Here are some classroom strategies and activities for enhancing self-improvement skills:
1. Knowing your audience can affect how much or how little you reveal about yourself. Talk about what is appropriate for conversations with different types of audiences. For example, have students take turns role-playing meeting a prospective employer, a friend's father, an attractive member of the opposite sex, a stranger on a bus, and other people who are likely to be in the life of your students.
2. If you have a class newsletter, take turns highlighting a student. Find out a few mysteries, little-known facts, surprises, and so on about this student. Don't forget pictures!
3. Try NOT to intervene in personal, petty disputes among peers. Let students use their problem-solving skills to try to handle their own dilemmas. It is important for them to learn to stand up for themselves an as well as to learn to look for solutions.
4. As an icebreaker activity with groups who do not know each other, try one of these activities: have a sheet listing one unusual or unknown fact about a student without giving the name. The group members have to circulate among themselves to find out which student "matches" the fact. A variation of this is Did You Ever? Students sit at desks arranged in a circle with one less desk than the number of participants. The person who is not in a desk asks a "Did you ever . . . ? question, and everyone who can answer yes gets up and runs to an empty desk. The leftover student becomes the next questioner. Examples: Did you ever have a dog chew up your homework? Did you ever cheat on a test? Did you ever forget to wear socks?
5. If you have a "class clown," try to use him or her to your advantage. Perhaps he or she can tell joke of the day, give a unique perspective on a school event, or prepare a skit for the benefit of the class.
6. Show that teachers have a sense of humor by putting a joke or cartoon on a test, displaying a bulletin board of baby pictures of teachers (with their permission), or creating a worksheet or drill sheet that has a code that translates to riddle. You might put one silly question on a test that students can answer creatively. (Math: If you received $1.50 for every time your little brother or sister annoyed you, how much would you have earned in the past 24 hours?)
7. Help students become good decision makers by giving them opportunities to make decisions that will affect their grades, ix-ports creative activities, and so on. Contracts can be helpful and enable students to feel that they are in control of the process and outcome.
8. When possible and appropriate, give your students as much factual feedback on them as you can.. This will give them more information that will help them view themselves realistically. For exam pie : "You got all of the detail questions correct on this reading passage, but you had trouble with sequencing. This is something you need to work on." Or "You tend to start out strong and then you rush at the end of a test and don't read all of the choices carefully. Watch out for that tendency and you'll do better- Give suggestions for improving these areas.
9. Have students talk about what triggers various emotions for them. List some common emotions, such as sadness, excitement, anger. and joy. Talk about how some emotions are pretty much the same for everyone (experiencing the death of a loved one or being at a winning homecoming football game, for example). Yet in some cases, an event might evoke completely different responses for individuals. For example, baby-sitting a young child, stepping in as the quarterback on a football team, or taking a test with a timer on the desk might trigger very different emotions.
Part I: Learning Basic Social Skills