Notes: Strategies for Teaching Social Skills to Adolescents with Disabilities

• social skills include how to act and interact with other individuals, how to get along with others, how to make and maintain friendships, what and when to say certain things, what not to say in certain situations, and how to act in certain situations

Importance of Social Skills

• social interactions, appropriate languages, and development of a variety of interest are fundamental skills critical for life success
• friendships, which is a "natural and essential part of human existence...involves a series of complicated social interaction"

Social Skills and Individuals with Disabilities

• students with learning disabilities lack the social skills and abilities to achieve average levels of social acceptance among students without learning disabilities
• there are several reasons why students with disabilities have difficulties with social skills
• limited opportunities to model appropriate social skills
• limited cognitive abilities
• limited attention to environment
• high levels of distractibility
• emotional issues related to disabilities
•   factors associated with acceptance vs non-acceptance of students with disabilities
• acceptance
• perceived as being a part of the class
• peer tutors and/or independence
• limited self-abuse, aggression or loud behaviors
• overall classroom  culture of acceptance and tolerance
• knowledge of the disabilities or differences as well as similarities
• specific training
• non-acceptance
• frequent removal from classroom
• presence of a one on one adult assistance
• extreme or disruptive behaviors
• negative attitude or treatment by teacher
• lack of understanding of disability or differences
• unusual or "scary" equipment or behaviors

Social Skills Instruction

• specific methods used will depend on several variables, including the students age, cognitive ability, ability to communicate and opportunities for practice
• remember that all students are capable of learning social skills
• its up to educators to determine what skills are needed and how to teach those needed skills
• assessment of social skills
• useful information can be collected using informal observations
• the following potential pitfalls to this form of data collection may result in
• biased observer
• inaccurate recollections
• inaccurate subjective judgments
• missed important behaviors
• formal observations are better than informal the observer sets out to observe specific behaviors in controlled settings
• formal observations include
• identifying an observable target behavior
• selecting a procedure for measuring the target behavior, including setting up a data collection system
• observing the target behavior and collecting data
• recording the results on a graph
• interpreting and applying the results
• assessment system used to determine social skill
• is the skill deficient or inadequate?
• does the student have the ability to learn the skill?
• will the student have an opportunity to practice the skill?
• does changing the student's behavior have importance to significant others in the student's life?
• is the skill needed in current or future environments?
• is acquisition of the skill essential to remain in the current environment?
• social skills and culture
• social skills instruction should reflect the lifestyle and experiences of the culturally diverse student
• social skills instruction should include heterogeneous groups with socially competent representative from socially diverse cultures
• social skills instruction should incorporate the language of culturally diverse learners

Strategies to Teach Social Skills

• multiple opportunities for students to interact with each other and with their teachers in a variety of settings and activities, and also many opportunities for modeling and direct instruction in social skills
• barriers to social skills instructions
• time
• resources
• training

Level I - structuring a classroom community

• belonging with their chronological-age peers
• establish a climate for interactions among students
• Creating an accepting classroom environment
• Establish clear and positive classroom rules and expectations 
• Promote disability awareness and acceptance 
• Create culturally responsive classrooms 
• Welcome collaborating partners (i.e., family members, support staff, paraprofessionals) 
• Creating a "place/voice" for each student in the classroom 
• Set up classroom jobs and responsibilities 
• Promote individual talents and interests 
• Promote classroom membership and belonging 
• Creating opportunities for social interaction
• Structure in-class activities (e.g., centers, flexible grouping) 
• Use cooperative learning and peer tutoring 
• Structure out-of-class interactions (e.g., groups games, recess) 
• Encourage collaboration (e.g., group/pairs projects)

• strategies teachers can implement in their classrooms to make a more positive environment
• notice children
• provide a forum
• get personal
• jump-start social skills
• provide positive reinforcements
• specific ways teachers can create and maintain an open classroom for conducive for social interactions and learning
• rules and expectations
• physical arrangement of the classroom
• facilitate friendships
• select the classroom wisely
• scheduling wisely
• selecting supports wisely
• preparing classroom teachers
• preparing the general education students
• preparing students with disabilities
• securing maintaining family support
• model positive interactions
• facilitate conversations
• encourage students with disabilities to initiate conversations
• use games
• implement peer strategies
• peer support programs have been shown to be very effective in facilitating the social inclusion of students with disabilities
• develop friendship circles
• service learning
• cooperative learning
• promote the development of social skills includes a large number of things teachers can do to make their classrooms more open and conducive for social skills development and reinforcement

Level II - Specific strategies and curriculum for promoting social competence

• Using strategies for teaching social skills in large or small 
• Teach problem-solving skills group contexts (role-playing, games, and vignettes). t
• teach effective communication and group interaction 
• Teach conflict-resolution skills 
• Provide character education 
• Use strategies to deal with frustration, anger, and other emotions (children's books and social stories)
• Using social skills or character education curricula
• Use published or teacher-developed curricula

• large or small group activities and implementing a social skills or character education curricula
• 6 steps process for teaching these skills
• establish the need
• identify the skill components
• model the skill
• role-play the skill
• practice the skill
• generalize the skill
• efficacy of social skills training
• modeling, coaching, and reinforcement procedures appear to be most effective
• evidence for cognitive-based strategy is weaker
• demonstration of consistent, durable gains is difficult
• cognitive-based strategies use outcomes measures that lack social validity
• the amount of intervention appears to be related to success
• interventions based on assessments are best
• social skills training needs to be more frequent and intense
• treatment should be targeted to specific deficits
• functional assessment-based planning to tie interventions to current deficits works well
• inappropriate behaviors that compare with social skills must be addressed
• teach problems-solving skills
• identifying the problem
• finding possible solutions to the problem
• identifying pros and cons for different solutions
• choosing a solution
• effective communication and group interactions
• in order to facilitate social skills development, students must be able to communicate effectively
• initiate and close conversations appropriately
• select appropriate topics for conversations
• make contributions to the conversation truthful and relevant
• match oral and nonverbal messages
• detect and display emotion through facial expressions
• maintain a social acceptable distance
• maintain appropriate eye contact
• conflict-resolutions skills
•  uses peer mediators which provides a structured method for dealing with conflict
• character/values education
• role-playing
• student can work together to explore their feelings, attitudes, values and problem solving strategies
• literature-based strategies
• provides students with a story that describes expected behaviors, how to achieve those behaviors, and rewards earned as a result of those expected behavior
• learning strategies
• stop - student determines what is going on in the environment
• observe - various aspects of the environment are observed, which could include what individuals are doing and saying
• deliberate - student would develop an action plan of what to do or say
• act - student implements the plan developed during deliberate stage
• video-therapy
• means for helping high school students deal with social and emotional problems
• students watch a video, followed by a teacher-facilitated discussion
• the discussion provides student to identify with the character and connect their own lives to the events in the movie 

• social skills curricula
• some teachers use published or self-developed curricula for large or small group instruction for social skills

Level III - Targeted individual interventions

• Teaching specific social skills corresponding with student
• Conduct functional assessments needs 
• Develop targeted intervention to match student needs
• Acquisition deficit: teaching new skills that do not exist in the student's repertoire 
• Competing behavior: teaching replacement behavior (socially acceptable behavior instead of problem behavior) 
• Fluency deficit: providing practice and generalization of target behavior t
• teaching students specific strategies for recognizing and
• Help student establish support networks enhancing their social support networks 
• Teach how to provide support to others Teaching self-management strategies 
• Teach strategies for self-monitoring, self-evaluating, self-reinforcement, self-instruction
• Enhancing and promoting student's self-determination
• Enhance self-knowledge of student’s strengths and abilities 
• Valuing oneself (acceptance, responsibilities) 
• Teach strategies to promote self-determination and self-advocacy

• functional behavior assessment questions
• function of the behavior - attention seeking vs avoidance
• type of deficits - does the student know how to do the behavior?
• social validity of the target behavior - is the behavior important?
• individual interventions include
• teach specific new skills that the student does not possess
• teach a competing behavior to replace a socially inappropriate behavior
• provide practice and generalize for newly learned skills
• help students establish support networks
• teach self-monitoring, self-evaluating, self-reinforcement, and self-instruction strategies
• teach acceptance and responsibilities
• teach strategies to promote self-determination and self-advocacy
• for those who need interventions and supports to assist them in developing appropriate social skills, comprehensive planning is necessary
• educators and family members needs to have an understanding of the nature of social skills deficits before implementing a plan for improvement
• there needs to be an understanding of the level of social skills before implementing a program to improve them