[nenna817]

I switched positions in my district this past year and now teach middle school social skills. The students either have ASD, ED, or LD and all are very high functioning. I have different sets of curriculum but I am not happy with them. I have been doing my own thing at this point. What do other people use? Anyone have any ideas? I just ordered Michelle Garcia's book that has the Kingdom of Jerkdom but it has not come in yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[eeza]

Hello! I don't follow one curriculum but rather pick and choose from different books. These are ones that I have used:

The DVD is helpful for examples of social skills.
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Making...endship+skills

I am at a high school, so some of these are for younger kids, but I like the activities.
http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Frien...endship+skills

Hope this helps!
Not used this yet but I have some pages bookmarked for when I get to that skill.
http://www.amazon.com/Social-Teenage...+social+skills

For more emotional issues, I like the Instant Help Book for Teens series. It's more of a self-help book, but I use many of the activities with small groups and we just go through the activities together and share. Here is an example of one of the books in the series: http://www.amazon.com/Stress-Reducti...ess+management

[GraceKrispy]

Welcome to the board (and to PT)! Eeza gave some great suggestions. I really like Michelle Garcia Winner's materials as well.

I think the most important thing is practice and trying to generalize that practice into natural settings. Research suggests more effectiveness when teaching social skills/how to be inclusive to typical peers rather than a segregated social skills group for affected peers (e.g., ASD, ED, etc.), but you don't have that option.

Since all your kids are high functioning, it might not be a bad idea to have a "problem of the day" type of set up, too, where a student (or you) can bring up a social skills situation (e.g., something that happened and a kid didn't understand why it happened that way), and the class problem-solves it. The book "Diary of a Social Detective" by Jessup would be a good source of some social "mysteries" to go over as well. You could devote one class period a week, or 10 minutes a day to problem-solving what to do in certain typical middle school situations. Practice is also key. Role play in the classroom, guided practice in the school setting (is there some way you can take the kids out to practice in other environments during the class?), etc.

[teachingtall]

I know its expensive, but I truly love the Boys Town model for teaching social skills. Each social skill has steps and those steps all correspond with the actions needed to be done. It's an entire program that helps teach social skills and problem solving. http://www.boystownpress.org/

My current psych/program manager is pushing my district to Skillstreaming. It also has the steps, but I am finding it to not be as user friendly to the teacher, its a lot of pre-work before you can teach. http://www.amazon.com/Skillstreaming...skillstreaming.

One thing I am now to just realizing I need to teach my students (only took 4 years) with emotional disabilities is problem solving. I have some good materials to do it, just need to get my butt together to do a teacherpayteachers thing with it...

[MsOwl100]

My district provided Skill Streaming for the Adolescent. Honestly, it has decent content, but it's BORING. I have taken most of the lessons, tweaked them into what my kids actually need and found ways of making them more engaging. I could have probably done the same with random things I found off of Pinterest. To be completely real with you, I observe my students, see what they are lacking (or what General Ed teachers are expressing concern about) and create lessons based on those skills.