Vanessa's Blog: October - Ideas for groups
I am asked quite often about social skills programs that you can follow with intervention groups or what to do with a group targeting a specific cohort like girls, or anxious pupils. The truth is that there a lot of programs out there, but few of them actually do the things we need them to, taking into account social context and mental health. The best intervention groups draw from a number of different resources and strategies, adapting to the individual needs of your group. Here are some of my favourite ideas for social and emotional learning in small groups;
Ideas for an Anxiety/ASD support group:
- Look at some of the neurodiverse famous people with autism, ADHD or other disabilities (e.g. Chris Packham, Greta Thunberg etc..)
- Go through workbooks such as Starving the Anxiety Gremlin by Kate Collins-Donnelly
- Learn about energy accounting - click here
- Establish ways to express worries, such as a worry box, a journal, or a worry monster to ‘post’ worries into.
- Try out a range of calming/mindfulness strategies aiming to put together a choice board or a soothing box of the ones that work best for each individual; Click here
- Use Blob Trees to explore feelings
- Work as a group to discuss hypothetical scenarios and how to solve problems., This could lead to creating ‘what to do if X happens ’ cards or problem solving flow-charts for different scenarios
- The Incredible Five Point Scale or Zones of Regulation: Click here The Zones could be used in conjunction with characters from the film Inside Out
- Create a problem scale, to show that different worries are not all at the same level of severity and link self-help strategies.
- For Year 6 pupils, use workbooks aimed at resilience and readiness for secondary school;
https://eikon.org.uk
http://www.snivelandshriek.com
Idea for a Girls/ASD support group (in addition to those above):
- Look at comic style visual guides by Girl With The Curly Hair and try making their own versions for issues that are meaningful to them. https://thegirlwiththecurlyhair.co.uk/
- Group reading other books focused on girls, including issues; click here
- Activities to promote friendships and bonding as a group (including those that would not normally happen in school) like arts, crafts, hairdressing etc.
Ideas for a Social Skills/ASD group:
- Playing board games to target social skills;
o Communication – Guess who, barrier games
o Team Work – cooperative games
o Turn taking
o Coping with loosing
- Watching cartoons or videos together and draw Comic Strip Conversations to support pupils to make guesses about what is in other people’s thought bubbles. Good video resources include Mr Bean, Timmy Time and Simon’s Cat (You Tube). Click here
- Using Circles of Familiarity to visually explore how our relationships and social ‘rules’ differ with different people in our lives. click here
- Social Stories written for the group, or written collaboratively by the group click here
- Trips out to practice skills for community life, such as libraries, shops, cafés, super markets, post offices etc..
- Lego Therapy or other collaborative tasks which involve allocating group roles https://network.autism.org.uk/good-practice/case-studies/using-lego-therapy-autistic-pupils
- Surveys to conduct around peers, or adults in school, with topics such as;
o What makes a good friend?
o Have you ever made a mistake and how did you cope?
o What makes you worried and how do you calm down?
- Circle of friends - learning to support each other click here
- Practicing or roleplaying conversation starters
