Social Skills Activities for Middle Schoolers:
Speech Therapy Goals and Ideas
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.
However, knowing exactly how to run a social skills group can be tricky. I’m going to present you with some great social skills activities for middle schoolers (ages 11-14 years).
Listen to the Social Skills for Middle Schoolers Podcast:
Social Skills for Middle School:
Skills to Target
- Topic Maintenance
- Announcing Topic Shifts
- Not talking too much (ask the other person questions)
- Responding to others with relevant information
- Not asking personal questions
- Keeping secrets and respecting someone’s privacy
- Including enough information for the listener to know what you’re talking about
- Using clear speech with complete sentences
- Beginning and Ending Conversations
- Vocal Volume
- How to Listen
- Thinking about others
- Using clues in conversations (making inferences)
- Approaching and entering a group conversation
- Not perseverating on a topic
- Making small talk
How to Figure Out what Social Skills to Target for Middle Schoolers:
- Observe student in natural interactions with peers (host a lunch group or push-in (“supervise”) during lunch or free time)
- Ask teachers what social problems they’ve noticed
- Ask the child what he has trouble with in conversation or when things seem to break down
- Ask the child’s friends (with his permission)
- Observe other children his age in typical interactions and see what they are doing that the student is not
How to Run a Social Skills Group for Middle Schoolers:
- Choose one topic per session (or one topic for several sessions)
- Read a story or watch a video about the topic or give a scenario where the skill was not used correctly and have the students identify what went wrong
- Explain the skill to the children and write out rules for the situation or scenario
- Have one or two students come up to the front to demonstrate the skill in a staged scenario that you control and plan out
- Ask the students questions about the rules of this topic
- Have students pair off and practice the skill while you watch and provide feedback
- Come back together and ask questions again to ensure comprehension. Watch the video again or read the book again.
- Assign each student to write in a journal about one time that they used the skill (either correctly or incorrectly) and review at the beginning of your next session
- Check to see if the students retained the info during the next session. If not, repeat these steps.
The Amazing Tool that’s Going to Make all of this A LOT Easier!
Everyday Speech Social Skills Video Library
They’ve made the videos for you! Videos will include:
- A brief explanation of the skill
- Video demonstrations of the skill being done incorrectly
- Analysis of the incorrect demonstration including the consequences of the child’s actions
- Video demonstrations of what the child should have done instead and how that changes the consequences
- Summary of the skill
Videos cover a variety of topics for middle schoolers (and some for younger kids as well), including:
- Basic Conversation Skills
- Advanced Conversation Skills
- Nonverbal Communication
- How we Act in School
- Making Friends
- Keeping Self Control and Handling Stress
- Solving Conflicts with Peers
More Resources with Social Skills activities for Middle School:
If you’d like more resources for middle schoolers, check out this page on my site:
Click Here for More Middle School Resources (including a free middle school therapy material bundle!)
About the Author: Carrie Clark, MA CCC-SLP
Hi, I’m Carrie! I’m a speech-language pathologist from Columbia, Missouri, USA. I’ve worked with children and teenagers of all ages in schools, preschools, and even my own private practice. I love digging through the research on speech and language topics and breaking it down into step-by-step plans for my followers.
Fun Fact: When my son was three, he once got mad at me and told me he was going to send me to Antarctica in nothing but a t-shirt. He had an overly large vocabulary for a 3-year-old….along with an overly large amount of sass. He still has both to this day.
Connect with Me:
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Hi Carrie, Thank you for this great podcast on social skills for middle school aged students. They are not an easy population and I learned a lot from your podcast. My question for you: how do you go about focusing solely on a social skills lesson and address other students goals in that group. For example, I have students working on articulation goals, writing goals, language and social goals within one group. I’m worried I won’t be able to get enough sound productions for articulation students and/or work on vocabulary or grammar with other students. I struggle the most in my groups with addressing everyone’s goals and getting enough production/examples to take data for each kid. Thank you for your help! Also, I am really excited to check out that social skills website. It looks great!
Hi, Megan! Unfortunately, I’m not sure how you would work on social skills and articulation/writing/language in the same session. Since social skills require such a drastically different type of therapy than those other skills, I can’t think of a way to work on all at the same time effectively. When I was working in the schools, I had to make sure that I scheduled my social kids in different sessions that the rest of kids. I know that can be a nightmare when you have a huge caseload but I just don’t see any other way to do it. I do have another post about doing group therapy so maybe this will give you some ideas. In particular, check out the part about 5-minute therapy sessions for artic/language kiddos:
Tips for Productive Group Therapy Sessions:
http://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/grouptherapy/
Thank you for the response. I can maybe try a 5-minute therapy first and then go into a social skills lesson. Unfortunately, I am limited to when I can pull the kids from class based on their core curriculum. My students are schedule on ideal pull-out times rather than same goals. I wish I could do it differently!
Carrie,
I just listened to your podcast on this and it sounds great. On the site it says you can only view videos for 3days. Is that true? I would like to review videos for several weeks in a row.
Thank you!
Mona
I didn’t see that! I would suggest contacting support over there at Everyday Speech. They will be able to tell you for sure.
Hi! I just came across this podcast and found it super informative. Thank you! I went to the everyday speech website and it seems they do yearly pricing now? I know its a little out of date but I wasn’t sure if the 7.99 was still a current deal. Thanks for sharing!
Hi, Kaitlyn-It does look like they changed up their pricing structure. Here is the link for it: https://everydayspeech.com/sign-up/.
Thanks for such great content with us! Really happy to see how people like you providing value to the world. I really appreciate your work.
You are more than welcome, Peter!