TEACHING SELF AWARENESS FOR KIDS IN SPECIAL EDUCATION

SEL {Social and Emotional Learning} has always been important, but perhaps now, more than ever! Taking care of our kiddos social and emotional health is finally starting to get the attention it deserves. This is self awareness for kids in special education is so important. 

What Is SEL?

SEL refers to learning how to manage and understand our emotions. It helps us to develop the necessary social skills to maintain positive feelings and positive relationships.

SEL has 5 main skill areas, as outlined by CASEL {The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning}:

1. Self Awareness

2. Self Management

3. Social Awareness

4. Relationship Skills

5. Decision Making

These 5 skill areas are critical for all children to learn as they are moving through school {and life}, but for kiddos with special needs, it can be very challenging.

Each skill area has many splinter skills embedded in each one.

Special education ...

Due to the coronavirus, many schools have gone remote.  While teachers have put a tremendous amount of effort into making the transition from school, to school from home, as easy as possible…the fact is, it’s hard!

 According to Education Week, school closures due to coronavirus have impacted over 124,000 U.S. schools and at least 55.1 million students. States have closed schools into late April or May, or even closed down for the remainder of the school year!

Parents, educators, and students have had to make the move to online or Distance Learning. This mode of teaching and learning is unfamiliar to most of us.  We are all doing our very best to figure it all out, and quickly.

As an elementary school teacher, I am seeing a lot of students {and parents} doing okay with school from home, but many too, are really struggling.  Especially our kiddos with special needs.

Challenges like technology {access and knowledge}, working parents, siblings, space, and stress, have made it ver...

Remotely Teaching social skills can be an interesting challenge.  I have spent many years avoiding the use of technology in my social skills sessions.  I felt my kiddos got plenty of screen time, and what they really needed was face to face interaction.

While I still believe this, we are currently in a situation where we simply must use technology to teach.  

So how do you teach a social skills group on a video conferencing platform like Zoom or Google Meet?

By playing games, of course!  

But saying it is one thing…actually doing it is another thing all together!

Our students are dealing with so much right now.  And on top of it all, they have to learn new technology and new appropriate behaviors to go with it.

I don’t know about you…but I have spent the first few weeks of remote teaching, remotely teaching my students how to behave appropriately on Zoom.  

Engaging in a group on a video conferencing platform, is quite different from engaging in a group in person.  

 ...

Most of us are Remote Teaching/Distance Learning these days.  Have you started?  It can be tricky.

First, you need to teach your students how to appropriately access the technology that you will using, e.g. Zoom, Google Meet, etc. Grab a freebie to help you teach your students appropriate video conferencing behaviors, HERE. 

Next, you need to have things to do that are easy and fun!

Many of our kiddos are easily distracted and have challenges focusing on peers, in person.  Socializing online, can be even more tricky.

We need to have fun activities to keep our students engaged.  They need to be fairly short in length {under 20 minutes} and they need to be super easy for both teacher and student to access, i.e. low prep. and few materials needed.

Why?

Well… certainly we all come to this situation with a different skill set, but many of us are not technology experts and on top of that, we may be feeling the stress of everything that is going on with COVID-19, both from the persona...

Teaching Remotely?  Sure, I can do this…

Then as it came near… I started to panic.  It’s not as easy as it sounds…remote teaching.  And it comes with a whole new set of stressors.  But special educators are some of the most resourceful people I know!  

We WILL figure this out!

Before You Start

If you haven't started remote teaching yet {or even if you have}, my top recommendation for preparing yourself is to practice some self-care.

Why?

Because like our students, we need to practice a new skill so that it is more easily accessed during times of stress….because there will be stress, there will be mistakes, and at times, it will be messy.

Beating yourself up about it, wont help.

If self-care is not something you are particularly good at doing…here are some ideas.

Things you can do for yourself:

• Make a list of self affirmations that are meaningful to you and have them handy.  Practice saying them.
• Put a meaningful quote or two in an area where you can easily see it.
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Many students with special needs struggle to engage in conversations and lack effective communication skills. Why? Well, there could be many reasons related to each child’s specific set of challenges and abilities. But the biggest reason, in my mind, is the number of skills needed, to successfully engage in a conversation.

There are literally dozens of skills needed. On top of that, these skills change based on the type of conversation, the number of different people involved, etc.

Oy! 

Is it any wonder that our kiddos lack good communication skills!

An important skill I spend a lot of time on with my students is, Responding To Others which is one of the essential conversational skills I teach.. After all, responding, is what makes a conversation a conversation. Without the back and forth exchange, you have a lecture or a dialogue, not a productive conversation.

But how many times have you watched a group of your students talking… active listening is not taking place wit...

HOW TO TEACH STUDENTS TO ASK QUESTIONS

Have you ever watched a group of your special education students having a “conversation?” It can be very awkward social interaction, to say the least. 

To be fair, I see similar behaviors and lack of social awareness when watching regular education students too. The students are talking…but are they having a true conversation?

A conversation is defined as a back and forth verbal exchange between two or more individuals. Of course there is sooooooo much more to pragmatic language skills. 

Based on my personal experiences, when I watch my students{who haven’t used my strategies for social pragmatics) engaging in a conversation… what I typically see when taking a closer look is one child talking, then another child talking, then another…usually overlapping each other, rarely on the same topic, and sometimes with little to no regard for each other.

One of the skills my students and I work on the most is responding to others in social settings....

Engaging in successful conversations is an important social skill that can be very challenging for our kiddos with special needs. 

Probably the biggest reason that basic and friendly conversations are challenging for children's development of communication skills, is because, like so many things, there are actually many language skills involved Conversation may be one word, but the skills involved in executing it, are numerous and complex. 

Conversations involve complex social skills such as, Perspective Taking and Self-Regulation, which are often difficult for students with special needs. 

Here are my Top 10 picks for the most important skills needed to be taught to special education students, to help them implement effective ways to engage in better conversations with their peers:

1. Physical Proximity

How many times have you seen your students talking to someone as they are walking away or as the other person is walking away, talking to someone who is too far away ...

Learning how to teach conversation skills is crucial. Many young children who are typically developing find engaging in conversations to be quite easy. They have picked up on the necessary skills naturally and with informal practice over time and in their day-to-day interactions with others.

But for our kiddos with special needs, finding a more explicit approach is a good idea. Some of the best ways of teaching conversational skills often breaking down into small, manageable steps. Each of those steps may need to be explicitly taught, practiced, re-taught practiced in multiple environments, and so on.

Before we talk about how to teach conversation skills, let’s talk about why conversation skills are one of the most important skills to teach.

Our students need to be able to engage appropriately in conversations, to have successful social interactions. However, this is not a quick and easy skill to teach, as there are many variables to consider.

Within the context of social inte...