The purpose of this group is to help middle school sixth and seventh grade
students with poor friendship skills learn specific social skills to improve peer
relationships. Group topics include identifying positive friendship qualities, learning skills to enhance conversation abilities, recognizing the importance of body language in communication, and learning how to effectively solve friendship problems. Students are referred by teachers via a form provided by the School Counselor or through discussion at a student’s CSE meeting, and the group is appropriate for those who have few friends, are shy or withdrawn or who display inappropriate social skills that hinder friendship
development. The group is formatted to be held in five 30-minute sessions, and each group is designed for approximately six students.
Offering a small group to enhance the friendship skills of middle school students is important for a variety of reasons. At this stage, friendships may be especially significant to a healthy social development because adolescents frequently look to their friends to fulfill their emotional needs as well as to practice their socialization skills (Lefrancois, 1999, p. 348). Students lacking this social network thus may not have the necessary opportunities to learn how to best interact with their peers. Furthermore, adolescents who are unable to develop quality friendships experience heightened anxiety about school (Sunwolf & Leets, 2004, p. 196). There also is evidence that inclusion in a healthy peer group predicts academic success for sixth and eighth grade students (Wentzel & Caldwell, 1997, p. 1206). School counselors are in a position to help improve the academic and social success of students who have difficulties making and maintaining positive peer relationships by designing a group to teach them specific social skills that they can use to improve peer interactions and enhance friendships.
Teaching Social Skills to Enhance Friendship
Session : What Does it Mean to Be a Friend?
Author: Emily Worsnopp
Grade Level: 6/7
Group Size: 5 students
Time: 30 minutes
Setting: Small office (counseling office or conference room) with chairs set up in a circle
Goal:
ASCA Personal/Social Standard A: Students will acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and interpersonal skills to help them understand and respect self and others.
Objective: Students will be able to identify friendship qualities and discuss basic
friendship concepts.
Materials: 1 skein of yarn.
Procedure:
Ice Breaker Activity: The Spider Web
Begin by explaining that the group will be doing an activity to get them
thinking about what friendship means to them.
Give the ball of yarn to one student and ask him or her to name one quality
that they consider as important in a friendship. Have the student pass the ball
of yarn to another student to continue the “web” until everyone has identified
one quality that is important to her or him. Before “cleaning up” web connect
the image of a web to friendship (interconnected, reliant upon many parts,
etc.)
Discussion: Have students continue to talk about friendship qualities. Some questions to ask include:
Is your view of friendship the same as everyone else in the group? What is
different?
Why is a certain quality more important to you than others?
Are there different ways to act with different friends? (ex: acquaintances,
close friends)
What are some easy/difficult things about maintaining friendships?
Do they have friends that have some of these qualities?
What do they think makes them a good friend?
Homework: Introduce the idea of homework and explain its purpose in helping to
transfer the things discussed in the group to their everyday life. Have students pay
attention to interactions that they have with their peers until the next session. What
friendship qualities do they already exhibit? Are they happy with their friendships?
What is missing (from what they do and from what others do) Have students write self observations down and keep observations in friendship folder to discuss at next meeting.
Evaluation: Students evaluated based upon their ability to identify and discuss
friendship skills.
Teaching Social Skills to Enhance Friendship
Session : Conversation and Listening Skills
Author: Emily Worsnopp
Grade Level: 6/7
Group Size: 5 students
Time: 30 minutes
Setting: Small office (counseling office or conference room) with chairs set up in a
circle
Goals:
ASCA Personal/Social Standard A: Students will acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and interpersonal skills to help them understand and respect self and others.
NYS CDOS Standard 3a: Universal Foundation Skills
NYS ELA Standard 4: Language for Social Interaction
NYS Arts Standard 1: Creating, Performing and Participating in the Arts
Objective: Students will be able to effectively initiate and maintain a conversation and understand how conversation skills are important to friendship development and maintenance.
Materials: Conversation and Listening Skills worksheet
Procedure:
Follow-Up on Homework Discussion:
Begin by having students discuss reactions to homework from previous week.
What did they discover? How did interactions with peers make them feel? How do they feel about their current friendships?
Have students name one of the qualities identified in Session 2 that they
exhibited.
Transition to new Lesson: Expanding your social network and communicating
effectively with others:
Begin by discussing why being able to effectively start conversations and
communicate with others is essential to developing successful relationships. It is
important to know how to start, continue and end conversations for success.
Ask student to discuss what is scary/easy about starting new conversations, and what is challenging for them about having conversations, especially with new people.
Pass out “Conversation skills and Listening Skills” worksheet and discuss.
Have group members role play conversation skills (ask for volunteers).
Encourage all students to participate. Ask members to come up with situations
that might be challenging for them. Examples might include meeting a new
person, asking for help, pairing up with someone for a class project.
Have student reflect on role-play. How did it feel to be the one initiating the
conversation? Responding?
Conversation and Listening Skills
Approach with confidence.
Make eye contact.
Ask questions about things that interest the other person.
Focus on the person talking.
Get your point across without interrupting.
Listen and respond actively.
Close conversation appropriately. (“It’s been nice talking”,
“See you later”)
Teaching Social Skills to Enhance Friendship
Session : Understanding Body Language
Author: Emily Worsnopp
Grade Level: 6/7
Group Size: 5 students
Time: 30 minutes
Setting: Small office (counseling office or conference room) with chairs set up in a circle
Goals:
ASCA Personal/Social Standard A: Students will acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and interpersonal skills to help them understand and respect self and others.
NYS CDOS Standard 3a: Universal Foundation Skills
NYS ELA Standard 4: Language for Social Interaction
NYS Arts Standard 1: Creating, Performing and Participating in the Arts
Objective: Students will be able to effectively demonstrate and describe positive and negative body language and relate these skills to friendship enhancement.
Materials: Body Language in Communication handout
Procedure:
Homework Review:
Use “go around” method and ask students to share conversation experiences.
Were they able to initate conversations? What was difficult about it? What was
easy? Did they learn anything?
Transition to new topic:
Explain the importance of body language for communicating.
Pass out Body Language in Communication worksheet and discuss body language “dos” and “don’ts” and review worksheet. Practice body language styles on sheet, and encourage students to have fun with it, especially the “don’ts” category.
Have students get into pairs. One pair at a time, have student briefly talk about
any topic. One person should talk and the other should demonstrate body
language “don’ts”. Have partners switch roles but now have the listener
demontrate body language “dos”. After each group has gone have students go
around the room and discuss behaviors that they noticed and how it made them
feel (as the listener and talker).
Did members notice any ways that they (or others) use body language effectively
in the group? Go around and ask people how they think their body language
impacts how peers view them. How can body language impact friendship?
Evaluation: Students are evaluated based upon their ability to effectively describe and demonstrate appropriate and negative body language and discuss the importance of body language to friendship enhancement.
Body Language in Communication
The communication process is nonverbal as well as verbal. Behavior expresses meaning,
sometimes more clearly than words. To be effective in our relationships with others, we
need to be able to tune into body language and tone of voice. Did you know
70% of our communication comes through our body language.
23% of our communication is through our tone of voice.
7% of what we communicate is through our words.
We need to pay attention to how we say things as well as what we say.
Dos Don’ts
Eyes good eye contact Stare, glare, jittery, no eye contact
Voice (volume) loud enough to be heard clearly too soft or loud
Voice (tone) tone communicates
understanding – disinterested, gruff tone, sarcastic
Facial expressions matches your own or other’s feeling; smile frown, yawn, sigh, scowl, blank look
Posture
leaning forward slightly, relaxed
leaning away, rigid,
slouching, crossing arms
Movement toward away
Distance arm’s length too close (less than 2 feet) / too far (more than five feet)
Teaching Social Skills to Enhance Friendship
Session : Problem Solving and Termination
Author: Emily Worsnopp
Grade Level: 6-8
Group Size: 5-7 students
Time: 30 minutes
Setting: Small office (counseling office or conference room) with chairs set up in a
circle
Goals:
ASCA Personal/Social Standard A: Students will acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and interpersonal skills to help them understand and respect self and others.
ASCA Personal/Social Standard B: Students will make decisions, set goals and take
necessary actions to achieve goals.
NYS CDOS Standard 3a: Universal Foundation Skills
NYS ELA Standard 4: Language for Social Interaction
NYS Arts Standard 1: Creating, Performing and Participating in the Arts
Objective: Students will be able to identify problem solving steps and apply them
effectively to solve interpersonal conflicts.
Materials: Problem Solving Steps worksheet for each student. Easel or
white/blackboard and markers/chalk for brainstorming activity.
Procedure:
Explain to students that sometimes, even with good friends, we can encounter
conflicts with our friends that might be difficult to solve.
Pass out Problem Solving Steps worksheet and explain that there are specific
steps that people can take to solve a problem with friends. Using these problems
can help to alleviate stress and avoid more difficult situations with friends in the
future.
Ask students to volunteer a situation (real or imaginary) that demonstrates a
problem that friends can experience.
After a situation has been established, work with students to help them see how
they can use the problem solving steps to solve problems with their friends. To
help with choosing the best solution, have students discuss them and role play
some possible solutions. After role plays, have the participants and group
members discuss if the scenario worked, or how a better solution can be reached.
Termination:
Use the “go around” method to have each participant talk about what they feel
that they are best taking away from the group. Have they made progress with
making and keeping friendships? What has been useful to them? How confident
are they feeling about being able to use the skills in the group to help improve
their friendships in the future?
Evaluation: Students are evaluated based upon their ability to apply problem solving techniques to role play exercises.
Problem Solving Steps
1: Identify the problem.
2: Think of ALL possible solutions. Write them down if you can,
or talk them out with someone.
3: Think about the consequences of each possible solution. Ask
yourself “What could happen if I did this?” Think about how each
solution impacts you and others.
4: Choose the best solution.
5: Put the solution into action! If appropriate, practice the solution
with someone else before hand.
References
Brigman, G. & Goodman, B. E. (2001). Communicating with body language. Group
Counseling for School Counselors: A Practical Guide (pp. 167-168). Portland,
ME: J. Weston Walch.
Forth, S. (2004). Lesson 32: What is a healthy choice? New York State school
counselor
association comprehensive school counseling program: Middle level activity
book (pp. 73-75). New York: New York State School Counselor Association.
Hulse, C. M. (2004). Lesson 38: The spider web. New York State school counselor
association comprehensive school counseling program: Middle level activity
book (pp. 88-89). New York: New York State School Counselor Association.
Lefrancois, G. R. (1999). The Lifespan (6 th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing
Company.
Richardson, R. C. & Evans, E. T. (1996). Rules for listening. Connecting with others:
Lessons for teaching social and emotional competence, grades 6-8 (p. 82).
Champaign, IL: Research Press, p. 82.
Sunwolf & Leets, L. (2004). Being left out: Rejecting outsiders and communicating
group
boundaries in childhood and adolescent peer groups. Journal of Applied
Communication Research, 32(3), 195-223.
Waksman, S. & Waskman, D. D. (1998). Conversation Skills. The waksman social skills
curriculum for adolescents: An assertiveness behavior program (4 th ed.) (pp. 31-
35). Austin, TX:Pro-Ed.
Wentzel, K. R. & Caldwell, K. (1997). Friendships, peer acceptance, and group
membership:
Relations to academic achievement in middle school. Child Development, 68(6),
1198-1209.
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BILLY’S COMMENTS : This and the adjacent articles – ‘Suggested Questions for
Initiating a Conversation’ by GGSC and ‘Ice Breakers‘ by Stephen Smuin all focus on Methods. Indeed, TEACHING HOW is equally important as LEARNING WHY.
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