Welfare / Inclusion News

Social Skills

Social skills is an important aspect of children’s development and lifelong learning. At PHPS we offer a range of opportunities for students to learn and practise skills to improve their understanding of forming relationships, interacting according to social rules, respecting and responding to the feelings of others and regulating their own emotions within situations. 

Some of the initiatives we embrace at PHPS include:

This is a framework that assists schools to improve social, emotional, behavioural and academic outcomes for all students.

The Zones of Regulation provides a way to think and talk about how we feel on the inside and sorts emotions into four colored Zones, all of which are expected in life.

The Respectful Relationships program supports schools and early childhood settings to promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours. It teaches our children how to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence.

Practising Social Skills at Home:

• Play board games as a family or amongst friends to navigate competitive environments, teamwork, turn taking, resilien and being exposed to both winning and losing.
• Use conversation cards to encourage conversational skills and active listening.
• Choose random topics for your child to discuss. Make it a game! Using a timer can help with children preferring visuals. By using both familiar and unfamiliar topics, your child will learn to to grow more confident outside their comfort zone, whilst also building more confidence and passion for the topics they already know a lot about.

• Come up with your own social scenarios as a family, and discuss different ways to address the situation. This is great for practising problem solving skills. 

  (E.g. Your class is told to work in pairs, but there is an odd number of students and you end up with no partner. How would this make you feel? What could you do? Who could you go to for help?) 

  Each child will respond and be impacted by these social situations differently. This activity will allow you to learn about what trigger points your child may have and how to further support them.