Talkabout for Children 3

Developing Friendship Skills

Alex Kelly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138380677
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351631259
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Talkabout for Children: Developing Friendship Skills is a bestselling professional workbook supporting educators and therapists who deliver social and relationship skills groups for children with social, emotional or behavioural difficulties.

This resources creates the final level of the Talkabout heirachy, where self-awareness comes before non-verbal skills and non-verbal comes before verbal, with assertiveness coming last.

Resources include:

• an assessment framework
• planning and evaluation forms
• a three-term intervention plan for schools
• over 25 structured activity sessions focussing on friendship skills
• all the supplementary handouts and images needed to deliver the sessions.

This second edition is presented with full-colour illustrations and handouts, and includes a new introduction by Alex Kelly reflecting on her own experiences of using the resources since they were first developed.

Topic 1: What is a friend?

Objectives:	To help the group gel To introduce what we mean by a friend as opposed to a member of our family or other kind of relationship To identify people in our lives.
Materials:	You will need to print out and copy a number of the activities Some of the activities are best enlarged to A3 Some of the activities are best laminated so that you can use them again.
Timing:	This topic will take up to four sessions to complete.

Activity	Teacher notes
Group cohesion games / getting the group started	Remember to allow a session or two to help the group to gel if this is a new group. You may also like to start each session with a ‘How am I feeling?’ board. You can find this, and ideas for group cohesion games, in the first Talkabout for Children book – Developing Self Awareness and Self Esteem.
An introduction to relationships (Activity 1)	An activity to encourage the children to consider the differences between different types of relationships – friends, family or others.
People in my life (Activity 2)	The children identify a number of different people in their lives that they regularly see. They then sort these into different types of relationships.
How close are they to me? (Activity 3)	The children place name cards on a large sheet of paper to show how close they feel to the people identified in the previous activity.

Activity 1: An introduction to relationships

Preparation

Print out the three category cards and all of the scenario cards. You may wish to enlarge the category cards or place them on a large sheet of paper. The blank cards are there for you to add in some real examples of people in the children’s environment.

Laminate the cards if you wish to use them again.

Instructions

•Introduce the three main categories to the children. Ask them to explain what we mean by:

○Friend

○Family

○Other

Can anyone think of what ‘other’ might include?

•Explain to the children that they are going to take it in turns to select a card from the pile of scenario cards and choose which category they think the card should be placed in. If it is in the ‘other’ category, what kind of relationship do they think they have?

•Does everyone agree? Are there times when a card could be placed in more than one category? For example, your sister may also be your friend.

•As an extension activity, ask the children to think of one or two people they know who fit into each category.

Mrs Kelly and Miss Green Mrs Kelly is Miss Green’s boss. Miss Green works for Mrs Kelly.	Mr Francis and James Mr Fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Introduction
• Initial assessment
• Topic 1 What is a friend?
• Topic 2 Friendly behaviours
• Topic 3 Choosing a friend
• Topic 4 Starting out
• Topic 5 Being a good friend
• Topic 6 Coping with problems
• Plan of intervention
• Forms
• Index