Social skills first grade
8 Important Social Skills For Kids And How To Teach Them
Teaching social skills for kids is one of the most complex, confusing, but rewarding aspects of raising young children.
It’s no secret that preschoolers and kindergarteners are naturally egocentric. Even when playing or interacting with others, many children have difficulty sharing, empathizing, collaborating, and cooperating.
HOMER is here to help you learn eight of the most important social skills for kids, as well as how to incorporate them into your family life.
8 Important Social Skills For Kids
1) Sharing
Sharing is a part of daily life. That doesn’t mean it’s easy!
Sharing is a difficult concept for young children to get behind. Toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergarteners have a particularly difficult time, as they are more focused on their needs and desires than the needs and desires of others.
This is normal. The feeling that something “belongs” to them is typically much stronger than their desire to please others.
Even though it’s hard to share, doing so is critical to a child’s social skill development, as it helps them keep and advance friendships. It’s also a great way to bond and show appreciation.
2) Listening
Active listening is an important skill that even some adults struggle with. Properly deciphering and absorbing information requires significant focus.
We all know this can be challenging for young kids, but active listening can strengthen their receptive language skills (the ability to comprehend spoken language).
Receptive language skills help your child:
- Handle social interactions
- Answer questions
- Understand stories
- Comprehend what they’re reading
- Understand gestures
While developing their social skills, your child will come to see how important it is to actively listen when others are speaking.
Paying attention to what someone is saying and responding directly to their statements or questions is a big part of healthy communication.
3) Following Directions
The cousin of good listening skills would be executing the instructions your child heard — a.k.a., following directions!
Following directions becomes particularly important once your child enters into their school years.
It’s one thing to follow directions at home with their parents where they’re innately comfortable; it’s another task entirely to follow directions from adult authority figures they may not know well.
Your child will learn how listening and following directions overlap with one another. If they listen well, it becomes easier for them to follow directions accurately. And when they follow directions accurately, they’ll often be rewarded for their hard work!
Keep in mind, however, that multi-step directions are challenging for young children. To help them develop the ability to follow directions, give them one direction at a time.
4) Collaborating And Cooperating
Similar to sharing, your child will learn how to move beyond sharing objects to sharing ideas, stories, and work.
With good collaboration and cooperation skills, children will learn that working in a group gives them a chance to express their ideas and listen to the ideas of others. It allows them to see that it can be fun to work on a shared project!
This may sound simple, but for young children, cooperation can often require real effort. It will take time for them to learn to respect others’ opinions even when they’re different.
By working together toward a common goal, kids can advance their sharing skills to include both intellectual and physical (think: cleaning the dinner table with a sibling) feats.
5) Patience
How many times have you heard the cliche, “Patience is a virtue”? Well, we are here to say it one more time!
It’s normal for young children to be impatient. However, patience really is one of the most rewarding social skills for kids.
Patience is critical for many things, including maintaining friendships and relationships and achieving big goals that can only be completed over an extended period of time.
This is where the concept of delayed gratification comes into play. When you help your child understand that good things often take time (not everything in life is microwaveable!), you nurture them into a patient person.
Learning patience takes practice and, you guessed it, patience! Trust that it will come with time (as everything does).
6) Empathy
When we say “empathy,” we’re referring to the traditional definition — the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Your child will learn how to appreciate the similarities and differences between their lives and those of people they meet. They will also learn how to empathize with these people, no matter how different they are.
For young children, this can mean small gestures.
For example, if their friend or sibling cries because your child is playing with a specific toy, your child may pause and say, “I know you want to play, too. Don’t be sad. We can take turns!”
But this sense of empathy will likely not appear overnight! Empathy develops over time and across a variety of scenarios.
The easiest way to promote your child’s development of empathy is by showing it in action. When you extend grace to your child often, they will learn how to extend it back.
7) Respecting Boundaries
Some people require different emotional and physical boundaries than your child.
This can be a particularly difficult concept to learn, especially for very young children who receive most of their socialization from within the household.
Likely, if your child is extroverted, they may assume everyone is OK with hugs, questions, or lots of chit-chat. In some cases, they may be right! In others, they may accidentally cross boundaries in their efforts to be friendly.
Teaching your child how to ask permission and identify boundaries helps them establish a sense of respect between themselves and others. The same goes for helping them establish boundaries for themselves.
Let your child know that it’s OK to say no to hugs, kisses, or other displays of affection from someone — no matter who it may be — if they feel uncomfortable.
Model this idea by asking questions yourself (“Would you like a hug?”).
When they make their boundaries clear and ask for others to do the same, it will make both parties feel much more at-home.
8) Positivity
Working on positivity can make it exponentially easier for your child to tackle many of the other social skills for kids we’ve mentioned, especially patience, boundaries, listening, and sharing.
With a positive attitude, your child will find it easier to make and keep friends, succeed in school, and achieve their goals.
The easiest way to demonstrate positivity is by modeling it. The more positive you are about your child’s social skill development (including their inevitable slip-ups), the more reassured and positive they will become themselves.
This doesn’t mean you have to be positive all the time. In fact, a healthy amount of honest criticism can be beneficial in helping your child learn to express their feelings.
To do this, start with your own emotions.
Let them know how you’re feeling and how you’re managing it in real time if you can. Kids need to know it’s OK to be sad, angry, or mad sometimes and how to handle it.
How To Teach Social Skills To Kids
Now that you know what social skills for kids to include, how do you go about teaching them at home? Let’s take a look!
Normalize Mistakes
Your child should know that you do not expect perfection. There is no way to execute all of these social skills every time, everywhere, without mistakes.
That is OK! In fact, it’s encouraged. Mistakes are normal; they’re how we learn what went right or wrong.
Make sure you normalize this for your child. If they know all humans learn lessons this way, it’ll be easier for them to push through the sting of a mistake and try again.
Encourage Sharing (Without Violating Boundaries!)
Although sharing is great and should be encouraged, there may be some things that are special to your child that they don’t want to share.
This can be especially true of stuffed animals, blankets, or special toys.
This is OK, too! It’s great for your child to set boundaries that you and other children respect. To encourage sharing, try not to force it.
Encouraging without forcing also demonstrates to kids how boundaries can be created, acknowledged, and respected between people.
This will motivate them to share with those around them by taking comfort in the fact that what is special to them has been kept sacred and separate. It will also encourage them to be direct about their and others’ boundaries when it comes to play, school, or emotional issues.
Check Their Listening
During social interactions within your own family or outside of it, pay attention to your child’s listening skills. You can observe them to see if they are listening carefully.
Do they seem engaged? Are the asking questions?
And remember it is just as important to listen to your child. This shows them that what they are saying is important and encourages them to listen to you in return.
Think About How You Give Directions
In teaching social skills for kids, the parent or authority figure is responsible for ensuring the directions they give are something a young child can execute successfully.
When giving instructions, be clear, firm, and gentle. As we mentioned earlier, children have a very difficult time executing tasks with many directions at once. Start with one direction at a time that your child can focus on.
When giving instructions, have your child repeat what you want them to do. Only give an additional instruction when the first has been completed. Repeat until the task is complete.
Your child can give you directions, too! That way they have a sense of what it takes to delegate, manage, and execute a task from start to finish.
Give Empathy To Get Empathy
Show your child that you think about other people’s emotions, too! This is less of a teaching moment and more of an authentic display of empathy.
If you see that your child is expressing an emotion, validate it for them.
“Oh, I see that you’re excited. I love that you’re so eager and happy to do this!”
You can acknowledge negative emotions, too. For example, you might say, “I know that must make you angry. Do you know how I can tell? What can we do together to make you feel less unhappy?”
This not only helps them feel seen and heard in the moment, but it also gives them a direct example of how to tackle empathy with others in similar situations.
Social Skills For Kids Are Essential
The more your child experiences the benefits of social skills, the more intuitive these skills will become for them. However, all children learn at different rates. With practice (and patience!), we know they’ll get there.
The Learn with Sesame Street app is an effective tool that helps kids learn and develop their social and emotional skills. With the help of their Sesame Street friends, kids learn how to express their emotions, empathize with others, and create healthy relationships. Explore the Learn with Sesame Street app today!
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Social Skills Grade by Grade
Step into any classroom, and along with the usual math tables and word lists, you’ll probably see other signs hanging front and center.
You know, the ones that say, Be kind! or Be brave! These rules aren’t just there to keep the peace. They underscore what teachers know, yet most parents never think about: Strong social skills are as key to school success as academic ones. In fact, sometimes they’re even more important, says child development expert Michele Borba, Ed.D.
Being able to delay gratification, for instance, is one of the biggest predictors of success. “Research shows that kindergartners who can wait will do better in school three years later than those who came in knowing their letters,” says Borba. Pretty impressive. Here’s what teachers are looking for most at each grade — and how you can build that know-how at home.
Pre-K Skills:
Sharing
“Give-and-take is the first moral skill kids learn, and it’s hard to go forward without it,” says Borba.
How to teach it
Take turns talking about what you did that day over dinner and play lots of board games together; these are two of the easiest ways for him to practice waiting.
Borba also suggests helping your child come up with fair rules — he gets five minutes on the swing set, then his friend gets five. It will teach him how to problem-solve as well as share.
Being Polite
“A kid with manners is a likeable kid — and you can’t underestimate likeability,” says Borba. “When a child feels accepted, he can concentrate on his school work rather than worry about who’ll play with him.”
How to teach it
Remember your manners. Sounds obvious, but the more he hears “please” and “thank you,” the sooner the soundtrack will become laid down in his head. Also, gently remind your kid when he forgets (and he will) and don’t be afraid to shower praise when he remembers without prompting.
Self-Control
Your kid may be used to relying on you to help calm him down. But now he has to start using his words and working through his emotions by himself (with a little help from the teacher).
How to teach it
Pinpointing your child’s feelings (especially mad and sad) helps him recognize the emotions — and once that clicks, he can begin to control them when they bubble up.
Resist the urge to fix the situation. Instead, encourage him to think of a way to cope with his emotions. One to try: “Take a deep breath and blow the angries away.”
PLUS: AN EASY WAY TO TEACH SELF-CONTROL
Kindergarten & 1st Grade Skills:
Patience
In the classroom, being patient means waiting your turn and paying attention without fidgeting — no easy feat for the average wiggly kid. “A child who gives her full attention is going to hear and learn so much more from her teacher and classmates,” says Ashley Button, a kindergarten teacher in Atherton, CA.
How to teach it
Give your child lots of opportunities to entertain herself without your help. The next time she wants your attention when you’re busy doing something else, say you’ll be there in a few minutes and have her sing a tune or draw a picture to pass the time. Reading is also a great way to improve kids’ concentration. “As your child gets better at being patient, stretch out the amount of time she has to wait for you, or choose a slightly longer book to keep improving her focus,” says Borba.
Assertiveness
Kids need to speak up for themselves by making eye contact and using “I” messages (“I felt sad when you cut me in line”). “I practice with my class, so kids learn to go to an adult only when they can’t work it out on their own,” says Julia Seligman, a firstgrade teacher in Essex, VT. Assertive kids excel because they aren’t afraid to ask questions.
How to teach it
Practice “I” messages, like saying “I feel frustrated when you leave your backpack in the middle of the hallway” or, in your kid’s case, “I don’t like it when you nag me to make my bed.” They not only help your child become more assertive, they beef up her body language, so she’s less likely to be bullied.
Resilience
“Many kids need to be taught it’s OK to make a mistake. It’s how we learn,” says Seligman. “When the classroom feels safe, kids let go of ‘What if I get it wrong?’ and take chances.” Gaining this skill now — when mistakes are small — pays off in a few years when, say, he’s called on to do a wicked calc problem.
How to teach it
When you mess up, point it out to your child, says Seligman. Then talk about what you learned for next time. “And compliment your child when he takes a chance — whether it pans out or not,” says Button.
PLUS: HOW TO RAISE A KID WITH GRIT
2nd & 3rd Grade Skills:
Open-Mindedness
“Kids like working in a group with classmates who ask ‘What do you think?’ and make them feel good,” says Borba. Learning the knack of respecting other opinions while giving your own boosts likeability and problem-solving skills.
How to teach it
Show your child how to see both sides, says Carrie Conover, a teacher in Chicago. If your kid is in an animal project group, explain how he could respectfully disagree: “I think bats are awesome! But I think it would be better to study squirrels because there are so many different kinds.” And seize chances to model compromise: He wants McDonald’s; you, the bistro? Find a place where he can get a burger and you, sweet-potato fries.
Responsibility
With more schoolwork and activities, your kid has to step up responsibility and organization. After all, it’s much easier for him to hit the books when he’s not searching for his pencil.
How to teach it
Maybe you were inclined to do things for your kiddo when he was younger. Now it’s time to impose routines so he can start managing his own stuff (with reminders). At night, for instance, he can make sure his backpack is ready at the door and his clothes are laid out. In the morning, he can put his dishes in the sink after breakfast.
Self-Reliance
“Kids don’t want to snitch, so they’re less likely to involve adults in squabbles now,” says Conover. They need to know how to express their real feelings to friends so that they can solve their own spats.
How to teach it
Instead of calling the other parent when your child has an argument with a pal, talk through solutions and urge your child to take it from there.
Knowing that he can (mostly) solve his own problems — whether social or academic — will give him another big boost in resiliency.
4th & 5th Grade Skills:
Accountability
Juggling daily assignments with long-term projects is a lot to keep track of. He needs to learn the consequences of forgetting or misplacing.
How to teach it
If you constantly schlep his homework to school whenever he forgets it, he’ll never learn to own up to his actions. Be up front about your expectations and the consequences if your tween doesn’t follow through, suggests Conover. Give your kid a couple of reminders, if necessary, but then let him take over. And if he loses his permission slip, tough luck. “That one fail will be a big and positive lesson for your child,” notes Borba.
Perspective
Along with the responsibility comes anxiety — and the sooner your child learns how to weather it, the better. A relaxed kid, unlike a stressed one, turns into a little academic sponge.
How to teach it
Help your kid pinpoint what wigs her out most: Is it tests or shake-ups to her daily routine? Then brainstorm stress-busters, says Conover, from listening to tunes to going on a bike ride. Come up with a little mantra she can mentally repeat (“It’s okay. I can handle this!”) to manage in-the-moment jitters.
Confidence with Mean Kids
Bullies want a reaction, so your child needs to know how to keep her cool and stand strong.
How to teach it
Arm her with a short but sweet comeback line. She has to say it like she means it, so do some dry runs at home. Strong words paired with equally strong body language is enough to defuse most bullying situations, say experts. And not being afraid to stand up for herself is a real-world skill that every child needs — now and later.
PLUS: HOW TO BUILD HEALTHY SELF-ESTEEM IN CHILDREN
Photo Credit: © David Woolley/Getty Images
Social-emotional skills in school.
Part 1. As part of the project “University Environment for Teachers” of the Moscow City Department of Education, a program of several lectures was presented at the HSE Institute of Education, the participants of which were members of the Educational Spaces Design Studio. This article will focus on lecture “Forms of work in the classroom that contribute to the development of social and emotional skills of students” , author — Tatyana Kanonir , Associate Professor, PhD, co-director of the master's program “Measurements in Psychology and Education”.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the importance of developing social-emotional skills. The educational standards of basic and primary schools in Russia require the formation of students, along with subject educational results, meta-subject and personal educational results. It is under personal educational results that social-emotional skills are hidden.
Social Emotional Skills (SES) are skills that enable people to recognize and manage their emotions, successfully manage conflicts, understand and empathize with others, establish and maintain positive relationships, follow ethics, contribute constructively to their reference communities, set and achieve goals.
Different terms are used to refer to these “non-cognitive” skills: Soft Skills or “soft skills”, skills of the XXI century, emotional intelligence ... All of these concepts differ from each other in breadth of coverage and context of use, but have similar features: conceptual independence on cognition, total value for social adaptation, relative stability over time, potential change as a result of exposure , situational manifestation.
In this article we will focus on 2 social-emotional skills
- Achieving goals : working towards achieving short- and long-term goals, including in changing conditions:
- stability (ability to maintain stable work for a significant time),
- self-control (the ability to control one's state in the process of performing a task),
- striving for a goal (awareness of the need to achieve the goal - independent or set by the teacher).
- Collaboration with other people
- sociability (ability to establish and maintain social contacts),
- respect (tact and respect for peers and adults, including those from other cultures),
- caring (disinterested assistance to the interaction partner).
Exercises to help teachers develop these social-emotional skills in students
1. Formation of the skill of achieving goals
Exercise : mutual assistance in achieving individual goals (conducted in small groups)
- The teacher begins the lesson by telling the children about the difficulties people often face in achieving their own goals and suggests the most general strategies for overcoming these obstacles, writing the main points on the board. For example, it could be a list like this:
- frustration (depending on the audience, a more understandable term may be used, such as depression) that the goal is too difficult.
Possible strategies: relaxation, distraction, break from work. - boredom . Possible strategies: set a shorter-term goal, give yourself a reward (such as a break or ice cream). too lazy to do the task. Possible strategies are: assign yourself a reward, think about how you will feel when you complete the task, or that if you do not study, you will let the whole group down.
- anxiety due to fear of failure . Possible strategies: remember situations in which everything worked out, relaxation techniques.
- frustration (depending on the audience, a more understandable term may be used, such as depression) that the goal is too difficult.
- Then the teacher formulates in writing an individual educational (or near-academic) goal for each of the children (it is better to do this work in advance) and divides them into groups.
- Children sit in a circle, each voices his goal and names the possible obstacles to achieving it. The rest of the group suggests possible solutions based on the information on the board or their own experience, and also try to suggest one action that they personally could help another child (for example, “I can call you on Friday and remind you that in you have to do the weekend…”, “I can call and find out how you are doing…”, “I can explain to you the material that you don’t understand…”, etc.
). - In the next week, students discuss in groups their progress towards their goals, how they felt when they were helped by classmates, what kind of help was most useful.
Expected results : children learn to anticipate barriers to achieving a goal and think in advance about possible options for overcoming them, children learn to help others achieve their goals, ask for help and accept it.
2. Learning how to work with others
Exercise : learning together
projects - for example, to study material about a country, continent, scientist, physical phenomenon, etc.,
This exercise can have many variations, for example, “brain rings”, “debates” of representatives of different historical eras, etc.
According to the head of Educational Spaces Design Studio Rai Ivanovskaya, the task of forming and developing SES among students can definitely be solved with the help of designing the school space: forgot about the goals set (by the teacher or by themselves) - you can make a special stand in the class, on which they could write their goals, indicate the planned deadlines for achievement, indicate the expected obstacles and how they eventually coped with them. That is, this information is constantly “in sight” (the guys will not forget), and is also a demonstration of their success. In the event that someone does not cope with the task on their own, this is also visible and the teacher can “hint” to the students that their help and support is required (and this is already a manifestation of caring - that is, the skill of working together).
The stand itself must be visually attractive in design (with motivating phrases, for example), made of modern materials (marker film, cork, etc.) - so that children would be “pleasant” and interested in interacting with it.
Educational space design studio: we turn boring school interiors into bright and beautiful ones! View our work in the PORTFOLIO section.
By the way
Many currently existing SES assessment tools have disadvantages: they are based on purely local experience, data on the psychometric quality of methods are not published, there are practically no references to international experience, experience is often designed for individual assessment and is not scaled, and the result of assessment depends on the skills of the teacher and his attitude towards a particular student. However, if we do not have SES assessment tools, then we cannot draw conclusions about their development, can we?
The HSE Education Quality Monitoring Center, together with the Sberbank Charitable Foundation “Investment in the Future”, conducted a large-scale study of social and emotional skills in primary and secondary schools, based on an international research framework, associated with the Federal State Educational Standards for Primary and Basic Education, which resulted in developed monitoring evaluation tools.
It is important that the school as a whole (that is, different teachers) have a unified system of work on the socio-emotional development of children, as well as coordinated work within the teaching team, which is organized systematically and purposefully.
Target audience of SES development methods:
- whole class or whole school,
- risk group or children with a specific problem area (e.g. very shy),
- individual students experiencing severe stress, having situational problems or going through a period of crisis (for example, in the course of adapting to a new school team when moving from one school to another).
When reprinting a link to the website of the Educational Spaces Design Studio (www.design4school.ru) is required.
Social Skills and Learning Success - Child Development
When a child enters Kindergarten or Kindergarten, parents expect the child to learn to read and write. But before focusing on acquiring academic knowledge, there are many other skills that he needs to master.
Research shows that the most important skills to teach children at this age are social skills: cooperation, self-control, confidence, independence, curiosity, empathy, and communication.
In the first months of the school year, educators have the most difficulties with children who have behavioral problems and insufficiently developed attention. In fact, everything is simple: if a child does not know how to keep a queue, listen and sit quietly in a group, how can he learn the educational material? That is why at the beginning of the year so much time is devoted to learning and developing the basic social skills of babies.
Fortunately, the previous experience of social interaction, both at home and in the younger groups of the kindergarten, helps the child to adapt to the changes that have occurred with the team after the summer vacation period. As soon as the kid has mastered the basic skills of social interaction and behavior in a group at a sufficient level, he will be ready to focus on the educational material.
That is, a child will be able to gain more knowledge if the approach to the development of his social, emotional and cognitive (academic) skills is maximally balanced by his parents and teachers of preschool education.
Recent brain development research has shown that a child's ability to interact with other children, control and express their feelings, and solve basic problems independently is just as important to academic success as academic skills. The pathways in the brain necessary for successful learning are developed through positive interaction with other people! Caregivers use this data to help children build relationships with each other, share and care, listen and speak in groups, and feel confident to take on new challenges.
Early Basic Skills
Here are some examples of what good teachers set at the beginning of the school year in senior or pre-school. Parents can adapt them in their family and help the child develop in this direction, being in the comfortable conditions of their own family and at home.
- Self-confidence and self-esteem: is one of the first skills that caregivers focus on developing. It is important to instill in the child a positive feeling about himself - himself as a person and a participant in social interactions. This is a skill that will not lose its value throughout the child's life and will help him feel capable and skillful both now and in future studies.
- Collaboration: games, stories and songs help a child learn to work with other children - not an easy task at this age! Collaboration for a baby is the ability to empathize and get along with other people.
- Curiosity: Perhaps one of the most important skills a child needs to develop at this stage is a thirst for learning. The caregiver can use a wide range of interesting materials and ideas to engage your child's natural curiosity. Recent studies show that new or unusual activities and materials (compared to already familiar ones) engage the brain more, forcing it to pay close attention to the information offered.
- Communication: Expressing yourself and your thoughts, feelings and knowledge about the world is one of your child's key skills. It underlies all reading, writing, math, and science skills. If a child can confidently express his thought or opinion, he becomes more open to learning and developing thinking.
How Parents Can Help Develop These Skills
Help your child develop critical social and emotional skills by connecting with kindergarten friends in your own home. Ask the kid who he would like to invite to visit to play. It is often easier for children to build friendships in their own one-on-one space than in a kindergarten. Many educators find that a child who finds it difficult to make friends or interact in a large group is more likely to forge a close bond with a new friend at home. These relationships can then be transferred to the conditions of the kindergarten. Once the child has established a bond with one classmate, it will be easier for him to establish friendships with other children.
