Chapter+5

Jeff is a student in Miss Erney’s class who lacks the ability to get along with his peers. Jeff’s inappropriate behavior includes taking toys and food from his classmates’ hands. On the playground, students try to avoid Jeff so that he does not take their things. When Miss Erney talked with Jeff about his inappropriate behavior, he refused to take responsibility and blamed his classmates for the problems. Recently, Jeff has withdrawn from the class, and he frequently can be found walking alone on the playground and after school. Miss Erney wants to help Jeff become more socially mature.

1. Discuss the use of sociometric techniques to assess social skills and related problems. How can Miss Erney use information from a sociogram to help Jeff? Through the three different types of peer interactions (nominations, ratings, and assessments) Miss Erney can use different items such as the sociogram and peer nominations to find out who is most willing to be around Jeff to help him out, the more another student is around him and helping him out the better he will be

2. Discuss the use of social skills training to reduce Jeff’s inappropriate social behaviors. Include the use of direct instruction to increase Jeff’s interpersonal social skills. I believe that Miss Erney really needs to work on Friendship skills with Jeff, the better those get the better his social skills in general will get. If he doesn't learn the social skills now in life he will have a harder time later in life.

3. Describe three social development activities that may help Jeff with his social problems. Predict some of the possible outcomes of each activity. I think role-playing or role-reversal would be good for Jeff. This would be good because he will see what other students feel like when he doesn't treat them well. Another activity that would be good for Jeff would be to have some sort of journal or writing activity to where the other students write down their feelings after Jeff hurts them and then have Jeff read them later and discuss how he could have acted differently in that situation to make the student feel better. I think another thing to do would to maybe put Jeff onto a conflict resoultion team to watch another set of students resolve the same type of issues that Jeff has and then by seeing this he may start to change his ways a little.

4. Instructional games promote positive peer relations and enable the teacher to work on specific social behaviors. Create a game that Miss Erney can use to help promote Jeff’s social development.

Emotional Circle's Objective: To have students understand that the actions they take are long lasting Items Needed: Erasable Pen, White Construction Paper and Playing Cards (with different scenarios on them), Playing Board Directions: students would pick up a Playing Card read the scenario and following the directions on it.

Example: Jeff picks up a card and reads -- Sally was playing on the playground with the basketball. Alan walks up to sally and takes her ball away. Sally was really hurt and upset by this action! Since sally was hurt and upset please place a circle onto the paper (draw a circle with erasable pen on white paper). Please go a back 2 spaces.

Another card in the deck might say something like this: After taking sally's basketball away and realizing how upset sally was, Alan apologized to sally by telling her he was sorry and giving back her basketball. Please remove a circle from the paper (please use the eraser on the end of the pen to erase the pen mark). Please go ahead 3 spaces.

After the game is all done the teacher or game monitor would read the following:

After hurting someones feelings it is best to say that u are sorry, but as you can tell, just saying sorry doesn't always take the pain away. It is best not hurt someone's feelings in the first place so that they never have to feel the pain.

(as adults having to once use eraseable pen we know that they never fully erase and students will see this when they try to erase it)

5. Discuss the use of life-space interviewing and reality therapy as two interventions to manage Jeff’s behavior and promote his emotional development. I believe that both life-space interviewing and reality therapy would be good for Jeff. Life-space interviewing because it will give Jeff a chance to explain without the judgment from the teacher and i think that sometimes kids think to themselves i'm just going to get into trouble regardless so why not, i believe if Jeff knew his teacher was judgment free than he may not be as bad as he would be normally. Reality therapy would be good for Jeff because having Jeff understand his own feeling will help him understand how everyone else feels.

Instructional Games: