Chapter 13

Chapter 13 – Building Social Relationships

What is your role in promoting positive social interactions among students with and without disabilities?

·         Creating Opportunities for Social Interactions

o   Provide opportunities for them to interact

o   Structuring activities and assigning students to groups so that interacting becomes part of classroom instruction

o   Arranging service-earning activities

o   Creating special programs or nonacademic activities

·         Nurturing Support and Friendship

o   Circle of Friends – students learn to build a circle of friends around new students

o   By teaching students how to greet one another, express friendship, and resolve conflicts, teachers can foster positive peer relationships and provide students with a strong basis for lifelong interaction skills

·         Providing Positive Role Models

o   Teacher might be the most influential model for students learning how to interact with a peer with a disability

o   Interacting with students with disabilities in the same way that you interact with everyone else provides the modeling that helps shape all student interactions

o   Promoting positive peer relationships needs to be part of your automatic teaching behavior throughout the school year

How can you provide education about individuals with disabilities?

·         Informing through direct instruction

o   Most straightforward

o   Incorporating relevant topics into the curriculum

·         Using video and print media

o   Identify media that relate to your instructional goals, find ways to incorporate them into your lessons, and arrange discussion so your students feel free to ask questions and share their insights

·         Demonstrating and using adaptive technology

o   Can demonstrate for students the capabilities of talking computers, calculators, and waters

How can you develop and support peer tutoring?

·         Developing Peer-Tutoring Programs

o   Types: same age, reciprocal, cross-age

o   Provide time for peer tutoring

o   Select content and format for tutoring

o   Train tutors

·         Supporting Peer Tutoring Programs

o   Manage and supervise

o   Communication

How can you use cooperative learning strategies to facilitate social inclusion?

o   Cooperative Learning – student-centered instructional approach in which students work in small, mixed-ability groups with a shared learning goal

·         Rationale for Cooperative Learning

o   Purpose – to increase students’ ability to interact with each other in appropriate ways

o   Can enhance learning and achievement

·         Characteristics of Cooperative Learning Approaches

o   Positive interdependence

o   Face-to-face Interactions

o   Individual Accountability

o   Interpersonal skills

·         Developing Cooperative Learning Programs

o   Assign students to cooperative groups to create heterogeneous groupings

o   Skills for cooperative group members – forming, functioning, formulating, and fermenting

o   Once students are established in cooperative groups, your role becomes one of monitoring and managing your class

How can you help students with disabilities improve their social skills?

·         Using informal instruction

o   Develop student social skills and incorporate informal social skills instruction in to your class activities

·         Using behavioral interventions

o   Identify clearly the behaviors you want to foster, choose an appropriate reward structure, create a simple record-keeping system, explain the intervention to students, and systematically implement your plan

·         Using social skills training program

Outside Resources
Success for All Foundation	www.successforall.com
Iris Center	http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/da/chalcycle.htm
MyEducationLab