Middle School Social Skills

TeachTown Middle School Social Skills

The TeachTown Middle School Social Skills curriculum is designed to target a range of essential social skills for adolescent students. The lessons were created to meet the needs of students who have difficulties in the areas of communication, social interaction, pragmatics, self-management, problem-solving, and/or emotional awareness. The Six Behavioral Domains of TeachTown Middle School Social Skills: • Building and Maintaining Relationships • Interpersonal Skills • Problem-Solving • Self-Awareness • Personal Care • Safety and Community Participation.

TeachTown Middle School Social Skills lessons provide multiple opportunities for repeated practice and social interaction in natural settings. Lesson plans were developed to include components which were identified in 2014 as evidence-based practices for children, youth, and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder by The National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorder. These best practices include: Naturalistic Interventions, Self-Management, Modeling, Peer-Mediated Instruction and Intervention, Scripting, Social Narratives, Social Skills Training, Video Modeling, and Visual Supports.

There are lessons to span over 5 days for each target social skill, with an additional list of extension activities and ideas. Each target skill includes a data collection tool, and many of the lessons include ready-to-use lesson materials and/or worksheets. In addition, each lesson plan describes ways to differentiate instruction and includes a “Self-Management Strategy”, which is a phrase that students can learn and memorize to help them monitor and manage their own behavior. To enhance the teacher-driven lesson plans, TeachTown Middle School Social Skills includes individual, student-lead activities! These activities are an Interactive Activity (in which the students watch clips of the animated episodes and answer a series of questions), and Comic Strip Builder (in which students can create their own social comic). TeachTown Middle School Social Skills features online assessments to help gauge students’ current understanding (and use) of the target social skills. This also includes a progress-monitoring component to track your students’ learning.