Due to the coronavirus, many schools have gone remote.  While teachers have put a tremendous amount of effort into making the transition from school, to school from home, as easy as possible…the fact is, it’s hard!

 According to Education Week, school closures due to coronavirus have impacted over 124,000 U.S. schools and at least 55.1 million students. States have closed schools into late April or May, or even closed down for the remainder of the school year!

Parents, educators, and students have had to make the move to online or Distance Learning. This mode of teaching and learning is unfamiliar to most of us.  We are all doing our very best to figure it all out, and quickly.

As an elementary school teacher, I am seeing a lot of students {and parents} doing okay with school from home, but many too, are really struggling.  Especially our kiddos with special needs.

Challenges like technology {access and knowledge}, working...

Remotely Teaching social skills can be an interesting challenge.  I have spent many years avoiding the use of technology in my social skills sessions.  I felt my kiddos got plenty of screen time, and what they really needed was face to face interaction.

While I still believe this, we are currently in a situation where we simply must use technology to teach.  

So how do you teach a social skills group on a video conferencing platform like Zoom or Google Meet?

By playing games, of course!  

But saying it is one thing…actually doing it is another thing all together!

Our students are dealing with so much right now.  And on top of it all, they have to learn new technology and new appropriate behaviors to go with it.

I don’t know about you…but I have spent the first few weeks of remote teaching, remotely teaching my students how to behave appropriately on Zoom.  

Engaging in a group on a video conferencing...

Learning how to teach conversation skills is crucial. Many young children who are typically developing find engaging in conversations to be quite easy. They have picked up on the necessary skills naturally and with informal practice over time and in their day-to-day interactions with others.

But for our kiddos with special needs, finding a more explicit approach is a good idea. Some of the best ways of teaching conversational skills often breaking down into small, manageable steps. Each of those steps may need to be explicitly taught, practiced, re-taught practiced in multiple environments, and so on.

Before we talk about how to teach conversation skills, let’s talk about why conversation skills are one of the most important skills to teach.

Our students need to be able to engage appropriately in conversations, to have successful social interactions. However, this is not a quick and easy skill to teach, as there are many...

WHAT ARE THE EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS?

The most commonly noted executive function skills are:

• Planning
• Organization
• Task Initiation
• Time Management
• Working Memory
• Metacognition
• Self Control
• Attention
• Flexibility
• Perseverance

Love visuals? Try this handy Executive Functioning Skills poster. 

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Engaging in social interactions successfully in Perspective Taking requires a lot of “splinter skills.”

While there is a scope of development of social skills and sequence for Perspective Taking, for our young children, development is usually uneven, and good social skills are often scattered; leaving us trying to figure out what to teach, much like a puzzle.

Spending some time figuring out, as best you can, where the student is at {in their perspective taking development} and which strong social skills are lacking is a great way to get started with Perspective Taking. Then, start your teaching with the developmentally earliest skill on that list, and move along up the scale as you see positive feedback and success in communication skills.

WHAT IS THE TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING?

Here is a very basic overview:

Preschoolers: This this very early age, kiddos are just starting to figure out that...

Are you a classroom teacher with a student who is always arguing and/or analyzing everything you {and their peers} say or do? Do they debate even the smallest of requests that you make causing constant power struggles? Do they become argumentative with peers, even those who are trying to be friendly to them, causing them to have few or challenging friendships due to this problem behavior? 

Having this student behavior management issue with a student who constantly argues can be very frustrating!

Figuring Out The “Why”

The first thing I always do, is try to pinpoint the reason for the behavior. Is there a direct correlation that you can pinpoint?

An effective teacher will ask themselves why the student engaging in this behavior. What is he/she trying to say? Beyond the words, what message is he sending?

Students who engage in this type of student behavior management issue are often seeking the best way to have control. They want to...

Having to find behavior management techniques for dealing with defiant student behaviors in the classroom is a reality for all teachers. Classroom teachers, special subject teachers and assistant teachers, all have to respond to a variety of defiant behavior(s), sometimes, on a daily basis. Defiant behavior(s) also affects the other students who share space with those who are struggling. This post will give you 10 tips for classroom management that will help new teachers and experienced teachers with defiant behaviors.  

Some, experience severe behaviors. This post will address good classroom management strategies for dealing with mild-moderately defiant behaviors. These are behaviors that are unsettling and/or disruptive to your teaching, including; non-compliance, arguing and being rude and disrespectful.

*The strategies discussed here and the Freebies passed along, are not intended for significantly defiant...

This time of year I tend to put a lot of focus on the explicit teaching of two very important social skills; Teamwork and Cooperation. 

Of course, teaching teamwork and cooperation skills are essential skills all-year-long, and are used in nearly every activity in school and in life.

For me, the importance of teaching teamwork and cooperation skills really seems to stand out, as I watch my students to playing sports and games at recess, and engaging in cooperative activities on the playground in in their classrooms. 

Teamwork and Cooperation are defined very similarly, and my students always tell me they are the same thing.

But there are some subtle and important differences that I like to keep in mind and the good news is, you can learn them too! This post will look at the difference between teamwork and cooperation and it will give you some good ideas on how to teach these skills in your classroom.

Let’s...

We all know how important it is to teach and support social pragmatic skills. Year after year I see more and more children struggling to engage in even very basic social interactions and social situations throughout the school day. This post provides 5 basic social skills activities you can use with your students.

It’s important to teach social pragmatic skills, explicitly in many cases, to our students. From kindergarten, all the way through elementary school…and in some cases, beyond.

Here are the 5 basic social skills that I like to teach in the kindergarten classrooms that promote strong social skills: 

Sharing

Cooperating

Taking Turns

Using Kind Language

Respecting Personal Space

Below are some great social skills activities, tools, and ideas for how to teach these important social pragmatics in your day-to-day teaching and lesson plans. I hope you find some helpful ideas that you can quickly and easily add throughout the school...