Putting Social Skills onto the Curriculum
- Part 3

Oak Lodge School

Year 7 Plan of intervention: Spring Term

Topics
In this term we will cover the topics of people in our lives, likes and dislikes and strengths and needs. 

Resources
We will be using the resources in:

• Talkabout level 1 pp 27-30
• Talkabout Activities pp 53-64
• Talkabout for Teenagers level 1

A detailed plan of activities for the autumn term                  

1. Group cohesion activities

Our first session will aim to recap on the previous term's work and to gel the groups by playing a couple of group cohesion activities

2. People in my life

• Use circle of friends exercise to think about people who are very close, quite close and not so close
  
  
• Children complete their own circle of friends
• Create their own picture / collage / family tree to show the people in their lives
  
  
• Children consider what are the benefits of the different relationships

3. What do we like and dislike doing?

• Group discuss things they hate doing - draw pictures or symbolise and create a picture
  
  
• Pair up with someone who has a similar dislike - why do you dislike it?
  
  
• Group discuss things they like doing - create a group 'like' board / picture
  
  
• Pair up with someone who has a similar like etc.

4. What are we good at and not so good at?

• Use a number of subjects at school and other qualities e.g. a good friend, good listener, sharing, doing what I've been told to do, play station games, skydiving... and create a survey using a rating scale of 1-10
  
  
• Make the information into a group summary of things we are not good at and good at
  
  
• Play the game from Talkabout for Teenagers where children choose whether a quality is a good or bad quality... 'it's good to be...' and 'it's bad to be...'
  
  
• Create individual flowers or fans for each child - ask the group to brainstorm an individual's qualities and then the child creates their own flower with their six favourite qualities on each petal or section of the fan
  
  
• Create a display of our qualities using the flowers or fans
  
  
• Compliment games - say something nice about someone in the room

Plan of intervention: Summer Term

Topics          
In this term we will cover the topics of self esteem and problem solving. 

Resources  
We will be using the resources in:

• Talkabout level 1 pp 34-36
• Talkabout Activities pp 65,66
• Talkabout for Teenagers level 1
• Talkabout Relationships section 1

A detailed plan of activities for the autumn term                  

1. Group cohesion activities
Our first session will aim to recap on the previous term's work and to gel the groups by playing a couple of group cohesion activities

2. Introducing self esteem

• Introduce Gary and Brad from Talkabout for Teenagers
  
  
• Gary feels good / Brad feels bad game
  
  
• What are Gary / Brad like? What kind of people are they?
  
  
• What is self esteem?
  (Talkabout Relationships activity 6)
  
  
• What kind of people are they? - happy, positive, believe in themselves or negative, doesn't like self, doesn't believe in self
  
  
• Create a collage of what 'feeling good about yourself means'
  
  
• Think about situations and self esteem (Talkabout Relationships activity 7)                      

3. Things that make me feel good

• My favourite things game (Talkabout for Teenagers)
  
  
• Create a collage of all our favourite things / individual poster of their favourite things 'Things that make us/me feel good...'
  
  
• Did anything happen this week that really made you feel good about yourself?

4. Things that bring me down

• Read the Bad, bad day for Brad story from Talkabout for Teenagers and think about things that are in his control and things that are not...
  
  
• Did anything happen in their week that made them feel bad?  What happened?
  How did they feel?
  
  
• Think about things that can make us feel bad

5. The way I feel

• Group think about good feelings and bad feelings
  
  
• Which are the feelings that are difficult to handle?
  
  
• Think about the link between thoughts, feelings and actions i.e. I thought... 'Sarah doesn't like me', I felt... 'angry', I chose to... 'hit her'.
  
  
• Create pictures of different situations where we thought, felt and did...- what else could we have done?

6. Problem solving

• Identify things that bring us down - either situations that occur or things about ourselves
  
  
• Pick one situation that affects several children and problem solve by getting all the children to give ideas (like a brainstorm). The person whose problem it is chooses the four ideas that they like best and they write these down as an action plan
  
  
• Each week, children feedback how they are doing

So hopefully that has given you some idea on how we have practically planned for one year of developing the children's self and other awareness. 

If you are working with children or adults who are more or less able, then the activities may need to be simplified or made more challenging but hopefully it has given you an idea of how I might plan for a year of intervention. 

If you have any questions about teaching social skills, please email and I will answer your question, I will also share the question and answer in the next issue of Speech Therapy Today (names and places will of course remain private), it may help others so feel free to ask away!

Alex Kelly
Speech & language therapist and social skills consultant www.alexkelly.biz

 

Alex Kelly is the author of Speechmark's best selling Talkabout series.

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See the Talkabout online assessment tool at www.alexkelly.biz

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