As mentioned in the previous post A Clear Method for Teaching Social Skills on our blog, Social Skills Y charts are sent home to the Year 2 parents for discussion and reinforcement. By doing this, parents can use the same language and students see the importance of applying the learnt social skill across different settings. The feedback from parents has been positive and it has been very encouraging to see parents actively involved in the teaching and learning process by discussing with their children the focus social skill and looking for opportunities to reinforce it outside of the school environment.
Through notices in our school newsletter and posters around our school grounds, we have also been raising awareness about the social skills that we are focusing on as a school and have been encouraging the school community to take part in the The Ripple Effect Initiative by asking them to embrace the skills through role modelling. Another valuable feature of our newsletters is the regular links that we have been making to the articles written by parenting expert, Michael Grose, found at Parenting Ideas. This excellent blog offers advice to help parents (and educators) develop happiness, confidence and resilience in children. Our school also currently subscribes to a weekly newsletter from Parenting Ideas, which provides us with professional quality tips and strategies that we share with the school community via the newsletter.
This very blog aims to not only document our journey and disseminate information regarding student well-being, social skills and engagement, but also to involve parents and the wider community in the process. It is imperative that as a school community we remember to always think "social skills" and use every naturally occurring opportunity to teach and reinforce social skills. We look forward to continuing this journey and we are excited about what the future holds.
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