Group Planning Project: Social Skills Group

1. Group Planning Project:Social Skills Group Samantha Peden

2. Problem and Rationale for running social skills groups • The social skills group was designed for 5th graders who have issues making friends, fitting in, socializing and interacting with others, reading social clues, managing behaviors and emotions, and solving problems. • Group leader will implement strategies to help members express their emotions, initiate and respond to interactions, gain self- control and confidence, manage their emotions, gain coping skills to deal with teasing and bullying, anger management techniques, understand how to read body language and social cues, and problem solving techniques.

3. Purpose of the Social Skills Group • The purpose of the social skills group is to teach and guide social interactions of children participating in the group so that they can establish and make friendships. • The goal is to help students gain skills in social interactions, cooperation, joint attention, problem-solving, making friends and keeping friends, and learning how to overcome challenges of social situations inside and outside of school.

4. Practical Consideration: Format and Structure • 5 week period • 45 minutes sessions • 7-8 5th graders • Closed Group • Voluntary Group • Group will meet every Wednesday at 12:00. • Group leader will pick-up students from their prep class.

5. Outcomes • At the end of the group, members will be able to better communicate their feelings, thoughts, and needs to others. • Group members will be able to: • obtain skills to improve social interactions • create long lasting friendships • understand social cues and gestures • manage their emotions • build confidence and overcome adversity.

6. Lesson Plan 1- Build Positive and Healthy Relationships by Communicating • The purpose of the first group is to build positive and supportive relationships, help members get to know one another. Introductions/ Set Purpose • Icebreakers- All About Me Game- using skittles • Group leader will explain that in order to build positive relationships we have to be able to communicate. We will brainstorm ways we can communicate with one another. • Dyads- One person will tell a story and the other person will actively listen and then will share their story to the group. • Review what we learned in the group and how we can build positive relationships and supportive relationship by communicating with one another.

7. Lesson Plan 2- Identifying and Managing Emotions • The purpose of the group is to teach group members how to identify and cope with their emotions. • The group leader will explain a situation and the students will share how they felt in that situation and how different situations make them feel. • Group leader will teach the students different strategies to cope with their emotions. • Role-play- Students will then role-play each strategy so that they can practice using the skills. • Final activity- one of the students will read different scenarios that produce anxiety, stress, anger etc. and the other students will explain how that made them feel and how they can cope with the experience. • Summarize what was done in the group, practice coping with emotions, and set purpose for next session.

8. Lesson Plan 3- Maintaining Friendships/Overcoming Jealousy • The purpose of the group is to help group members maintain friendships and overcome jealousy. • Students will brainstorm a time they felt jealous about another persons friendship or what they had. We will talk about how they felt and how they handled the situation. • Group leader will play a clip from Toy Story where Woody feels he his loosing a friend and becomes jealous of Buzz. Members will create ways to handle the situation differently and share with the group. • Each member will then get a character and explain positive choices they would make as that character. • Summarize what was done in the group and purpose for next session.

9. Lesson Plan 4- Empathy and Perspective • The purpose of the group is for group member to be able to understand and demonstrate empathy as well as how to identify different and accept different perspectives. • Group leader will ask students what empathy means and how they can show empathy. • Discussion- In order to show empathy, you must be open to different perspectives and opinions. Group leader will explain what perspective means and how people can have different perspective. • Dyads- Students will answer questions such as their favorite food, favorite music, etc. and will be able to see other perspectives. • Final activity- The group leader will give a scenario and the group members will state their perspective on the matter. • They will listen to every ones perspective and state how it felt to hear other perspectives other than their own.

10. Lesson Plan 5- Manners • The purpose of the group is to identify how to use manners. • Group leader will prompt a discussion to activate prior knowledge about manners to determine what manners are and examples of using manners. • Group leader will teach 10 different manners and model one of the manners to students. • Dyads/ triads- group members will get index cards with different manners and practice role-playing each manner. • Manner's tea- Role play having a fancy tea party and group members will practice using their manners. • Closure: Group members will discuss their experience at the manners tea, good manner that they noticed, or bad manners.

11. References • Bellini, S. (2009). Making (and Keeping) Friends: A Model for Social Skills Instruction. Retrieved from https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/pages/Making-and-Keeping-Friends-A-Model-for-Social-Skills-Instruction • Foden, T. (2011, 16). Social Skills Interventions: Getting to the Core of Autism | Interactive Autism Network. Retrieved from https://iancommunity.org/cs/what_do_we_know/social_skills_interventions • Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1990). Social skills for successful group work. Educational leadership, 47(4), 29-33. • Rex, M. (2012). Elementary School Counseling. Retrieved from http://www.elementaryschoolcounseling.org/ • Wolstencroft, J., Robinson, L., Shrinivasan, R., Kerry, E., Mandy, W., & Skuse, D. (2018, February 8). A Systematic Review of Group Social Skills Interventions, and Meta-analysis of Outcomes, for Children with High Functioning ASD. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996019/