and go. Also included is a visual for social skills secret agent tools and 12 task cards to start great discussions on the topic. Find this time-saving resource here.
What Are Social Skills Worksheets
Follow up with some what are social skills worksheets. They will help your students further their understanding of the topic.
These worksheets can contain a variety of things. Some can define the terms again to help it really sink in.
Others can go over tools that are used to identify what others are thinking.
Use some worksheets with real-life situations. Students can make predictions as to what others are thinking. Make sure the situations are things that would happen in the students’ lives. This will help them to relate the topic to themselves.
Need some done-for-your worksheets? Then grab these to save yourself loads of time. There are 15 different worksheets and a 5 page flipbook. All are as simple as print and use – great for a quick lesson that requires almost no prep. Each worksheet goes over important beginning social skills concepts and understanding to get your students’ knowledge on the topic developed. Grab them here.
More Basics on Social Skills
For more on this topic, check out these helpful posts.
Definition of Social Skills for Teachers – if you are still a bit confused and have some more what are social skills questions, check out this post full of great information on the topic.
What Social Skills are Essential for Students – this post will answer all your questions on the skills students need and why.
3 Steps to Help Students Lacking in Social Skills – here you’ll find information to help your students who might be struggling with their social skills.
Happy Teaching!