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Effective Social Interaction Strategies for Inclusive Settings

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Abstract

Many strategies and interventions exist in the education of young children with disabilities. One area of intervention is that of social interaction, including social skills instruction, peer interaction strategies, and play skills. Interaction and social skill strategies for use with children with and without disabilities for the purpose of increasing social interactions between children with and without disabilities in educational settings is an area many educators of early childhood special education strive to find in an effective and easy to implement format. Several strategies from research are presented in this article. Only strategies that were demonstrated to be successful through reported research are discussed. Strategies are identified according to their ease of implementation and effectiveness.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent Street (DA 216A), New Haven, CT, 06515-1533, USA

    Judith E. Terpstra & Ronald Tamura

Authors
  1. Judith E. Terpstra
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  2. Ronald Tamura
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Judith E. Terpstra.

Appendix

Appendix

  • 1. Opportunities to implement programs

    • Inclusion classrooms

    • Reverse mainstream settings (early childhood)

    • Specials

    • Lunch

    • Recess

    • Community events

    • Family and neighborhood

  • 2. Training formats

    • Training for non-disabled peers (NDP)

    • Training for children with disabilities (target)

    • Classroom training

    • Teacher training

    • Parent training

    • Curriculum selection and environmental organization

  • 3. Guidelines for selecting strategies

    • Identify the needs of your students and your classroom related to social and play skills including: strengths of the children in your group, skills they could develop through intervention, and classroom resources for supporting the students during the teaching of new skills (volunteers, paraprofessionals, related service providers, etc)

    • Always have a data collection system to determine if your intervention is effective and to document progress

    • Plan for generalization-where else will the student be able to use these skills?

    • It’s often helpful to take strategies/interventions from research and adapt them to meet the needs of your classroom. For example, the skills taught may vary but the method remains consistent or the setting varies but the skills remain consistent, etc.

  • 4. General strategies

    • Sensitivity training

      • Taught to non-disabled peers

      • Sessions may include teaching others how a particular child tries to “ask to play”, “get your attention”, “ask a question”, “refuses to participate/says no”

      • Focus of one study was on the nonverbal communication behaviors of children with disabilities. (Goldstein et al. 1997)

    • Teaching specific strategies

      • Teaching strategies to non-disabled peers to help them better interact with children with disabilities

      • Strategies may include asking a child (with disability) to eat together at lunch, commenting skills, providing natural supports for classroom prompts, commenting on activities, etc.

      • Ex: Typical peers were taught to attend to, comment on, and acknowledge the social behavior of children with autism. (Goldstein et al. 1992)

    • Socio-dramatic scripts as a social skills strategy (Goldstein and Cisar 1992)

      • Play scripts developed by teachers and introduced to children

      • One script role per child in the group

      • Common play themes for children

      • Scripts may be taught verbally, written, or developed through picture prompts

      • Taught through faded teacher prompting

    • The placemat game (Spohn et al. 1999)

      • Teacher is facilitator of game, played during meals

      • Each child has a collage placemat with four pictures

      • Taking turns, the children could say something about their placemat or choose an alternative comment/question

      • Three-step interaction required with teacher prompting if needed, longer interactions permitted, after three steps other children could add to conversation

      • Completion of one interaction, means next child’s turn

    • Peer imitation training (Garfinkle and Schwartz 2002)

      • The teacher told the students to take turns being the leader of the group

      • Teacher reminded of activities they could do with the selected materials

      • The leader could choose activities

      • Others must follow the leader (leader is teacher selected)

    • Social skills program—skillstreaming by McGinnis and Goldstein

      • Identification of specific skills through assessment

      • Introduction of new skills

      • Reinforcement through modeling and role play activities

      • Generalization of skills in different environments and with different people

    • Classwide social skills program (CSSP) (Hundert and Houghton 1992)

      • Implemented daily

      • 20-min training session in classroom centers

      • 20-min generalization session on the playground

      • Children were trained to use specific social skills including; (a) giving play invitations, (b) sharing, (c) persisting at play, (d) complimenting, and (e) helping

      • Training skills were taught using puppet modeling, child-adult practice, and child-child practice

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Terpstra, J.E., Tamura, R. Effective Social Interaction Strategies for Inclusive Settings. Early Childhood Educ J 35, 405–411 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-007-0225-0

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