A Behavioral Specialist’s Guide To Teaching Social Skills

Increasingly, school social workers are being called upon to help students with emotional and behavioral difficulties develop appropriate social skills. To this end, school social workers are forming partnerships with teachers and other mental health practitioners to implement school-based social skills programs.

The Partnerships in Place approach describes how school social workers are organizing social skill programs to address a wide range of student needs at different levels.

• Prevention. At the prevention level, school social workers may assist teachers in establishing positive classroom environments. Working collaboratively with teachers, school social workers teach students social skills that underlie positive classroom conduct and group participation. The guide provides suggestions for teaching social skills that underlie classroom rules and instructional formats. A unit on respect is included.
• Responsive support. At the responsive support level, school social workers may intervene with students who pose discipline problems primarily because they lack appropriate social skills. In small groups, school social workers respond to students’ behavioral difficulties by replacing antisocial behaviors with prosocial ones. The guide provides suggestions for conducting conflict resolution groups.
• Intensive support. At the intensive support level, school social workers may intervene individually with students who have serious social skill deficits that undermine their interactions with peers and adults. In these cases, social skills instruction is integrated into the student’s total intervention plan. The guide provides suggestions for teaching social skills as replacement behaviors.

At all levels of intervention, school social workers are finding that social skills instruction is an invaluable tool in supporting the behavioral and emotional development of all students. The guide comes with activities, strategies, and forms that can be implemented with students of varying ages. Partnerships in Place has been successfully field-tested.

Table of Contents
1. Partnerships in Place

2. Social Skills Instruction

3. Prevention in the Classroom

4. Proactive Support

5. Responsive Support

6. Intensive Support

7. Appendices

8. Selected Activities: Amazing Discoveries

9. Selected Lessons: Job-Related Social Skills

Read an excerpt of this publication in PDF.