1. Social Skills and Social Problem Solving: More Than Just A Game
Richard Van Acker, Ed. D.
Eryn Van Acker, M. Ed.
College of Education (M/C 147)
University of Illinois at Chicago
1040 W Harrison
Chicago, Illinois 60607

2. Group Activity 1. Cross your arms across you lower chest.
2. Uncross your arms, and then cross them again.
Chances are that you crossed them the same way each time. Notice how one arm goes over the other with it's hand tucked under its biceps (upper arm).  At the same time, the hand of the lower arm has it's hand resting on top of the biceps of the other limb.
3. Now unfold your arms again, but this time switch their positions so that the one that
was on the bottom is now on the top (and vice versa).
4. Now unfold the arms and do it in your old way.
5. Now unfold the arms and cross them in the new way. Repeatedly switch back and forth
between the two positions.
All right.  It took you awhile, but you were able to do it.  Does this new position feel a bit uncomfortable and odd?  Yes. It's not your ingrained way of doing things. However, I now want you to show this new way of crossing your arms for the rest of your life.  Don't ever make a mistake or revert to the old way.  

3. A Significant Challenge for Many Students
Increasing numbers of students facing adverse childhood experiences.
Increasing numbers of students with mental health disorders.
Many of these students do not experience the same social world most of us live in.
Students fail to learn incidentally and do not generalize or maintain what is learned easily.

4. Why Don’t Some Children Have Social Skills
They don't know another way to (re)act other than their present pattern of behavior. 
(2) They know (cognitively) other ways to behave, but haven't had enough practice to display them competently.
(3) They tried another way, but it didn't work for them the first time(s) they tried it, so they assume that it would never work for them.
(4) Tension and anxiety interfere with the ability to perform the practiced behavior well in real life.

5. Disorders that show an impairment in social skills:
Conduct Problems
Mood Disorders
Anxiety Disorders
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD)
Learning Disabilities
Emotional Disabilities
(Rutherford et al., 2004)

6. Serious Service Concerns for Students with EBD and MHD
Most un- and under-served population of students with disabilities
“Dual deficits” with both academic and behavior impact educational and social performance
Poorest outcome and adult adjustment
Too little empirical research has been directed towards academic instruction for this population – much of our practice is simply extrapolation from research addressing other disabilities (primarily LD).
School-based interventions must address both student characteristics (norms, beliefs, behaviors) and the school environment (e.g., teacher behavior, discipline practices, school climate).

7. Social Skills Assessment
Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale, Second Edition (BERS-2) (Epstein)
Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) (Gresham and Elliot)
Social Skills Improvement System (SSiS) (Gresham and Elliot)
Measuring Elementary School Students’ Social and Emotional Skills: Providing Educators with Tools to Measure and Monitor Social and Emotional Skills that Lead to Academic Success (Child Trends)

8. Social Skills and Social Problem Solving Skills: A Complex Array of Behaviors
Social conventions
Appropriate greetings depending on relationships: i.e. peer to peer or child to adult
Appropriate and polite ways to make requests ("please") and express gratitude ("thank you")
Addressing adults
Shaking hands
Taking turns
Sharing
Giving positive feedback (praise) to peers, no put downs
Cooperation
Intra-personal social skills
emotion recognition
Emotional self-regulation
Inter-personal social skills
Displaying appropriate initiating interactions – making requests, sharing, exercising reciprocity (give and take), and turn taking.
Understanding and building relationships

9. Sample Social Skills Asking for help Accepting differences Apologizing
Being patient
Being responsible for behavior
Communicating clearly
Complimenting others
Disagreeing politely
Encouraging others
Following directions
Listening Actively
Participating equally
Resolving conflicts
Sharing materials
Staying on task
Taking turns

10. Steps to Teaching Social Skills
Discuss the skill - explain and discuss the need for them in the classroom as well as the world at large.
Create a Scope and Sequence for Instruction – typically teach one skill at a time – but build in activities to support the display, acknowledgement, and reinforcement of new and previously learned skills.
Directly teach the skill – in authentic situations if possible – What it looks like. What it sounds like. (Consider visuals – T-Chart, etc.)
Practice the skill – role play, establish authentic activities that ‘occasion the need’ for the skill to be displayed
Review the skill and actively promote generalization and skill maintenance.

11. Various Instructional Strategies
Modeling: The teacher and an aide or another teacher enact the social interactions you want students to learn.
Video self-modeling: You videotape the student performing the social skill with lots of prompting, and edit out the prompting to create a more seamless digital recording. This video, paired with rehearsal, will support the student's effort to generalize the social skill.
Cartoon Strip Social Interactions: Introduced by Carol Gray as Comic Strip Conversations, these cartoons let your students fill in the thought and speech bubbles before they role-play a conversation. Research has shown that these are effective ways to help students build social interaction skills.
Role-playing: Practice is essential for maintaining social skills. Role-playing is a great way to give students an opportunity not only to practice the skills they are learning but also teach students to evaluate each other's or their own performance of skills.
Bibliotherapy: Using books to address the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of the reader. Allows you to introduce various social problems and strategies to address these issues through the actions of the characters in the story.
Build Social Skill Instruction and Practice into Classroom Expectations: Many schools have adopted MTSS structures to help clarify, teach, and reinforce desired behaviors that foster student social and academic success.
Embed instruction and Practice in Play: Educators can embed instruction, practice and acknowledgement of social skills in classroom transitions, breaks, and recess activities.

12. Cartoon Strip Social Interactions
These can be developed and drawn by you or can be downloaded from a number of internet sites such as Pinterest.com
Lend themselves to a wide variety of skills.

13. Bibliotherapy
This approach lends itself well as a means to embed social skill instruction into language arts programs and reading activities.
Literally thousands of great books are available to help explore various social skills and challenging conditions (e.g., mental health conditions) or life events confronting students (e.g., death of a parent, divorce).

14. SAMPLE MTSS CLASSROOM MATRIX

15. Structured Play
Teachers and social workers engage in structured play with all or some students during breaks on recess times.
Assignment to this structured group can be used as an instructional consequence for repeated problems during these unstructured times.

16. Research Supported Social Skills Programs
ICPS-I Can Problem Solve: Preschool, Kindergarten and Primary and Intermediate” Elementary (Curriculum)
Skillstreaming in Early Childhood, Elementary, and Adolescent” (Curriculum)
Second Step: Violence Prevention Curriculum”-Preschool through 9th grade (Curriculum)
“Positive Action” curriculum for each of the elementary school grades averages 140 lessons taught four days a week, organized into six teaching units and a seventh review unit, presented in a consistent order. Much more expensive, but comes with all the materials you need. Colorado RETHINK Anger Management Program (Curriculum)
Responding to Individual Differences in Education (RIDE) (pre k-8) –
The next two go together: Project ACHIEVE (Curriculum)
Stop & Think Social Skills Program (Curriculum) &functionID= &site=sw
Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice-CLASS (curriculum) -
Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS)-Curriculum for elementary schools -
Teaching Social Skills to Youth: A curriculum for child-care providers. (T. Dowd & J. Tierney) Available from
“Managing Student Behavior in Today’s Schools”-Curriculum for Upper elementary to high school -
Peacemakers -
Cool Kids: A Proactive Approach to Social Responsibility (level 1 grades k-3 & level 2 grades 3-8)
Primary Mental Health Project (Cowen et al.) Targets children K
The EQUIP Program (Gibbs, Potter, & Goldstein) for adolescents
The PREPARE Curriculum (Goldstein) for MS & HS students -
The ACCEPTS Program (Walker et al) Elementary students -
The ACCESS Program (Walker et al) MS & HS students -
Basic Social Skills for Youth. Available from boystown.org/
Boys Town Curriculum. Available from (The training for Boys Town is very expensive.) May not be cost effective. Compared to some of the other programs that do not need the extensive training.

17. Academic Approaches that Support Social Skill Development and Use
Intervention
Description
Elementary
Secondary
Classwide peer tutoring (CWPT)
Entire class simultaneously participates in tutoring dyads. During each tutoring session, students can participate as both tutor and tutee, or they can participate as either the tutor or tutee. X
Cooperative learning
Small teams composed of students with different levels of ability use a variety of learning activities to improve the team’s understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn.
Cross-age tutoring
Older students are matched with younger students to deliver instruction. Tutors are typically at least 2 years older than the tutees. There do not need to be large differences in skill levels between the tutor and tutee
Peer tutoring
Students who need remedial support are paired with select tutors (perhaps highly skilled peers, peers also in need of remedial work, or cross-age tutors). Each member of the dyad may receive and provide tutoring in the same content area, or tutors can provide instruction in a content area in which they are highly skilled.

18. Academic Approaches that Support Social Skill Development and Use
Intervention
Description
Elementary
Secondary
Peer-assisted learning strategies
A version of CWPT in which teachers identify children who require help on specific skills and the most appropriate children to help them learn those skills. Pairs are changed regularly, and over time, as students work on a variety of skills, all students have the opportunity to be ‘‘coaches’’ and ‘‘players. X
Peer assessment
Peers are used to assess the products or outcomes of learning of other students of similar status.
Peer modeling
Students acting as peer models receive instruction in desired behaviors, then engage in these behaviors in front of students deficient in these areas. The teacher draws the student’s attention to the peer model and identifies the desired behaviors the student should emulate.
Peer reinforcement
Peers provide reinforcement for appropriate responses within the natural environment. The purpose is to reinforce appropriate behaviors of students with disabilities by their peers.
Ryan, Pierce, & Mooney, 2008

19. Resources
101 WAYS TO TEACH CHILDREN SOCIAL SKILLS: A READY-TO-USE, REPRODUCIBLE ACTIVITY BOOK by Lawrence E. Shapiro,Ph.D
Bibliotherapy: Six Best Websites for Bibliotherapy Resources
Teaching Social Skills in the Classroom