Social Skills Lesson Plan Format

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Social Skills Lesson Plan: Initiating Conversation
1. Group: The small group consists of six students that range from 9-10 years old, both male and female.
All students are identified with various learning disabilities and struggle in reading as well as oral
communication.
2. Skill: Initiating a conversation with a peer
3. How and why skill chosen was for instruction
The social skill “initiating conversation” was chosen because through observation and teacher interviews
it has been noted that many of the students have difficulty making friends and do not know how to
appropriately approach their peers. Based on observations I have made in class, recess, and lunch
students use attention-grabbing tactics such as poking or interrupting others as a way to start an
interaction with their peers. Overall, being able to initiate conversation will help students build a social
support system which can improve their attitudes about school, their self-esteem, ability to express
themselves orally and help students work in groups or with partners in an academic situation.
4.
Objective: The student will initiate communication once a day with someone they know or someone
new during classroom group activities, lunch or recess.
5. Material(s): White board, eraser, topic cards, and conversation starter worksheet
Instruction Procedures:
Teacher starts lesson by asking class why they start conversations with other people.
a. Describe skill: Initiating a conversation means going up to someone you know or don’t know in
order to get and/or give information.
6. Teacher will discuss reasons for initiating conversations, eliciting examples from the class first, then
providing reasons to help guide them.
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To learn about people’s interests
To make friends
To get help
To join in a group
To share your opinion
Next the teacher will model both good and bad examples of how to initiate conversation with a peer by
acting out a scenario with the paraprofessional as listed below:
Teacher: goes to paraprofessional and start poking her and making weird face
Paraprofessional: Stop that is annoying, leave me alone.
Ask student what was wrong with your approach and elicit bad examples of initiating a conversation. Then
discuss good ways of initiating conversation, guiding student examples to fit the steps of the skill (Make eye
contact, smile and say name, greeting) Next model an appropriate way to initiate a conversation with the
paraprofessional using an example below.
Teacher: Ms Stout, how was your weekend?
Paraprofessional: Good, I went to the mall. What did you do?
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Teacher then differentiates situations in which the students approaches someone they know versus
someone they don’t know and elicits ideas from class while writing them on the board. Together the
class will make a list of topic sentences to initiate conversations with people the students know and
people they don't know. Next pass out topic cards to pairs of students and let them practice with each
other. Student will report back what they learned about their partner and if they have anything in
common. Next switch partners and topic cards and let students practice again.
b. Student Rationale (adapted from the PBIS Compendium web site): Teacher will give examples and
elicit examples from students.
 It shows friends we like them
 We can make new friends
 It’s polite
 People like to talk
 People may want to learn more about us and our interests
 People will wants us to be in their group and play with us at recess
 What happens if we don’t begin talking in a nice way
c. General conditions for using skill: To learn more about someone you know or don’t know, to ask
for help, to join a group or get another person to engage in talking with you or doing an acitivity
with you.
d. Specific examples of situations in which the skill is used:
 At lunchtime if you want to share your food or trade snacks.
 During recess if a group of your peers are playing kickball and you would like to join or you
want someone to play a board game with you.
 When you are in class and working in a group and don’t understand something you can ask,
or if your highlighter runs out you can ask to borrow one.
e. Steps of the skill: Teacher will specify why each step is important, but will first elicit reasons from
class and supplement accordingly. For example: Eye contact and saying a person’s name lets them
know we are talking to them, smiling lets others know we are approaching them in a friendly
manner, appropriate space ensures that our peers can hear what we are saying. Do not invade
personal space as it makes people uncomfortable. Come up with an appropriate greeting (e.g., “Hi,
how are you? What did you do this weekend?)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Make eye contact
Smile and say person’s name
Greeting (topic sentence or question)
Space (allow peer personal space)
Wait for a response
f.
Model the skill :
Teacher will role-play by initiating a conversation with different students in the class. Solicit feedback from
the class, let those participating what went well and what went bad in the conversation. Next assign pairs of
students to talk initiate a conversation with each other. Pass out topic cards and have each student think of a
starting/greeting sentence to get a conversation going in that subject area. They can choose to share
information or ask information.
g. Verbal rehearsal of skill steps (students learn to name steps of skill to automaticity)
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Steps will be written on white board. Class will practice chorally saying the steps, in normal voices, whisper voices and
robot voices. Next let the students repeat the steps in a round robin format until they can repeat with automaticity. For
students with memory difficulties supply an index card with the steps that they can keep in their pocket.
h. Behavioral rehearsal (role play) : (adapted from the PBIS Compendium web site)
Teacher selects two students at random (names could be drawn from a hat/bowl). One student stands on the
front of the room. The other goes to the hall, re-enters classroom and is to approach the other, make eye
contact, smile and say the person’s name and say greeting. Teacher will give feedback to students if they left
out any steps.
To generalize, supply students with a worksheet with three conversation-starting sentences and have students
self-record the number of people they initiate conversation and how it went on a sheet provided at the end of
the lesson. At the end of the day they will turn in their sheets.
i.
Homework (generalization) assignment
Students are to initiate a conversation on an assigned topic with their parent or older sibling and report back details of
the conversation to the teacher the next day. Assignment will be put in planner for parent to sign for confirmation.
7. Student Evaluation—evidence of student learning
After reciting steps chorally and practicing the steps with a partner, the students could repeat the steps
with 100% accuracy in order when called on in a round robin format. Additionally, when the children
reported back from their topic cards activity, they reiterated the steps their partner did in initiating the
conversation and were able to share common interests they learned about each other through
conversation, reinforcing why initiating conversations is relevant to them. Students specified if their
partner completed each of the steps and specifically shared the greeting/topic sentence they used during
the conversation.
8. Lesson Evaluation/Additional comments
The conversation skills demonstrated by the paraprofessional and me went well and helped elicit ideas
from the children on both good and bad ways to initiate conversation. Students openly admitted to
getting nervous in approaching others to talk, which reinforced the relevance for the lesson. I had good
participation from the students in chorally stating the steps of the skill and they volunteered to repeat
them more when they got to choose the “type” of voice we used. In particular they had fun using a robot
voice. One of my students was out, so I had to partner with one student, which didn’t allow me to
monitor other’s conversations. One group had a hard time grasping the purpose of the topic cards and
instead of using the topic card of “pets” to make conversation; they tried to make up a story. So I
redirected them to appropriate topic sentences and got them on the right track. The second round of topic
cards went a lot better and students actually learned new information about each other and found
common interests. If I did the lesson again, I would have had one student pair model their topic card
conversation to the class and critiqued them, before I let them practice independently.
At the end of the day, only two of my five students initiated conversation with three different people and
completed their worksheet. Two initiated conversation with one person and one student did not initiate a
conversation with anyone. However that one student was pulled away from his peers during recess and
afternoon classes for testing and had less opportunities.
References:
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PBIS Compendium. (2010). Retrieved on November 9, 2010 from
http://pbiscompendium.ssd.k12.mo.us/ResourcesSchools/SSD/SocialSkills/0108.htm
Name ________________________
Conversation Starter checklist
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Make eye contact
Smile and say person’s name
Space (be close enough but not too close)
Greeting
Wait for a response
Sentences to use as a greeting:
1. Did you have a good weekend?
2. What kind of sandwich is that? It looks delicious.
3. I forgot my highlighter today. May I borrow yours?
4. I have a sister/brother. Do you have any sisters or brothers?
5. Can you help me I don’t understand this math problem?
People I initiated conversation with today:
Name _______________
When: Lunch
Recess
Class
Name _______________
When: Lunch
Recess
Class
Name:________________
When: Lunch
Recess
Class
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