Social skills activities for middle schoolers
20 Evidence-Based Social Skills Activities and Games for Kids
Oct 14 2020
Positive Action Staff
•
SEL Articles
Activities and games for socialization are a great way for your child to learn how to behave around their peers, no matter if he is a toddler, preschooler or if he just started kindergarten. Games can teach skills like taking turns, managing emotions, and reading body language.
Use these evidence-based social skills activities to help your child build their social behaviors and learn how their actions affect others. With these games, they can become more independent and maintain healthy relationships throughout their lives.
1. Staring Contest
Many children have trouble maintaining eye contact in conversation. A staring contest can help kids make and keep eye contact in a way that allows them to focus on that task, rather than trying to communicate simultaneously.
If your child still feels uncomfortable, you can start smaller. Place a sticker on your forehead for them to look at and then build toward having a conversation.
2. Roll the Ball
It’s never too early to start building social skills, and a game of roll the ball suits children as young as toddlers. Kids take turns rolling a ball back and forth between them, laying the foundation for other social skills.
Kids learn to carry this skill into taking turns in conversation or when doing joint activities. They also learn self-control by aiming the ball toward their friend and rolling it hard enough to reach them yet with limited force.
3. Virtual Playtime
Sometimes, your child can’t have play dates in person, but they can still spend time together over video chat and other online spaces. Video chats help kids make eye contact by looking at their friend on the screen.
Learning to adapt to new situations becomes a valuable trait, whether with social distancing or in their future workplace.
Coming up with new ways to spend time together increases problem-solving abilities, which adds to a set of vital social skills.
4. Emotion Charades
Emotion charades involves writing different emotions on strips of paper. Your child picks one out of a hat or bucket. Then, they must try to act out that emotion.
Emotion charades can help children learn to recognize emotions using facial and body cues. You can even adapt social skills activities like this to create a game similar to Pictionary, where children draw the emotion.
By depicting and acting out emotional expressions and reactions in social skills activities, children learn emotion management, which plays an important role in creating positive relationships and communicating feelings.
5. Expression Mimicking Games
When you play this game with your child, you're teaching social skills with expressions. Mimicking your expressions allows your child to understand what certain expressions mean and recognize them when others make them in real conversations.
When kids with social challenges learn to read facial expressions, they become more comfortable in situations involving them.
6. Topic Game
You can play several variations of the topic game, but the most common one involves choosing a topic and naming things that fit into that category using each letter of the alphabet. For example, if you choose animals as the topic, you might come up with:
- A: Aardvark
- B: Baboon
- C: Chicken
The topic game teaches kids to stick to one subject and follow directions until they complete the activity. It also helps them make connections and get creative with letters that have fewer options.
7. Step Into Conversation
Step Into Conversation is a card game made for children with autism. The game presents structured social skills activities, like starting a conversation and talking about specific subjects based on cards.
The game helps kids learn how to talk to others appropriately and carry a conversation with perspective and empathy.
It teaches good manners and self-control by showing them how to politely enter a conversation, when to talk, and when to listen.
By using socialization games like this one, you give structure to conversations to develop the social skills necessary to handle different situations in their daily life.
8. Improvisational Stories
Many children tell stories even outside of intentional social skills activities. With improvisational stories, you add another challenge that requires them to collaborate and create a narrative without thinking about it beforehand.
For this activity, place cards with pictures or words face down. The child picks three of these cards, and they must include these objects or topics in the story they tell. The game ends when all the cards are gone, or the kids reach the end of their story.
You can use this activity as a multiplayer game where children take turns adding to the story and building on each other’s ideas, or one child can tell you their own story.
9. Name Game
With this simple game, kids roll or toss a ball to someone after they call out their name. Social skills activities like this one work well for helping even toddlers learn their peers’ names. It shows that they are attentive to others, and it’s a step toward getting to know other people.
10. Simon Says
Simon Says builds social skills for kids' self-control, listening, and impulse control as they copy their peers' movements and follow instructions. It also helps keep the attention on the game and rewards good behavior for those who follow the rules throughout the game.
11. Rhythm Games
You can incorporate rhythm games as a social skills activity both at home and in the classroom. These music-making games let your child be creative while following directions and recognizing patterns.
A 2010 study by Kirschner and Tomasello shows that joint music-making helps social behavior. In a game where children must “wake the frogs” with music, the researchers found that kids who followed the rules by making music were more likely to help others who tried waking the frogs with non-musical means.
12. Playing with Characters
These social skills activities involve tapping into your child’s natural tendency to play. Using stuffed animals or dolls, you can interact with your child through the toys.
Having conversations through toys teaches kids to recognize behaviors and communicate their feelings. They practice their social skills through the toys in an imaginary, low-risk environment, without worrying about the toys’ hurt feelings.
13. Play Pretend
Kids will typically create a scenario in which they pretend to be someone or something else. For example, they might play house and take on the roles of parents, become a doctor, veterinarian, teacher, or cashier. Each of these situations allows them to explore different social skills activities.
As they pretend to parent another child, for instance, they must learn to recognize and respond to emotions, deescalate situations, and adapt to new situations.
14. Token Stack
You can adapt token stack from board games like checkers to create social skills activities that teach children how to have a considerate conversation.
Every time the child speaks and responds appropriately, they add another token to their stack.
They face the challenge of trying to stack their tokens as high as possible while taking turns speaking. This activity makes them focus on having a calm conversation and giving thoughtful responses to questions and statements.
15. Decision-Making Games
Social skills activities like decision-making games come in many forms. By using strategy games or activities as simple as sorting and matching, your child learns persistence, thoughtfulness, and cooperation with others.
These games help kids with indecision, as they ask the child to make a choice, even if it’s not right the first time. It demonstrates low-risk consequences and encourages them to try again if they make a mistake.
16. Building Game
When children work together to build something, like a tower using blocks, they must communicate, take turns, and understand each other to bring their creation to life.
Kids will work together to come up with a method to build their item. When they apply it, they learn to try again if the creation falls and celebrate each other’s unique abilities when they finish the project successfully.
17. Community Gardening
Community gardening works differently than other social skills activities in that it teaches children to nurture a living thing.
Gardening with others increases social competence by having your child take care of something and learn responsibility, as they cannot neglect their plants. This activity also gets kids outdoor and can help calm them.
18. Team Sports
Children can participate in team sports through their school, on a recreational team, or even play with friends in their backyard. Team sports show kids how to work together toward a common goal and keep their focus on the game.
They also learn to recognize emotions, like when someone gets hurt or scores a goal, and react appropriately when they win or lose.
19. Productive Debate
A productive debate works well for older kids to learn how to manage emotions and work on positive expression, even in challenging situations. They learn how to have difficult conversations calmly, without turning them into an argument or trying to insult the other person.
People who can debate and listen to their opponent develop more of the skills needed to become leaders in the classroom and workplace.
20. Scavenger Hunts
During scavenger hunts, children work together to find objects or get a prize at the end of the activity. By working toward their goal, they learn teamwork, organization, and positive decision-making. They can choose to split up, move as a group, and collaborate to reach the end of the game.
They also get rewarded for cooperating. These activities help them with creative problem-solving abilities by making up clues for other players to solve.
What’s Next?
Using evidence-based social skills activities and games helps your child build social skills while doing something they enjoy.
You can adapt any of these activities to something that engages your child and allows them to get creative with their socialization.
However, activities and games can only go so far. The Positive Action social skills curriculum is designed to work in tandem with activities like these and more to help your child identify their self-concept and shift this introspection to their social interactions. We feel social skills start within.
Explore our sample lessons for even more ways to encourage your child’s social-emotional learning, or contact us to find out how our program can improve your child’s social skills and have fun doing it today!
31 Social Skills Activities and Games for Kids (Young Children, Teens, Autism & Group Activities)
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Looking for fun social skills activities to boost your kid’s socio-emotional development?
Social skills are an important part of kids’ socio-emotional development.
Every day, we use our social skills to communicate and interact in society.
Children learn about norms and acceptable behaviors through their social interaction with parents, teachers and, later in childhood, peers. There are also a number of social skills activities for kids that will help us support this learning process.
(Disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. You can also read our Disclosure & Disclaimer policy here)
Social Skills Activities for Kids
The following social activities are great for fun family game nights and for classroom activities. They are also great tools to help you work with kids on their social skills.
I’ve organized them into broad categories, following this social skills checklist.
- Communicating
- Listening
- Recognizing and Expressing Emotions
- Participating / Taking Care of Themselves & Others
- Problem-Solving
For each social skill mentioned above, you will find different activities that may help with the development of interpersonal skills.
This is the list of social skills games and activities that we will explore below:
- Conversation Role-Playing
- Self-Introduction for Kids
- Would you Rather Questions
- Giving & Receiving Compliments
- Puppet Show
- Assertive Communication Role-Play / Worksheets
- Personal Space Circle
- Recognizing Emotions / Emotions Flashcards Games & Activities
- Emotions & Facial Expressions (Worksheets)
- Continue my Story
- Guess what I’m Describing
- Whole Body Listening Worksheets
- Drama Workshop
- A Feelings Journal
- Expressing Feelings with Emotion Cards
- Conversation Ball
- The Talking Stick
- What Makes a Good Friend (Group Activity)
- Things We Have In Common
- Showing Interest: Questions about Others
- Guess Fake or Real Apology
- Write an Apology Letter
- How Others Feel / Perspective-Taking
- A Week of Kindness
- Conflict Resolution Worksheet
- Social Skills Board Game
- Social Skills Groups
- Social Clubs
- Playdates
- Social Stories
- Hidden Rules with Friends
Communication Skills Activities
VERBAL COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES
Skill: Starting, maintaining and finishing a conversation
Activity 1: Role-playing conversations
What is role-playing? It is acting out a particular person, character or situation.
It is a technique used often when training new skills and in psychotherapy.
It works really well when you are training kids in social skills, as it allows them to practice a new skill in a safe environment before they expose themselves to real-life situations. Consequently, you will see it mentioned in several suggested social skills activities.
In this activity, you will be role-playing with your kids or students different everyday communication situations like:
- starting a conversation with the kid sitting next to you
- wrapping up a conversation so the kid agrees on meeting / playing again.
Just a few examples that you can use:
- Conversation starters
Give them a few lines that they can use at school:
-
- What did you do this weekend?
- What games do you play at home?
- What is your favorite food / game / place?
- Finishing / Wrapping-up a conversation
- Should we play this again sometime?
If you run out of ideas, or would like to make it a bit more fun, you can use these conversation cubes (foam cubes with 36 engaging questions and activity guide)
You can also download our own printable conversation cubes (it includes 5 different topics and a blank template for you to explore any area of interest)
Activity 2: Role-playing self-introductions
Being able to introduce themselves is an essential skill that helps kids feel confident, and provides opportunities to make friends and meet new people.
There are many situations when children may need to introduce themselves to a group, most likely their classroom or an activity group.
Activity: Create a list of introductory questions and ask them to introduce themselves
Write a list of things for them to answer about themselves (favorite food, sport, names of their friends, how old they are). They can write down or draw depending on their age / writing ability
Related Reading: Self-Introduction Activities and Worksheets for Kids
Activity 3: Would you rather
“Would you rather” is a fun conversation game that offers a choice between two answers.
This games is so fun that even a quiet child can turn into a chatterbox.
Do you need some ideas? -> Check out our 114 Would you Rather questions for kids
Skill: Giving and receiving compliments
Activity 4: Role-playing giving and receiving compliments
In groups of two, each kid takes a turn saying something nice to the other person (e.
g. I like your t-shirt, You did great today at maths), and the child that receives the compliment responds “Thank you very much”.
Activity 5: Puppet show
This is just a variation of a role-playing situation. You may use the puppet show idea for any of the previous social situations that we have mentioned (conversation starters, giving and receiving compliments).
Just as an example. I sometimes use my kid’s favorite soft toys (Puppy Dog Pals) and represent conversations in which Bingo is having problems controlling his emotions and Rolly helps him through some of the calming strategies that we use at home.
Activity 6: Communicating Assertively
Assertiveness is an important communication skill that will improve your child’s social interactions and low self-esteem.
Assertive communication is not just about what we say. Nonverbal communication is just as important: making eye contact, keeping calm while speaking, and using a confident voice tone.
Role-play how to communicate assertively in real-life situations. These assertive communication worksheets include tips and examples of assertive communication.
⇒ More info on assertive communication for kids
⇒ Other assertive communication resources: I-statements examples
➡️ Deal Alert ⬆️ (FREE in Kindle Unlimited when I wrote this post!!):
Social Skills Activities for Kids: 50 Fun Exercises for Making Friends, Talking and Listening, and Understanding Social Rules
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NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Skill: Respecting personal space
Activity 7: The personal space circle
Draw a circle on a big sheet of paper. The inner circle will be the intimate space (1.5 feet radius), surrounded by personal space (4 feet radius) and the area outside is the social space.
Put that paper on the floor. Take turns to role play conversations where kids speak to each other without trespassing in their personal spaces. (You may also use a string to create the circle or a hula hoop)
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION & EMOTIONS /FEELINGS
Skill: Learning about facial expressions and body language
Activity 8: Identifying facial expression and body language in Emotion Cards
You can use emotion cards to work on emotion recognition.
This is a set emotions flashcards with of 24 emotion labels and definitions. It also comes with useful suggestions on how to use them.
Activity 9: Emotions & Facial Expressions Workbook
This Emotions & Facial Expressions workbook can be a great activity for younger kids, too (we developed this one ❤️)
Listening Skills Activities
Skill: Listening with complete attention
Activity 10: Continue my story
We love storytelling at home.
I make up new stories every single day for my child.
Stories can also be used for a fun activity that involves listening attentively.
One person in the group starts a story, and at some point of time stops and chooses who will continue the plot. The next person will take the story from there and will pass it to another one in due course.
Everybody needs to listen with full attention because they don’t know when their turn will come up.
Activity 11: Guess what I’m describing
Choose something that you will describe, for example, a lion. Then, share clues, one at a time, till somebody guesses what you are describing
“It is an animal / It has four legs / It lives in the wild / etc.”
Activity 12: Whole Body Listening Worksheets
“Whole Body Listening”, developed by Susanne Marie Poulette, is one of the most popular tools to teach younger kids active listening.
You can download this social development tool from this post: Listening Games and Activities for Kids (18 ideas!)
Expressing and Recognizing Emotions / Feelings
Skill: Expressing and recognizing feelings
Activity 13: Drama workshop.
Write down different emotions on slips of paper and put them in a bag. Taking turns each of you will take a slip of paper and role-play the emotion written on it.
The person role-playing practices the skill of expressing feelings
The people guessing are practicing emotion recognition.
Activity 14: Keeping a feelings journal
Some kids may find expressing their feelings a bit difficult. A good way to get comfortable reflecting about feeling could be writing a feelings journal. This one is a great one for girls. And this one could be a nice guided journal for teens, with prompts and fun design.
Skill: Expressing feelings
Activity 15: Emotion cards and real-life situations
With a set of cards portraying different situations, take turns to explain how would do you feel when you are in that specific situation.
These ones here are great.
The set includes 80 cards. Half of them are faces on white background (different ages, genders, and ethnicities) showing five different emotions (happy, sad, angry, disgusted and scared). The other 40 cards are real-life emotion-provoking situations. It also includes an activities booklet that provides instructions and ideas on how to build emotional awareness and social skills.
Tip: This option is a good idea if you want to work on different facial expressions on real people (the ones I mentioned in activity 7 are illustrations)
Participating (Social Skills Activity)
Taking turns
The beauty of this skill is that it can be practiced with any game you have at home. But just to give you another idea:
Activity 16: Answer the question when you get the ball
Conversation balls are great tools to help kids know about each other.
These balls have printed conversations prompts. There are several ways to play with them.
You usually toss the ball and check under your thumb the question you need to answer.
You can also choose one of the questions and toss the ball around so that the kids wait for their turn to answer that question.
Conversation balls encourage the use of interpersonal skills (taking turns, eye contact, listening, responding).
Activity 17: The Talking Stick
The turn-taking stick (or talking stick) is literally just a little stick decorated in a cute way. Only the student holding the stick is able to talk. After they have spoken they can pass the stick to another student
Related Reading: 25 Fun Turn-Taking Activities for Kids
Caring / Speaking Up for Themselves
Skill: Making friends
Group Activity 18: Brainstorming what makes a good friend
Some ideas to mention: kind, helpful, talk nicely to people, don’t exclude others, don’t say ugly things about others.
Activity 19: Things We Have In Common
This friendship activity is a great activity for breaking down barriers.
Kids are organized in small groups, ideally with a mix of kids that they aren’t already all friends. The group has to find a certain number of things that they all have in common.
Kids not only learn a lot about each other but become aware of how many things they may have in common with kids from different social groups.
Skill: Showing interest in others
Activity 20: Ask questions about the other person.
Organize the kids in pairs, and ask them to take turns asking questions about each other.
If the kids run out of ideas you can use conversation cards like these ones (120 questions divided into three kids’ theme topics)
Skill: Learning to Say I’m Sorry
Group Activity 21: Guess Fake or Real Apology
Play a guessing game where they need to figure out if an apology is real or fake.
Present different scenarios where an apology is necessary.
Have the kids come up with various real and fake apologies.
Then, go in a circle and have them read their apologies for lots of laughs. Each time a kid reads an apology, the others need to guess if it was real or not, and what gave them the clues.
Activity 22: Write an Apology Letter
An apology letter allows your kid to put their feelings in writing and reflect on their actions and how they affect others.
Related Reading: Teaching Kids to Apologize (worksheets included)
Skill: Teach Empathy
Activity 23: Help kids take other people’s perspectives.
Perspective-taking activities may be quite enlightening and help them reflect on how others feel about a situation.
Select a set of situations your kids or students may encounter:
- Joe makes a joke about how Tim’s hair looks. What is Tim thinking? How is Tim feeling?
- Anna invites Emma and Lilly for a playdate but leaves out Kathy.
Why do you think Anna left Kathy out. How did Kathy feel?
Activity 24: A Week of Kindness
Create a kindness challenge. Choose a kindness activity to complete each day of the week.
Related Reading: 23 Fun Empathy Activities for Kids
Problem Solving Activities
Skill: Problem Solving in Social / Group Context
Activity 25: Conflict Resolution Worksheet (Conflict-Handling Modes)
This conflict resolution worksheet will enable work on the different conflict-handling modes:
- collaborating
- competing
- compromising
- avoiding
- accommodating.
Identify a conflict scenario, and ask your students to write examples for each conflict resolution strategy.
You can download this worksheet from the following article:
- 20 Fun Conflict Resolution Activities for Kids
Activity 26: Social Skills Board Games
Board games are a fun way to learn important social skills in a safe space with a small group of peers or with family members.
So, let’s add an example of a social skills board game to our list:
- Social Skills Group Activities (6 Board Games)
The games target: morals, good manners, empathy, friendship, and emotional skills (showing emotions and managing emotions)
Related Reading: Social Skills Games for Kids
Social Skills Activities for Kids with Autism
One of the diagnostic criteria in Autism Spectrum Disorder is persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts:
- Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity
- Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction
- Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships
Kids with special needs or autism struggle to understand social cues.
As a social skills deficit really comes with the diagnosis, helping our kids with autism develop social skills is an important part of our work as parents, educators and health professionals.
Apart from the activities that you have already gone through, you may also consider helping your kid with the following activities:
Activity 27: Joining a Social Skills Group run by professional therapists
Check out if this type of activity is available in your community. We were really happy to discover that this was an actual possibility for us.
Activity 28: Joining a Social Club for Kids with Autism
Activity 29: Organize Play Dates at Home (guided play if your kid needs help in social interactions)
Activity 30: Social stories
Social stories, social scripts, or social narratives are short descriptions of a situation or event that also indicate the expected social behavior.
These stories assist kids who struggle with reading social cues (body language, voice tone, facial expression) or with understanding commonly accepted social rules.
Any social situation can be transformed into a social narrative.
An example of a social story (the stories often include visuals to help understand / reinforce the message) :
Paying at the supermarket checkout
- First, I put all the items in my list in my supermarket trolley. Then I go to the check-out.
- I place my items on the counter and the cashier scans them and puts them in my grocery bags.
- The cashier tells my how much I need to pay and I use my credit card to pay for my shopping
Activity 31 : Hidden Rules with Friends
We have used this card game with my son, but we don’t play it following the game’s suggested rules. My son loves us to explore and untangle whatever social problem the card presents:
- What do you do if a friend invites you over for lunch and you don’t like the veggies?
- What happens if you burp in public?
Tip: some people find the designs in these cards too simple. It has many blank cards to fill with other social situations that I don’t use.
For us, they work as flashcards to explore social challenges in everyday situations.
If you are looking for lots of activities ideas, make sure you check this book below:
➡️ Recommended reading (FREE in Kindle Unlimited when I wrote this post!!):
Social Skills Handbook for Autism ( 50 fun and simple games and activities help the child on the spectrum with social skills like making friends, being part of a group, interacting with peers, expressing feelings or dealing with bullies)
➡️➡️Try Kindle Unlimited Free HERE
Social Skills Activities Ideas in Books
These books come with lots of ideas and activities to practice social skills at home, at school or in therapy setting:
- The Shoulds and Should Nots: Photo Cards to Help Children Develop Social & Communication Skills
A picture book with 64 scenarios that build social-emotional learning, critical thinking, mindfulness, self-confidence, empathy, executive function, and critical consciousness.
- 50 Fun Exercises for Making Friends, Talking and Listening, and Understanding Social Rules
➡️Deal Alert ⬆️ (FREE in Kindle Unlimited when I wrote this post!!):
Social Skills Activities for Kids: 50 Fun Exercises for Making Friends, Talking and Listening, and Understanding Social Rules
➡️➡️Try Kindle Unlimited Free HERE
- Over 75 Fun Games & Activities for Building Better Relationships, Problem Solving & Improving Communication
Other Social Skills Resources for Kids
- A comprehensive list of Social Skills for Kids ( FREE poster included in that post).
- Fun Social Skills Games for Kids
- Empathy Activities for Kids
- Conversation Starters
- Roll the Question Dice Activity
- Self-Introduction Worksheets for Kids
- Conflict Resolution Activities for Kids
Other Coping Skills Activities in this Blog
- Anger management activities for kids
- Self-esteem activities for teens & kids
- Anxiety tips and activities
31 Social Skills Activities for Kids (Young Children, Teens & Kids with Autism)
The importance of teaching social skills to students in special education classrooms and beyond.
| Autism | Inclusion Every day, a large number of educators work hard to make schools a safe and positive learning environment with the greatest emphasis on test scores and academic achievement. But there are children who
neither emotionally nor socially are ready to face such academic demands because of their emotional and/or behavioral problems. Many of these students are in specialized special education classrooms. The teachers in these classes try to strike a balance between teaching these children the school curriculum and teaching them basic social skills.
In addition, special education educators often find it difficult to select and obtain effective resources to proactively teach children with special needs the necessary social skills, problem-solving skills, and to work with their personality characteristics. Social skills are life skills and it is necessary to learn to respect others in order to become a full member of society.
If the education system does not teach children how to cooperate with others, act responsibly, resolve conflicts and show tolerance, the number of inflexible and aggressive students in schools will steadily increase, and with it the number of cases of bullying, intimidation and physical aggression will increase . In addition, it is important that children acquire such skills at an early age, when they are most receptive to learning. The personal experience of many educators who have worked in public elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as professionals in non-profit organizations supporting physically and psychologically abused children, shows that teaching social and conflict resolution skills to older children, especially children with emotional or behavioral difficulties, incredibly hard .
Young children need to be taught social skills consistently especially in inclusive special education classes. Today, working with social skills in schools is of great importance, because, unfortunately, children often do not learn the most important skills of social interaction in the home environment.
Their parents may lack the knowledge, time, or child-rearing skills to instill in their children the basic concepts of social behavior. Moreover, a huge amount of valuable learning time is spent by educators managing behavioral problems, resolving conflict situations, and intervening in crisis situations.
So why should we teach social skills to children? The ultimate goal for teachers, parents and school leaders is for children to use their own conflict resolution and self-management skills as they learn to manage their feelings in difficult situations and generalize behavioral skills in a variety of settings. When the issue of behavioral problems in the classroom is no longer so acute, teachers can pay more attention to academic achievement and effective teaching of school material, and students will feel their own progress in learning and proper social behavior.
Source: http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/9266-the-importance-of-social-skill-instruction-for-special-education-students
Soft skills or social skills for a student: 85 % of success in life
Harvard and Stanford believe that a student's academic knowledge is only 15% of success in his further education, in building a career and in life.
Russian schools actively download knowledge into the heads of our children, but do not teach them social skills, the so-called soft skills - leadership, teamwork, organizational skills, etc. Namely, they allow you to apply the acquired knowledge and achieve your goals: a prestigious university, a successful career, a happy family and true friendship.
A study of Fortune 500 CEOs found that long-term and sustained job success is 75% social and only 25% academic.
Therefore, European education has long included the training of soft skills, without which it is difficult to succeed in the modern world. Many of these traits are innate and inherent in every child, but they need to be cultivated and developed. Here are some critical social skills that will help any student achieve their goals in life.
TEAM WORK
The ability to listen, the ability to see a common goal and find common ground between a common idea and personal ambitions.
Willingness to help others and support in a difficult situation, the ability to convince and find a compromise.
Check if your child can:
- do things with other children?
- help someone solve their study question?
- to make sure that not only he, but his entire team achieves the goal?
How it is taught in a foreign school:
- team events: games, performance, volunteer programs;
- joint academic projects, when the project can be defended only by the whole team;
- competitions between "Houses" for schoolchildren studying on a full board basis.
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LEADERSHIP
To be a leader means to be a person whom everyone else recognizes as having the right to make responsible decisions for the entire team.
Check if your child can:
- to become a leader for other children: inspire and lead them?
- understand and feel other people?
- set other children tasks corresponding to their abilities and nature and achieve their fulfillment?
How it is taught in a foreign school:
- Supervision of junior students and beginners by high school students;
- Numerous clubs and hobby classes are sure to resonate in the soul of any student, and he will take the initiative in the area that interests him and gather his team of like-minded people.
We are looking for leaders, but not from the category of "president of the chess club", but from those who, faced with a problem, can at the right time take the lead of the team and lead it to the goal
- Laszlo Bock, Vice President of Recruitment, Google
CREATIVITY
A creative person is able to find non-standard, completely new solutions in familiar situations, he is able to invent and implement new ideas.
Check if your child can:
- Suggest an idea for a gala evening, fashion design or pop star poster?
- tell your friends the story he made up?
- come up with an idea for a new computer game or mobile application?
How it is taught in a foreign school:
- When solving a problem, the student will be asked not only to give the correct answer, but also to find 10 different solutions;
- Schoolchildren focus on both academic knowledge and extracurricular activities - music classes, theater productions and acting skills, development of artistic skills. It is easier for a child with a broad outlook to find a non-standard approach to solving a problem.
COMMUNICATION
The ability to communicate, openness and the ability to establish contact with other people, as well as to make the right impression on them.
Check if your child can:
- Is it clear and interesting to express your ideas and thoughts?
- speak confidently with a group of your peers, with a school principal, with other adults?
- speak in front of an audience of 100 people?
How it is taught in a foreign school:
- Students are encouraged to actively participate in discussions in the classroom.
And the final assessment is influenced by the student's involvement in lectures and seminars and his ability to defend his point of view; - Schoolchildren are constantly surrounded by their peers and implement academic projects together, participate in sports and creative events, attend hobby groups;
- Career days and meetings with universities are regularly held for high school students. Schools set aside time to develop a personal resume, self-presentation skills and interviews.
MANAGEMENT
It is the ability to bring people together to achieve a goal and inspire yourself and others to action. Initiative, demanding of oneself and others, attention to detail, the ability to delegate or do it yourself - all these are important qualities of an organizer.
Check if your child can:
- organize your time so that you can keep up with your studies and take part in additional school activities?
- put together a team to run cross country together or organize a party?
- make quick decisions when things don't go as planned?
How it is taught in a foreign school:
- time management skills are the first thing a student learns.
Unlike Russian students, European students do not study from morning to evening. The whole day is scheduled by the clock, there is time for study, sports, hobbies, homework and, of course, time for rest; - participation in numerous school events require a variety of skills from the student, including the ability to organize an exhibition, holiday, performance, debate, sports match and much more.
POSITIVE
Faith in yourself and in other people. This is such a view of the world in which a person can look at events from different angles and prefers to find positive in everything that surrounds him.
Check if your child can:
- keep a smile on your face despite the challenges?
- to fight and not give up, even when you fail to achieve the goal?
- try to solve your problems on your own, without immediately resorting to your help?
How it is taught in a foreign school:
- Support and attention of teachers, mentors and high school students.
The school is well aware of the difficulties students face and is always ready to help with advice and pay attention to positive events. - A healthy competitive environment helps students focus on their goals and not on temporary setbacks.
CURIOSITY
Intellectual curiosity, thirst for new knowledge, interest in the world around and desire to get new experiences. This is a natural quality of any child and it is important to preserve it.
Check if your child can:
- look up from your phone or tablet and look around when you are driving?
- When you find yourself in a new place, try to find out something about it?
- ask questions about how the world works?
How it is taught in a foreign school:
- The task of every teacher is not only to prepare a student for the final exams, but also to make him fall in love with his subject. The first thing that Russian children and parents notice is that students in European schools love to study.
- Well-equipped classrooms and laboratories - here you can study not only theory, but also try everything in practice. Chemistry, physics, biology become especially exciting.
- School activities also include guest speakers and themed tours. Children can learn first-hand about the subject and specialties: who you can become in the future, how you can apply the acquired knowledge in practice, what kind of employees employers want to see.
Most children are not very self-confident. They worry about entering a new social situation, about learning new skills, about having to complete a new task, even more difficult. They seek help and support from friends, parents, teachers, and this is natural.
Studying in European schools, students develop their social skills, becoming more self-confident. These skills have nothing to do with intelligence, the ability to quote Shakespeare in the original, or mentally multiply three-digit numbers. But the child's ability to clearly formulate thoughts, offer alternatives and respect someone else's point of view will make him successful in all areas of life.
