Social skills involve effectively interacting and adapting to others across social situations. Social thinking allows people to consider others' viewpoints, emotions, and intentions. For those with social challenges, these skills must be explicitly taught. Social thinking occurs through our thoughts, words, and actions as we interact with people. Developing social thinking requires vocabulary like whole body listening and perspective taking to understand others.

1. What are Social Skills?
Think / Pair / Share
Think of someone you know who has good social skills.
What does it look like to have good social skills?
What does it look like to have bad social skills?
Think of social skills in this way:
“sharing space with others
effectively” or “interacting and
adapting to others across
situations.”

2. What do you see?

3. What is Social Thinking?
Social thinking is an intuitive process that
allows us to consider points of view,
emotions, and intentions of others.
In most children, social thinking is hard-
wired neurologically at birth and learned
intuitively from infancy.
For those with social learning challenges, we
have to cognitively teach them how to think
socially.
Michelle Garcia Winner www.socialthinking.com

4. Simply Put….
Social thinking is what we do when we interact
with people: we think about them. And how we
think about people affects how we behave,
which in turn affects how others respond to us,
which in turn affects our own emotions.

5. Rashi’s Commitment to the
Whole Child
http://www.casel.org/

6. Connecting
Social Thinking and Responsive Classroom
Goal for our students:
Create and maintain a positive learning community and to teach self-regulation.
What teaching practices support children’s social and emotional development?
• Teaching routines
• Establishing expectations
• Explicitly teaching common language
• Fostering positive relationships
• Structured reflection
• Modeling
• Role-playing
• Mindfulness

7. Essential Questions
 Kindergarten
What does it mean to be a friend? How do we share interests and differences?
 1st Grade
How do I maintain friendships? What can I learn from my mistakes?
 2nd Grade
What makes a good friend? How do actions influence relationships?

8. How do we think socially?
Through our thoughts, words and actions.
EYES
WORDS
BODY - Actions
Feelings and thoughts - MEMORIES

9. Thinking Socially Requires
Social Thinking
Helpful Vocabulary:
 Whole Body Listening
 Thinking With Our Eyes
 Body in the Group
 Brain in the Group
 Expected and Unexpected Behaviour
 Perspective Taking

10. What does Whole Body
Listening Look Like?
•Listening with the eyes (Look at the
speaker)
•Listening with the mouth (Closed and
quiet)
•Listening with the body (Facing the
Speaker)
•Listening with the hands (quietly at the
side of the body or in the lap)
•Listening with the feet (standing still or
quietly on the floor)
•Listening with the brain (thinking about
what the speaker is saying)
•Listening with the heart (caring about
what the speaker is saying)
By Kristen Wilson and Elizabeth Sautter

11. Thinking With Our Eyes
 It is more than eye contact.
 We get a lot of information about people when looking
at them.
 Joint Attention - the ability to follow someone’s eyes to
see what they are looking at and determine what the
person is thinking about. This typically develops at 9 – 12
months of age.
 This helps to read others plans and anticipate what others
are going to do.

12. Body in the Group
 Our physical presence lets others know we are a part
of the group.
 Not only do we need to be close to those we wish to
interact with, we need to have our bodies facing
towards that person as well.
 Successful social interactions depend on our bodies
as much as our words.
 Establishing our physical presence is a crucial
precursor to an interaction.

13. Interactive Lessons
Building on the stories by Authors: Ryan E. Hendrix, Kari
Zweber Palmer, Nancy Tarshis, Michelle Garcia Winner

14. Strategies to help build emotional
regulation:
• Mindfulness
• Resiliency
• Visualization
• 4 – 7- 8 Breath

15. HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?
HOW BIG IS THE REACTION?

16. Expected and Unexpected
 There are expected and unexpected behaviours
within groups.
 People notice how others are behaving and
recognize if they are following the hidden or
unwritten social rules.
 People remember how you made them feel
rather than what you said.
 As with any Social Thinking concepts these rules
are dynamic and constantly changing.

17. Developing Problem Solving Skills
• Teaching the hidden rule
• Importance of flexible thinking
• Sizing up the problem and finding solutions
• Working collaboratively

18. Resources
 http://www.susankaisergreenland.com/inner-kids-1/(mindful activities for
kids)
 https://www.socialthinking.com/
 http://www.gozen.com/ (animation videos to support emotional
regulation)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h51lgvjI_Zk (how to build a integrated
child / Daniel Siegel)
 http://www.drrobertbrooks.com/ (Resilience, Motivation, and
Family Relationships)
 http://efpractice.com/ (Executive Functioning / Sara Ward)