Social Skills and My Social Scouts

I am a little late in the game this year beginning my social skill groups, but I have made a lot of headway in other areas! Where my students once sat at a lunch table all by themselves, they are now eating lunch with age appropriate regular ed peers!!  My students used to have their own private recess, now my kiddos go to recess with the general pop!  LOL!  I have even had some kids from the 4^th grade classrooms come into my room twice a week to work with my students at their Independent Stations.  These are small steps, and I still have further to go.  However, I work at an amazing school, with super supportive staff and students, so they are always wiling to collaborate with me on including my students wherever possible.

Now for the challenge!  I really don’t want this to backfire on me and have the general ed kids stop wanting to hang out with my students because “Tommy” only talks about Thomas the Train (and he’s in the 4^th grade!).  Or “Kim” likes to reach over and take the food right off of their tray.  Hey, I wouldn’t want to sit next to that either! So I need to teach some appropriate social skill and conversation skills!
 This is something near and dear to my heart. My first experience with facilitating a social skill’s group was two years ago.  I teamed up with our school speech pathologist and we dubbed our crew the Social Scouts.  Our “scouts” consisted of six children with ASD.  Three of which were served in a functional self-contained setting, and the other three were pulled from the inclusive classrooms.  We had so much fun conducting these groups and our students enjoyed being part of a club (they even earned badges, just like scouts!)

So let’s explore social skill groups as another evidenced based practice for the autism classroom.  Prior to setting up the Social Skills Group, the practitioners will need to identify some possible candidates because most likely, by the time you are looking at developing a social skills group you already have target students in mind.  Keep in mind that research suggests these groups should consist of between 3 and 9 students (or 4 students per adult).  Now, I was tempted to include some typical aged peers as models,  but the NPDC claims that these groups should be limited to students with disabilities or ASD.  This makes sense to me now.  Besides, your ASD kids may not want their regular ed peers observing this kind of instruction. 

Now that you have your target group of students, you will need to refer to their IEP’s and identify relevant goals.  Discuss these goals with your team, and be sure to include the children’s parents.  Not only are your parents an invaluable resource, and should be treated as such, they should have the opportunity to share their hopes or expectations for their child participating in such a program.  As a team, identify the target behavior and state it in measurable and observable terms.  Once you have established the target behavior you can now collect some baseline data.  How many times does the student engage in the target behavior???

Now create your Social Skill Group format.  NPDC suggests beginning each session with an introduction.  I would have each of my students greet the person next to them, and then we would use one of my conversation starters (you can find them here). Next you would want to begin instruction on your topic.  If you do team up with another person/facilitator, I suggest working with the speech pathologist.  They are an amazing resource! If you are lucky enough to have help, break your students up in smaller groups.  So if you have 6 kids total, each of you works with a small group of 3. Then, allow the children to practice/model the skill and provide feedback and reinforcement. You will want to take data by observing the students in various settings to see if he/she is generalizing the skills being taught.  Us the data you collect to make decisions regarding instructional delivery. 

I LOVE listening to my kids having age appropriate conversations at lunch! I LOVE seeing my kids playing appropriately with their friends on the playground!  I LOVE seeing them accepted.  Providing instruction on appropriate social skills is key to their success in building positive relationships.

Here is a link to the NPDC's evidenced based practice resources on Social Skill Groups.