The Socially Skilled Kids Blog

We all know how important it is to teach and support social pragmatic skills. Year after year I see more and more children struggling to engage in even very basic social interactions and social situations throughout the school day. This post provides 5 basic social skills activities you can use with your students.

It’s important to teach social pragmatic skills, explicitly in many cases, to our students. From kindergarten, all the way through elementary school…and in some cases, beyond.

Here are the 5 basic social skills that I like to teach in the kindergarten classrooms that promote strong social skills: 

Sharing

Cooperating

Taking Turns

Using Kind Language

Respecting Personal Space

Below are some great social skills activities, tools, and ideas for how to teach these important social pragmatics in your day-to-day teaching and lesson plans. I hope you find some helpful ideas that you can quickly and easily add throughout the school...

Do you have students who get really upset when they make even the smallest mistake? 

Do you have students who try so hard to avoid making mistakes that they get incredibly anxious and preoccupied with doing something “right?”

Do you have students who struggle to understand (or admit) when they have made a mistake that requires an apology?

I do.

I have students who will rip their papers if they don’t like the way something looks. They will work really hard on something and then, out of (what seems like) nowhere, rip it up and throw it across the room. 

It’s heartbreaking.

I also have students who are so afraid to make a mistake that they sit quietly all day and will not start anything until the teacher gives them explicit instructions.  They ask the same questions over and over, checking, to make sure they are doing it “right.”

Ugh…

And yes, I also have students who refuse to admit when they make a...