Jeff+Scenario

Jeff is a student in Miss Erney’s class who lacks the ability to get along with his peers. Jeff’s inappropriate behavior includes taking toys and food from his classmates’ hands. On the playground, students try to avoid Jeff so that he does not take their things. When Miss Erney talked with Jeff about his inappropriate behavior, he refused to take responsibility and blamed his classmates for the problems. Recently, Jeff has withdrawn from the class, and he frequently can be found walking alone on the playground and after school. Miss Erney wants to help Jeff become more socially mature.

1. Discuss the use of sociometric techniques to assess social skills and related problems. How can Miss Erney use information from a sociogram to help Jeff? There are three sociometric techniques; peer nominations, peer ratings, and peer assessment. Peer nominations are where the students are asked to nominate peers according to their nonbehavioral attitudes. The students get to pick who they prefer to work with. Peer rating is where all students in the class rate each other. This typically indicates a student’s acceptance in the class. Peer assessment is where students are asked to rate their fellow class mates on behavioral characteristics. The students can be given a description or a student, and they have to guess who it is. Miss Erney can use the information that she received from the students in the socialmetric techniques and put that into graphs for the sociogram. She can look at the data, and find out who is isolated, and who the go to person in the class is. She can see who is a leader, and so need help finding friend. She can then pair Jeff up with one of the “leaders” and have them work together to improve Jeff’s isolation.

2. Discuss the use of social skills training to reduce Jeff’s inappropriate social behaviors. Include the use of direct instruction to increase Jeff’s interpersonal social skills. Social skills training is used to improve social skills performance. One technique could be manipulating the antecedent and consequences that target the behavior. They can increase the chances of a positive behavior, and decrease the chances of a negative behavior. Direct instruction can be used to increase interpersonal social skills. There are four different types; description, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. Descriptions is were there is oral techniques on how to perform a skill appropriately. Modeling is demonstrating how a skill is performed appropriately. Rehearsal performing the appropriate social skills over and over to make sure that the student knows them. Feedback informing the students after they perform a social skill appropriately or not and telling them what they did right or what they need to work on.  

3. Describe three social development activities that may help Jeff with his social problems. Predict some of the possible outcomes of each activity. 1. Pair Jeff with a socially mature peer for activities. Here they work together to complete task, and if they succeed or fail they are doing it together. I think that Jeff will enjoy working together with one of his peers. They are chosen, so he doesn’t have to be the last one picked and feel bad about that. They are chosen from the start, and they get the chance to work together, and know each other more. 2. Use appropriate modeling techniques to teach social skills. Award the student or praise the student for appropriate social behavior. Jeff will see here what is appropriate, and what behavior is getting the attention. I think he will want that same attention. 3. Use role play to show a variety of social possibilities. Discuss the appropriate way to handle the situation. This way the student is given a variety of possible ways to react next time. The next time Jeff finds himself in one of the positions they talked about he has a few options he can follow for the appropriate way to act.  4.Instructional games promote positive peer relations and enable the teacher to work on specific social behaviors. Create a game that Miss Erney can use to help promote Jeff’s social development.  <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Miss Erney can create a game that has to do with the role play idea. The students will be divided up into pairs of two. The cards will have different social skill scenarios on the backs. The pair of students will draw a card, and decide together what the best way to handle the problem would be. The scenarios can be problems from the past that Jeff has had trouble with.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">5. Discuss the use of life-space interviewing and reality therapy as two interventions to manage Jeff’s behavior and promote his emotional development. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; line-height: 115%;">Life space interviewing is verbal strategy that can be used to help resolve a problem. This technique is set up for the student to figure out the problem on his/her own the teacher is just there to listen, and help if the student is having trouble. This technique is a long process, but it helps the students see the consequences of the behavior, and find different ways to fix the problem <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; line-height: 115%;">Reality therapy is similar to life space interviewing. Here the students are taught to manage their behaviors and to face the reality of what is going to happen. They are taught to take on the responsibility of what will happen, and they get no excuses. The teacher and the student come up with a plan, and the student is expected to follow it. The student it taught sociably accepted ways to handle a problem. The students are taught to figure out what the problem is, then to come up with plan of what they are going to do, and last they are to carry out the plan.