12 Tips for Supporting Students’ Social Skills This Year

Promote peer support. Giving students the skills to seek peer support promotes a valid and important lifelong skill. If a student needs help with something, have them ask a peer first (you might choose to have all students follow the rule “Ask three before me”). Set up partnerships during instructional time and have students work together. Give students choices for play partners, transition partners (partners for walking to and from classes), choice time partners, lunchtime partners, math partners, and so forth.

Use praise genuinely. Provide behavior-specific praise right after a student displays a desired social be­havior like sharing or engaging in teamwork. (If you praise just to praise, it will likely lose its effect.) Make sure your tone, demeanor, stance, and facial expression match your delivery of praise statements. Vary your praise statements over time—select a variety of behavior-specific praise state­ments that are within your comfort zone to mix up your repertoire.

Teach the language of empathy. Remind students that empathetic people actively listen to others, not to “fix them” but to feel what they are feeling. Provide your students with a “wardrobe of words” to listen actively to each other and express their empathy. Teach them some sentence starters that might be helpful, such as:

• I can hear how ___________ you’re feeling now.
• It sounds like you’re feeling _______.
• I can see how important this is to you because _______________.
• Your expression seems to say ________.
• From where I stand, it seems _________.

Set up a pen pal program and have students from your class write letters to students in another class (or a class at another school). This activity teaches students how to demonstrate proactive social skills through written communication. Especially valuable for introverted kids, writing letters gives students time to collect their thoughts, and it levels the playing field for students who do not speak. Try providing structured sentence frames in which the students can hold polite conversation with their pen pals, and give guidelines on language usage, topics, and how much personal information to share.

Ask students to interview each other. Give your students a series of questions or prompts and then ask them to interview a partner. The prompts for these interviews can be tailored to the class. For example, in an English class, you might offer prompts like: “If I could meet any author (dead or alive), I would like to meet…,” “My favorite book is…,” or “Besides books, I like to read…” After the first interview, each member of the pair may be asked to introduce the person they interviewed to the group.

Offer tips on anger management. Help students soothe feelings of anger and frustration the emerge during the school day by giving them concrete suggestions: for example, use “if-then” statements to consider the consequences of potential actions, quietly count up to or down from 10, or talk to another person and listen to their perspective.

Read (and write) stories that teach social skills. There are dozens of stories for kids that teach social skills in direct or indirect ways. Stories written expressly for this purpose are known as social stories or social narratives. You can find ways to incorporate these stories in your class programs, or just set aside some time each day to read a story to the class that teaches social skills. You can reinforce those skills (and give kids more writing practice!) by having your class write stories with characters that display certain character traits.

Conduct community circles to close the day. Near the end of the school day, ask students to form a circle and reflect on the day together. Check in with students about how they are feeling and what went well for them, and talk about acts of kindness you’ve observed. Get a discussion going by asking them about something new they learned, something they’re wondering about, or a goal for the next day. You might also work in a closing song or game.

Want more expert guidance at your fingertips as the school year starts? Check out the books behind today’s post, perfect for professional development!

• Tips 1, 8, and 11: Adapted from Inclusion in Action, by Nicole Eredics
• Tips 2, 7, and 12: Adapted from The Social-Emotional Learning Toolbox, by Kathy Perez
• Tip 3: Adapted from Building Trauma-Sensitive Schools, by Jen Alexander
• Tips 4 and 10: Adapted from Merrell’s Strong Kids—Grades 3-5
• Tip 5: Adapted from The Educator’s Handbook for Inclusive School Practices, by Julie Causton & Chelsea P. Tracy-Bronson
• Tip 6: From The Teacher’s Guide for Effective Classroom Management, Third Edition, by Tim Knoster, Ed.D., & Stephanie Gardner, Ph.D.
• Tip 9: Adapted from Understanding and Supporting Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, by Vern Jones & Al Greenwood