Edinburgh
7
Focus:
Social Skills and the Curriculum for Excellence
How can social skills enhance the new curriculum and benefit young people?
As we prepare for the fourth year of Curriculum for Excellence implementation, the teaching of social skills is of heightened importance. Schools must ensure that our curriculum allows students to become responsible citizens, effective contributors, confident individuals and successful learners; the learning of social skills totally compliments these four capacities.
SUCCESSFUL LEARNERS
Taking turns, listening and celebrating success are all social skills which create students who learn successfully. Should students focus on and improve these skills, they will be more likely to attain better qualifications and enjoy being in class. Feeling successful definitely leads to better self-esteem.
CONFIDENT INDIVIDUALS
Appropriate confidence in young people can aid drive, ambition and having a 'can do' attitude. Always inclusive, co-operative learning strategies support all learners to increase their confidence at giving answers, opinions and presentations. Including everyone, being assertive and acknowledging the worth of others will all help to create learners who are prepared for the tough world of work.
RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS
During many co-operative learning lessons, students will be allocated a role during the activities. Taking ownership of a key skill that the group needs for all students to succeed is a great opportunity for young people to be responsible. After all, co-operative learning is designed to ensure that all members of a group contribute to do well so each individual learner should take this responsibility very seriously. In addition, asking for help and ignoring distractions are social skills which can be social aims for lessons or units of work, thus encouraging the student to take responsibility for their own learning.
EFFECTIVE CONTRIBUTORS
Effective contributors have good ideas and have the capacity to be creative and logical. They share this with other learners and staff. Co-operative lessons with social aims address how to achieve this by clarifying ideas, reaching consensus and extending each others' answers.
Social skills are necessary for students to achieve these four capacities in conjunction with the Experiences and Outcomes for each discrete subject area. Not only does the learning of social skills fit naturally into the new curriculum but will also equip young people with a skill base which they can utilise outside of and beyond school too.
Using listening skills!
Working Together