Why Social Skills Groups: Many of our children with language delays also have trouble with social skills.  This may be due to certain conditions that impair social skills, like autism, or it may just be because these children have trouble learning language and social interactions rely heavily on language skills.  Whatever the cause, one of the best ways to help improve social skills is through the use of social skills groups.  Doing social skills training in a group setting allows children to practice new skills with their peers instead of just talking about them theoretically.  Practice is crucial for these children to actually be able to use those skills in real life.

 

Social Pragmatic Skills group programs aim to increase initiation and maintenance of play or conversation based on age-appropriateness. In younger children (2 Years to 6 Years) , we typically focus on cooperative play skills and increasing joint engagement; while in older children (7 Years to 18 Years) focus is on executive-function skills such as planning peer hang-outs, scripting conversations with friends etc.

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Magpie Speech Therapy offers small groups for children as young as age 2 extending up to 6+ years. In our groups, we use a curriculum developed at Magpie Speech Therapy, concepts from FloorTime in combination with TEACHH, TalkAbility (Hanen Center) , Michelle Garcia Winner M.S., CCC-SLP (Think Social!) and the Zones of Regulation (Leah Kuypers M.A., Ed, OTR/L). We focus on helping children establish self regulation in a group setting first and foremost like sharing space, noticing peers, and imitating them. With this structure in place, children can then more efficiently take in information related to social thinking, feel more available and ready to interact with their peers and assume more independence and responsibility within a social exchange.

Children are placed in a group based on their age, development, learning needs, and areas of strength. We try hard to keep groups at these small numbers, and high teacher to student ratio so that we always have time to slow down and focus on process or challenge moments as they naturally occur. We have also found smaller numbers to be important so that the overall noise level is reduced; when there is less noise and less external distractions, children are naturally better able to think through and productively attend to difficult movements.

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Some of our Goals include,

• Acceptable Behavior & Compliance in Group

• Classroom Simulations

• Cooperative Play

• Peer Collaboration and Negotiation

• Controlling Emotional Outbursts

• Social Rules of various situations like Playground, B'day Parties, Shopping  etc.

• Whole Body Regulation

• Critical Thinking 

• Taking Perspective

• Problem Solving

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SOCIAL SKILLS CALENDAR

(Contains timetable & format for ongoing programs)