We have been using the very popular social skills book: You are a Social Detective by Michelle Garcia Winner in our group at school. For those not familiar with this book, it begins with a discussion of the things we are good at, termed "smarts", and then proceeds to review behaviors that we expect to see in a school setting. The next part of the book gives examples of unexpected behaviors and discusses how these impact others' perceptions of us.
Every Thursday, our "Lunch Bunch" eats their lunch in the social worker's office as we talk about various social skills topics. Due to time constraints, we barely have 15 minutes for a formalized lesson plan, so we have been reading the book while they eat and then we have the kids act out role plays before going back to class. To make things move along even quicker, I made up some slips of paper with either an expected or unexpected behavior on each for the role plays. You can grab your copy of these options here:
Expected & Unexpected Behaviors
I'm using a refurbished plastic container covered in mustache duck tape to store the role play scenarios. We have been calling it, "I mustache you to role play." Kids simply reach in the container and draw a paper. All in all, this game has been a huge hit with my fourth graders working on social skills. I hope you find it useful too.
