When we do individual or group work with the children, we always have a focus on developing social skills. We do this through various resources, but we often use ‘The Socially Speaking Game’. This month we want to share the game with you.
This brilliant board game teaches and reinforces social skills in a fun way. The game focuses on social interaction in three key areas: home, school, and the wider community. It teaches the children how to communicate effectively in a range of social situations whilst helping them to learn about appropriate social responses.
Children are given the opportunity to practise vital skills such as listening, turn-taking, asking questions, making telephone calls, and conveying emotions. Alongside this it helps to develop self-esteem, listening skills, understanding of emotions, eye-contact, greetings, turn-taking, winning, losing, receptive and expressive language and problem solving.
When we play the game, we always have a laugh as we use role-play to act out social situations. We have to give each other compliments and then respond in an appropriate manner; it focuses on listening to others, asking, and answering questions, developing, and maintaining friendships and my favourite one of all is using your voice effectively.
Within the game, if you land on the pink square you have to say, ‘I have peas for tea’, this has to be said while expressing an emotion, for example, happy, angry, scared. Some children find this easy and fun, some children need a little bit more time and that is absolutely fine.
The game is played by the children taking it in turns and moving around the board. Whichever square they land on, they are given the opportunity to answer a question where they need to think about the social situation or role play a social skill. When they land on a situation square (they love this square as they can win a donut to go onto their counter), they are challenged to complete a task that focuses on socially speaking, school, out and about or home.
The first player to complete the four different situation tasks and get back to the finish is the winner!
Reach Behaviour 