Introduction
The small group intervention in this article refers to children suffering from shyness resulting from a lack of social skills, with the preferred outcome being developing those social skills. The focus will be on elementary school K-5 students. Four essential stages the paper will look at are: the planning stage, the initial engagement stage, the work stage, and the termination stage.
Topic And Impact on Learning
The main topic to be covered throughout the learning sessions is overcoming shyness by developing the required social skills. Shyness is difficult for many students and inhibits their school learning (Hilton et al., 2019). These students find it challenging to demonstrate and share their knowledge in class, which may make their teachers poorly perceive them. This effect is that they may be unable to reach their full academic potential and non-academic areas such as public speaking, interpersonal relationship skills, teamwork, and self-confidence.
Criteria For Selection of Group Participants
The school social worker will put up posters around the school compound advertising the formation of the intervention groups to create students’ awareness of the existence of the intervention groups. Teachers will also provide a list to the school social worker of the students that will benefit from this program. The school social worker will form small groups from the list and those students who joined voluntarily (Massat et al., 2016). The group members will be placed by their level of education and their respective age. The reason is to influence the free and natural flow of group discussions.
Obtaining administrative, teacher, and other staff approval/collaboration
Every school has the relevant authority that governs it; the highest in the hierarchy is the school’s board, followed by the principal and the allocated teachers. It is unethical to carry out matters of the school’s interest without getting the necessary permits and permission. The school’s social worker will get the required approval from the school’s principal to start the intervention program (Massat et al., 2016). The next step is to liaise with the teachers at the appropriate time possible to pull the students from the regular curriculum for the group meetings. The social worker will lead the groups to the venue, which is the school’s hall. The social worker will collaborate with the school’s guidance and counseling teacher for maximum learning in the intervention groups.
Obtaining Parent Permission
Parents are the legal custodians of their children; Since these intervention groups involve elementary schools, it is essential to inform the parents of their children’s participation in the program. Parents think differently, and some might deem the intervention program not in the best interest of their child; therefore, the school must notify the parents first before the child joins the program. Communicating with the parents will be done by the principal office speaking with the parents through calls or letters While Students Will Also Take the Verbal Message Home.
Opportunities For Parent Involvement
Parents’ involvement in the intervention groups will be minimal because this group’s primary focus is the affected children. The participation of parents at the early stages would make some students uneasy during these meetings. Engaging parents during sessions may pose a problem to the social worker due to the many people in the room and also balancing the needs of the two groups’ ideas. The parents will be involved in later stages of the program and decision making process.
Establishing Group Norms
For every group to succeed, it needs a set of rules and norms to be followed by every member. These norms are followed until the termination of the group when the desired outcome or result has been achieved. The social worker will let them form these rules and standards and give adjacent sanctions for violating the group norms. The social worker can also add on the expected level of behavior around and the form of punishment when one breaks the rules. Standards encourage cooperative behavior (Fiesler &Bruckman, 2019). The setting of norms will be done at the first meeting. These rules include not speaking unless asked, raising your hand to answer questions, not interrupting others while they are talking, and keeping time.
Session One
The first lesson is meant to introduce the group members to each other. The social worker will first give an interesting story as an icebreaker to commence the day’s business. The social worker will ask the students to describe their favorite pet. In presenting the report, the student will be asked to introduce himself to the other group members by giving a brief history about themselves. After their own introduction, the social worker will pose the study topic question to the students. The main reason for the icebreaker is to create openness and trust among the students. The reason for asking the question is to prepare the students mentally for the weekly meetings.
Session Two
The second session is all about setting individual goals and group goals. Goals and objectives are important because they help improve behavior, increase personal focus, and help to sustain that momentum in life. The social worker will help the students break down the goals into short-term ones. The school social worker will guide them to create the goal ladder. In the goal ladder, the students will start with the most desired goal they want to achieve, followed by the objectives of how they will reach their desired destination.
Session Three
The school social worker will introduce a game of answering questions in this session. This game will serve the purpose of selecting other group members. The benefit of these is that once a group member is asked to comment on something or answer a specific question, the student must engage, or else the group member fails in the game and is deducted points.
Session Four
The school social worker will take the students on an outdoor activity. Such an activity might be to visit a place of interest, such as a historic place. The school social worker will give them activities to carry out in groups during these activities. This effect is that the students will engage more with one another, reducing shyness.
Session Five
The main goal of this session is to introduce students to playing with characters. In this session, the social worker will introduce toys to the groups. The students will then play with toys mimicking voices and giving the toys surfaces of natural objects such as houses, cars, and people. Conversations through toys teach kids to recognize behaviors and effectively communicate their feelings to others.
Session Six
This session will introduce the students to a Play pretend game. In this session, students will assume other people’s responsibilities, such as parents, teachers, and doctors. The significance of these plays is that each game they play will help the children interact with different social skills. Playing these games requires everyone’s participation, which will help decrease shyness among the group members.
Session Seven
The sessions involve the students in a building game; these games require more than one hand to create something. For example, the students must build a tower or molding. To do this, the group members must communicate and understand each other to bring their idea into something. In trying this, the object falls sometimes, and it is only successful after various attempts. Working together will make the group members understand that other students are not better than them at learning a particular skill. The school social worker will remind the students that their sessions are about to be terminated.
Session Eight
The session aims to involve the students in Team sports where the school social worker will engage the students in sports that require many people to take place. Such a game may be football, basketball, or any other active sport. The students will learn to communicate with each other in directing their teammates in case the opponent is approaching or telling them when to score the goal. The effect of this is that the students will learn the importance of communicating and teamwork. The school social worker will remind the students that they only have two more sessions before terminating the group.
Session Nine
In this session, the students reflect on their learning during the semester. Taking a test to evaluate the success of the intervention and talking about the parts of the process they enjoyed will help social workers access the success of the program.
Evaluation Plan for Monitoring Student Learning/Progress
The school social worker needs to assess the group’s performance to determine if the program is headed in the right direction in achieving its objectives and goals. The school social worker will use different strategies to monitor individual goals (Knox et al., 2020). Applying a test during the first and last sessions can help track progress.
Conclusion
This paper has explained how to create an intervention group program to tackle social skills problems such in elementary school students. The article has demonstrated the importance and impact of social skills on students learning, discussed the intervention process and set specific goals. Lastly, the article has explained how to assess and evaluate the performance.
References
Fiesler, C., & Bruckman, A. S. (2019). Creativity, copyright, and close-knit communities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(GROUP), 1–24. Web.
Hilton, M., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2019). Taking their eye off the ball: How shyness affects children’s attention during word learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 183, 134–145. Web.
Knox, K. M., Gherardi, S., & Stoner, A. (2020). Rules, roles, and practices: Exploring school social worker preparation for practice. International Journal of School Social Work, 5(2). Web.
Massat, C. R., & Constable, R. (2015). School social work: Practice, policy, and research. Oxford University Press, USA.