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School is a natural environment for children to make friends. Many children have a natural social instinct, though some do not. Putting several kids together and giving them activities in common creates an environment for children to develop friendships naturally at school. However, children won’t only make friends at school. After-school activities and sports, church, and other environments that encourage teamwork and socialization are also places where children will build their social circles.
Educators can help children improve their friendship-building skills. Providing strong social skills to all children in the classroom helps the whole classroom by leveling the playing field for both the socially awkward children and the socially outgoing children. Teaching children how to make friends at school and providing effective conversation starters will prepare them for one of the most useful and most frequently important experiences: connecting with people.
As for homeschooled children, it might not be as easy to teach children how to make friends while at home unless in a co-op. However, homeschooled children will still be able to learn how to make friends through learning social skills taught by the parent or third-party educator. Learning effective conversation starters, and strong social skills, in general, will prepare homeschooled children for successful and rewarding social lives as well.
How to Make Friends at School
According to WebMD, “Healthy friendships are also linked to better cardiovascular health, lower blood pressure, less depression, and a longer life. So it never hurts to try to make new friends.” (WebMD)
It’s a comfort to know that there are health benefits for friendships. However, children don’t need to know that there are health benefits to recognize that making friends is a good idea.
The job of educators is to create environments where children have equal opportunities to make friends, regardless of whether children are shy or outgoing.
Skills to teach children how to make friends include:
Saying yes to invitations
Taking initiative in social situations
Starting conversations (Sharing something about themselves is a good way to start.)
Showing interest in what other people are saying
Smiling and making eye contact
Share details about themself
Practicing small acts of kindness
Demonstrating persistent interest
Social skills aren’t necessarily obvious to some children. In fact, some children might find the prospect of trying to make friends both frustrating and intimidating. Even outgoing children might not have any natural instincts for how to pursue a rewarding relationship. Designing classroom activities that encourage the social skills listed above will help children start pursuing rewarding friendships.
While children learn what skills help them make friends, some children will also benefit from learning a few things not to do in a conversation to foster stronger friendships.
For instance:
Act with honesty.
Avoid bragging. While educators should try to show children they can be proud of their accomplishments, there should be some distinction made between talking about things they’re proud of themselves for and bragging about them.
Limit aggressive conversation tactics. Children might need to learn not to be too forceful with new acquaintances. They may also need to be introduced to spacial boundaries.
Learn patience. Children might need to learn that friendships can take a long time and need to be nurtured.
Another important and not necessarily intuitive skill that children need to learn about making friends is recognizing when they have successfully made a friend.
For instance:
Another child takes the initiative in the relationship
When it feels comfortable to be around a person and talk to them
When it becomes natural to share feelings with the person
The skills involved in learning how to make friends might not seem like teachable skills. However, nothing could be further from the truth. There are objective and clear indicators related to making friends, and anything objective and clear can be taught.
Conversation Starters
A fairly straightforward skill educators can create activities around is conversation starters. It’s a mystery to some children how to initiate a conversation. It may be an effective use of classroom time to design an activity where children come up with conversation starters.
For example:
What animal would you like to be and why?
What’s the longest walk you’ve ever taken?
What would you do if you didn’t have a TV?
If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
What’s your favorite story?
What’s your favorite song and why do you like it?
If you had a superpower what would it be?
Implementing this activity in the classroom allows children to think of things they would like to use in conversations without the pressure of performing on the spot.
A follow-up activity to this is roleplaying these conversation starters with other kids in the classroom. Roleplay provides the opportunity of helping children practice starting a conversation and thinking about what happens after the conversation continues.
Conversation skills are just as important as any other life skill. Activities that foster learning opportunities for children to learn how to make friends will prepare children for success in life.
For an online program on social emotional learning that includes social engagement exercises, view Tools From The Heart.
Teaching is a challenging job. Creating an environment where children can develop comes with a range of obstacles.
As educators, the best-case scenario is to recruit the children, in the long run, to help in their own education. Where it is appropriate, it’s not only valuable to help children take ownership of their own education, it is a mark of successful education.
Self-soothing is a particularly important area to give children tools to take care of themselves. Teachers and parents won’t be present every time a child feels worried or anxious. In the long run, it would not be helpful to a child’s development if they came to rely on the adults in their lives to fix their problems. To ensure balance in development, it’s essential for children to learn how to self-soothe.
Teaching Children How To Self-Soothe
What is Self Soothing?
People instinctively try to soothe their own stress. In children, this instinct to self-soothe can often look like fidgeting. Thumb-sucking, biting fingernails, and sucking on clothes, are all examples of potential self-soothing habits that children sometimes use to help them cope with stressful situations. Children might develop many other habits and behaviors to self-soothe as they grow. As a result, their instinctive behaviors might evolve or change.
Self-soothing can take many forms. Not all of them are clear and external, and not all of them are healthy or helpful. In fact, some children have trouble developing mechanisms for soothing their own stressful emotions. As children age, it becomes more important to teach children how to self-soothe, since some of the behaviors that small children use to self-soothe grow less socially appropriate.
In cases where children have developed potentially unhelpful self-soothing methods, or in situations where they have trouble developing self-soothing strategies of any kind, it might be prudent to teach better self-soothing techniques.
How to Teach an Older Child to Self-Soothe
Because coping with stress is the goal of self-soothing, children might instinctively resist learning new or different self-soothing strategies. An attempt to teach alternative self-soothing habits might look to children like taking away their coping mechanisms. As a result, educators must approach teaching new techniques with delicacy.
At the same time, it can be important to help children learn better self-soothing strategies as they grow. Stressors increase as children age. The self-soothing techniques that may have come instinctively to children may grow insufficient as they age.
The self-soothing techniques might also contribute to the stress and anxiety of the child if the technique attracts ridicule from other children. This might end up sabotaging their technique because a child might grow self-conscious about their instinctive technique, try not to use it, and then grow more and more agitated. Therefore, they need to replace the self-soothing technique with another soothing strategy.
When deciding how to teach an older child to self-soothe, there are two stages an educator should go through.
The first stage of teaching a new strategy for self-soothing is identifying any self-soothing techniques a child might already have a habit of using to cope with stress. For example:
Biting nails
Thumb sucking
Picking at cuticles
Sucking on clothing
General fidgeting
This is far from an exhaustive list. Educators and parents need to get to know their children’s habits. Once they do, it will become possible to identify which behaviors manifest to cope with stress. Identifying the self-soothing habits adopted by children will also mean gaining an idea of what causes them stress and gives them a need to use self-soothing strategies.
After working with the child to learn more about their self-soothing habits, then it’s possible to help them learn other self-soothing techniques. Some self-soothing techniques that might be useful to suggest include:
Changing their environment or something about their environment
Doing some stretches
Imagining soothing imagery
Focused breathing or counting breaths
Butterfly hugs–or the practice of gently patting themself on the chest with their hands crossed and telling themself they are safe
These self-soothing techniques are valuable tools to add to an educator’s or parent’s toolbox. There are a lot of legitimate and valuable self-soothing techniques out there. When deciding how to teach an older child to self-soothe, there are several options. Teaching these techniques prepares them for strong childhood development and long-term success in life.
Educators might assume that their classrooms feel safe to all their students. However, creating an inclusive classroom requires active work and a plan.
Creating An Inclusive Classroom
The process of creating an inclusive classroom may come intuitively to some educators, while some features might be surprising. Actively creating an inclusive classroom requires educators and students alike to learn more about what’s going on in the lives of other people in order to more effectively create an inviting and inclusive classroom environment for children of all backgrounds.
To start, here are a few inclusive classroom examples to get educators thinking about nurturing a more inclusive classroom setting.
Inclusive Classroom Examples
Creating an inclusive classroom includes many different aspects of education. Active pursuit of fair-minded and empathy-driven educational practices requires a holistic approach to education and development. While in essence, inclusive education is as simple as being fair to everyone, like so many simple ideas it isn’t easy to implement.
So what does an inclusive classroom look like? According to Harvard University, educators have to, “Learn high-leverage Instructional Moves to make your classroom discussions more inclusive, student-centered, and purposeful.” (Harvard)
Here are some inclusive classroom examples to guide educators in their educational strategy (Harvard):
Active learning: It might sound only obliquely related, but the pursuit of active learning strategies and incorporating active learning techniques into curricula will promote an inclusive learning environment. This is because active learning promotes complex thought processes and active attempts to understand other perspectives and ways of thinking.
Growth mindset: The inability to accept alternative lifestyles tends to stem from a habit of seeing the world as restrictive and very much set in its ways. Promoting a growth mindset in the classroom enables students to see value in attempting to understand alternative perspectives.
Get to know your students: Not every fix will work the same for every student. An educator can create a curriculum designed to promote inclusiveness, and with the very best of intentions, they might neglect the tools necessary for some group that they themselves might never have encountered, for instance. It’s essential for educators to get to know their students and make adjustments to their inclusive classroom activities.
Build opportunities for work outside the classroom: The essential purpose of a classroom is to prepare students to succeed in life. However, there are other opportunities to grow ideas. Seek opportunities outside of the classroom to give students the chance to see how ideas work in the wild.
Group expectations and guidelines: In order to make the environment safe for all students, it’s important to communicate to all students why it’s important to create an inclusive learning environment for everyone.
Educators may have to ask, “What does an inclusive classroom look like?” The answer will vary from one classroom to the next. In principle, however, the characteristics of an inclusive classroom will include the opportunities for students to learn empathy and the tools for understanding different perspectives.
Inclusive Classroom Activities
An inclusive classroom often looks like a thoughtful classroom. The characteristics of an inclusive classroom create a sense that all perspectives, and therefore all students, are embraced and valued. There has to be a sense of belonging achieved through an active pursuit of learning the values and perspectives of all students.
In the pursuit of this strategy of active learning to create an inclusive learning environment, here are a few activities to get educators started (LSA):
Core Values Exercise
Students may have never expressed their values before. While they might not need to define their values to the precision that some adults decide to define theirs, creating a sense of inclusiveness in the classroom might be easier if students have the opportunity to express what they value. This can help them recognize that some people share their values, and some people don’t. The goals of this activity include:
Helping students determine their own values
Helping students appreciate diversity in values
Prompt discussion among students about values
How to do it:
Moderated in-class discussion
Dialogue Blocker Exercise
Classrooms are microcosms of the greater community, and community runs on effective communication. Sometimes listening and empathically responding during conversations is excluded. This exercise is meant to create a scenario where students can learn to recognize dialogue blockers, or communication strategies getting in the way of effective communication. In recognizing them, students are better able to avoid them. The goals of this activity include:
Helping students recognize dialogue blockers
Encourage students toward more introspection during conversation
How to do it:
Find an example from a book or show where a conversation was ineffective and left its participants dissatisfied with the results.
Through moderated discussion, lead students through the poor communication displayed and talk about possible improvements.
Name Story Exercise
This inclusive classroom activity is designed to help students see each other and appreciate each other. At the same time, it gives every student the opportunity to feel like they have something inherently valuable about themselves that they can share with the class. The goals of this activity include:
Building community
Promoting a sense of diversity in the classroom
How to do it:
Give every student a chance to tell everyone their first, middle, and last names.
At the same time, every student has an opportunity to tell any story about their name that they know or like.
Since every classroom and every set of students presents different needs and challenges, it may be necessary to design exercises more specific to a given classroom or set of students. Everyone comes from different backgrounds, and in order to prepare students for success in life, educators need to create inclusive classrooms to help students feel safe and connected.
Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs and can help you learn how to create a safe space in the classroom or at home. Soul Shoppe encourages empathy and emotional awareness in children. Click here to get into contact with us.
Humans are naturally social creatures. Community helps with mental health. While we have a need for community, not everyone has the same abilities to connect with others. Educators are often responsible for sharing the best techniques on how to teach social skills to help create confidence. At Soul Shoppe, we specialize in helping educators and parents learn how to teach and model social skills and social-emotional learning techniques.
Strong social skills create a solid foundation for long-term success in life. A holistic teaching approach includes exercises, lessons, and learning opportunities for children.
How To Teach Social Skills
It’s good to review appropriate social skills with children frequently. As adults, it’s been a long time since we’ve learned appropriate social skills, and we might take for granted that social skills are obvious, when to a child they might not be.
As far as teachable skills go, social skills have an advantage in the classroom. Learning how to socialize in a diverse environment can help skills grow and they will get stronger with practice. Additionally, there are ways to practice them virtually.
How to Teach Social Skills to a Child in the Classroom
The method for deciding how to teach social skills to a student is similar to teaching other skills. It also has differences.
Teaching social skills to a child is the same as teaching other skills in that it requires demonstration, imitation, and repetition. After all, that’s how we teach math or reading skills.
Designing how to teach social skills is a different process in its particulars.
In order to do it well, an educator must follow the interests of the child. Children come from different backgrounds, and an educator must adjust and respond to this.
An educator must learn to ask the right questions, discovering what social skills the child needs to strengthen and which ones they already understand.
Roleplaying can be a powerful tool for an educator who teaches social skills to elementary school students. With demonstrations of example scenarios, children can practice social skills in controlled settings.
A more complicated, but essential, aspect of teaching social skills to a child includes teaching empathy. Asking questions like, “Can you imagine how that makes them feel?” will encourage this.
Children have not yet learned all the coping skills that they will eventually need, and social skills involve so many emotions that they will inevitably create strong emotions. Work within the limitations of the students involved. Practicing to the point of frustration can hinder results. (Harvard)
In the end, the most important aspect of teaching social skills is being a good role model. Children learn so much by watching that the most powerful teaching aid for any educator is their own behavior.
List of Social Skills to Teach
It’s important not to assume that social skills might come naturally to someone. No one knows the assumptions by which anyone else is raised, and it is the responsibility of educators to create a setting where children can learn the skills they need to prepare for a rewarding life.
When deciding how to teach social skills to students, begin with a list of subjects. Treat it like any other discipline. Here is a list of subjects to help you get started:
Sharing. For some children, sharing their thoughts and feelings doesn’t come naturally. Or, they might be nervous about sharing thoughts and feelings. Additionally, they might not know when it’s socially acceptable or appropriate. Encouraging sharing is like granting permission, which helps to foster this.
Listening. Children typically have the natural ability to absorb what’s going on around them. However, not all children have a natural instinct to quietly listen and pay attention to the people around them. You can use listening skills activities such as those outlined here, to help children develop these skills.
Following directions. Cooperating with community expectations is a large part of developing social skills. Children shouldn’t necessarily learn to follow instructions without thinking, but it’s valuable to learn how to cooperate with the goals of the group and recognize when an authority figure has a reasonable direction for their goals.
Collaborating and cooperating. Children must learn to collaborate and cooperate with their peers. This is a large aspect of creating strong social skills. It’s valuable for children to learn how to respect and participate in community activities. We provide some ideas for cooperative games for kidshere.
Patience. This is an important skill and can be particularly challenging to develop in a world of instant gratification. Many social situations require waiting calmly and graciously. Intentionally slowing some things down in the classroom and creating situations where children must wait will help them practice patience.
Empathy. Understanding how others may feel and the ability to consider these feelings is a pillar of social awareness. Teaching empathy can be incorporated through everyday interactions and through planned activities. We provide some ideas here.
Respecting boundaries. We don’t necessarily need to know why people have certain boundaries. However, it’s important children learn to respect the boundaries that people set.
Positivity. It’s amazing how powerful it can be to put a positive spin on realities and how much this can improve social interactions.
For some children, a few of these social skills will seem intuitive. When deciding how to teach social skills to a child, it’s important to recognize that not all social skills are intuitive, and yet all social skills should be learned and exercised. (Homer)
Teaching Social Skills Virtually
If unable to teach social skills in the classroom, or if an educator would like assistance teaching social skills, you can receive help with virtual social learning activities. Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs for children and educators that can be completed online. Soul Shoppe strategies encourage empathy and emotional awareness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings social skills to the forefront of the discussion. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
Education in general, but especially for children, rests on an assumption that new ideas will be explored–new thoughts will be thought. Some ideas cause discomfort, and some thoughts feel dangerous. When encountering new ideas or thinking new thoughts, children will worry sometimes whether what they think is somehow bad or wrong. Even if the thought isn’t wrong or bad, if it feels uncomfortable children are less likely to speak about them out loud or ask questions to better understand the new information. This new information might be an unsettling experience in life. Other experiences might include interactions with discrimination which makes environments feel unsafe.
For this reason, it’s essential to create a safe space in every classroom setting where children feel they’re allowed to ask any question without attracting negative reactions. In this article, we’ll explore what makes a safe space and how to create a safe space in the classroom.
How To Create A Safe Space
What is a Safe Space?
Safe space can refer to actual space, such as a classroom, or can even indicate a safe space ideologically. These can also be the same thing. Regardless, it’s important to create some clear and specific context where the boundaries clearly define where and when there will be no judgment.
There are different schools of thought around how to create a safe space, inside and outside the classroom. It’s vital that classrooms are safe spaces, and that they lend themselves to becoming safe spaces. Ideas are being tested already, and so some thinkers push a narrative of embracing a strategy of turning classrooms into “brave spaces.” In a brave space, educators tackle controversy with civility and moderate conversation to aid in ownership of intentions and their impact.
How to Create a Safe Space in the Classroom
Creating a safe space in the classroom starts with the teacher. An educator sets the tone of their classroom before students even set foot in there.
Since the crux of safe spaces stems from First-Amendment rights, it’s possible to begin with a conversation about the First Amendment. Every student–every person–has to understand the content and the implications of the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution. At the same time, it weighs on an educator to mediate productive dialogue, rather than permit a conversation that goes anywhere. While the goal is to create a classroom environment where students feel free to speak their minds, there are ways to be honest while showing respect.
Understanding how to speak both freely and respectfully is a necessary step in creating a safe space.
Educators might moderate this dialogue about First Amendment rights by…
Leading conversation on the subject of hurtful terms and what terms to use instead. If a child has never had an opportunity to learn that a given term may offend in some cases, then it is valuable to hear that in a safe environment.
Cultivate empathy. In the context of the classroom, conversations about understanding and empathizing with the perspectives of others turns into a skill. Skills have technical aspects, and they can be improved by practice and repetition. Discussions about what other people might think or feel helps create an environment of mutual respect.
Moderate conversations between peers when one of them has offended the other. Sometimes children haven’t learned the tools to communicate their feelings honestly and with empathy. Educators are in a position to use social situations as teaching opportunities.
Encourage students to speak up when they hear potentially damaging or derogatory speech. Children are more likely to speak up and honestly appraise what they hear if they’re not worried about possible negative consequences of speaking up. So, make it clear that nothing punitive happens when people do speak out about derogatory speech.
Create opportunities for open discussion, like “circle time” or otherwise age-appropriate contexts that enable a sense that this time is protected–i.e., a safe space.
Project Empty
Try our Project Empty Challenge and create a Peace Corner. Somewhere in your home or educational space, create a protected place with tools that promote calm. Tailor it to the needs of your students (and yourself). Any art, comfy cushions, or art supplies that promote a sense of calm can create a space that feels safe and welcoming.
Creating Safe Spaces
A classroom has to be a place free of fear, or at least somewhere that encourages bravery. If an educator wants to prepare their students to have rewarding lives, then it is essential to create a safe space where all students feel welcome, seen, and embraced. To do this means teaching techniques for respect and empathy and talking about some hard ideas. In the end, creating a safe space in the classroom empowers students for the rest of their lives.
Feelings can be complicated, and especially as a child, they can be difficult to navigate and express. It’s therefore important to help children find the words they need to vocalize their feelings.
When we talk about expressing feelings, a few clarifications are needed. Feelings and emotions are not the same. It’s tempting to use the words interchangeably, but it isn’t quite accurate to do so.
According to an article from Wake Forest University, feelings result from many different sensations, such as hunger or weariness. Feelings can come from emotions as well. Feelings are always conscious experiences, even if sometimes it’s unclear what’s causing them. (Wake)
Emotions are more complicated and unconscious. They are responses to layered experiences. According to the book, Discovering Psychology, they include “a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response.” (Very Well)
The first major step in discovering how to express your feelings in words is distinguishing whether the sensations are feelings or emotions.
How To Express Your Feelings in Words
Words to Describe Emotions and Feelings
In general, expressing emotions takes fewer words. At the same time, it requires courage. Children might find it difficult to voice the emotions they’re experiencing.
Help your child or students with vocabulary that enables communication of emotions.
The six basic emotions are:
Anger
Fear
Joy
Love
Sadness
Surprise
After a child identifies one of these emotions, then it becomes easier to start talking about feelings.
Feelings can come from emotions. For example:
Envy can be a feeling that comes from anger.
People feel panic as a result of fear.
Relief can be a feeling proceeding from joy.
Sometimes people feel longing because of the emotion of love.
Humiliation can be a feeling that comes from sadness.
Feelings and emotions can be complex. Panic might come from fear, but then it might lead to anger. Feelings of shame can sometimes stem from a moment that started as joyful.
Once an emotion or feeling has been identified, it’s easier to choose appropriate coping mechanisms.
Among the most effective tools for expressing feelings in healthy ways is the, “I feel…When people…I need…Will you please…” formation. (SoulShoppe)
This formation may need to be broken down, especially for younger children.
Start with just the “I feel…” part.
For example…
I feel frustrated.
I feel worried.
I feel nervous.
After children get used to identifying their feelings and emotions, start asking them to identify the cause of their feelings. Use the formation, “I feel…when people…”
For example…
I feel frustrated when people talk about how I pronounce words.
I feel worried when people remind me I have a math quiz.
I feel nervous when people talk about how I wear glasses.
Once they start getting the hang of associating their feelings with things happening in their lives, start asking them to begin looking for the reason those events matter. Use the “I feel…when people…I need…” formation.
For example…
I feel frustrated when people talk about how I pronounce words. I need to feel safe when I talk.
I feel worried when people remind me I have a math quiz. I need to learn my math problems.
I feel nervous when people talk about how I wear my glasses. I need to feel safe wearing my glasses.
The point of this formation is to give children more tools to communicate what’s going on inside them.
The last step is giving children the tools to ask for what they need. For example…
I feel frustrated when people talk about how I pronounce words. I need to feel safe when I talk. Will you please stop pointing out how I pronounce words?
I feel worried when people remind me I have a math quiz. I need to learn my math problems. Will you please help me study?
I feel nervous when people talk about how I wear my glasses. I need to feel safe wearing my glasses. Will you please stop talking about my glasses?
Why a Child has Difficulty Expressing Emotions
The reason a child might have trouble expressing emotions and feelings is simply that they’ve experienced fewer things than an adult, and some feelings are new. As a result, they’ve had fewer opportunities to learn the terminology necessary to express their emotions and feelings. According to Vanderbilt University, “Children get angry, sad, frustrated, nervous, happy, or embarrassed, but they often do not have the words to talk about how they are feeling. Instead, they sometimes act out these emotions in very physical and inappropriate ways.” (Vanderbilt) Children can end up experiencing frustration when they haven’t yet learned the words necessary to explain what they are feeling.
Therefore, teaching your child to identify and express emotions and feelings is of paramount importance. Gently helping children to better grasp the vocabulary and tools to identify and express emotions will prepare them for a far more rewarding life. This is because when they learn how to express their feelings in words they can then progress to learning coping mechanisms to express their feelings in healthy ways.
Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs for children. For more than twenty years we’ve created tools and empowered educators to incorporate emotional intelligence into curriculum. Soul Shoppe strategies encourage empathy and emotional awareness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings social skills to the forefront of the discussion. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
