Let ’ S Have Fun ! Teaching Social Skills through Stories , Telecommunications , and Activities

This article concerns social skills interventions for children with emotional/behavioral disorders. Drawing on the author’s teaching experience and the findings of research on social skills training in schools, and exploring effective ways to facilitate children’s social skill development, the paper describes how social skills interventions can be accomplished through the use of a story-based method that employs telecommunications, cooperative learning and gaming, and various other activities. The article concludes that as teachers explore innovative ways to enhance students’ social competence; they also need to consider the complexity of learning social competence and how difficult it is for students to gain mastery. Finally, researchers in the field are encouraged to carry out both theoretical and empirical studies to explore the overall efficacy of social skills training in general, the effectiveness of particular approaches, and to identify more proven strategies that promote students’ social competence.