The monthly newsletter
Issue 88 | December 2012 | www.ei-india.com
This Month’s Issue Teaching Social ............... 01 Children’s Day ................ 02 Accidental Inventions ..... 03 Year Planner ................... 04 Thoughtful Story ............ 06 Book Review .................. 06 Teacher’s Bite ................. 07 Anecdotes Relating ........ 08
Teaching Social Skills in Schools We live in a competitive world and being globally connected, we need to understand and experience diverse cultures. We would need to determine whether every child is ready to contribute in a competitive and interconnected world, in our current education system. Experts feel that the focus on the mastery of core subjects has to be supplemented with relevant social and life skills such as: effective communication, collaboration and team building, creativity and innovations. Social skills are critical for survival in today’s world. They are a combination of the ability to understand and manage one’s own emotional state as well as understand and respond to other people. Students need to know how to manage oneself by identifying emotions and scenarios, and developing ways to deal with personal emotional states. Interpersonal Social Skills: As said earlier, the ability to understand others’ emotional states, wants and needs is critical not only for success in school, but also in life, as life demands constant interaction with diverse people across cultures, both at personal and professional levels. Teachers can use tools like team building,
initiating interactions and sharing both by project methods and in classroom situations. Inter-personal skills are sometimes also referred to as people skills or communication skills. Active listening, response, delegation and leadership are core components of interpersonal skills. Some others are active listening, praising, staying on tasks, helping others, etc.
We’ve Got Skills!
Steps to Teach Social Skills: 1. A teacher first needs to demonstrate through videos or stories, a few examples/case studies, highlighting the sufferings of individuals lacking social skills. She could get students to brainstorm lists of social skills and guide them on how to acquire these. 2. While teaching social skills, it is best to focus on just one skill at a time. A teacher can choose the skill by herself By Jitu Mishra, Educational Specialist, EI
or let her class decide which skill they would need to work on first. Depending upon time and resources, the teacher might have to work on a different skill each week, highlighting these on the bulletin board. 3. It is not enough to say, “Be nice!” A teacher has to help students identify exactly what they need to do and say in order to improve the identified social skill. The teacher can make a laminated poster for her bulletin board and write the social skills in the box at the top. Then the teacher should ask students to talk about their possible actions and when they would need to demonstrate these skills. 4. After the discussion on the nature of the skills and how they can be demonstrated, she should provide an opportunity to practise these skills, through cooperative learning activities. 5. At the end of the activity, the teacher should get the class to reflect on how well the social skills were used.