The Blog - Page 7 of 9 - Check in with Mrs G

Teaching the Unspoken Rules of Interviewing

Teaching interviewing skills is a tough task. Teaching students in my special education class to transition into the workplace was daunting. There are so many social rules involved in having a successful interview. It is overwhelming to think about the unsaid rules that could be the difference between you landing the job of your dreams or being passed up for another candidate.

Teaching vocational skills in general is my thing (read about it here)! I love preparing my students for life beyond my classroom. But, interviewing in particular comes with its own set of challenges. And, as it turns out, I was not up for the task!

Teaching Fail!

The first time I walked a group of students through the mock interview process it was… humbling. I rallied three of my co-workers and set up an interview panel. The questions were very basic (What is your experience? What are your special skills? etc.). We rehearsed about a million times and my panel of interviewers promised to stick to the script.

When the time came, my students crumbled. They answered questions with silence and a few random stories. Or, in some cases a robotic sentence. It was one of those moments as teacher where you sit back and take notes about your own shortcomings. You let the students teach you exactly where you failed them. Then, you go back to the drawing board.

Two Strategies

For me this meant two things: role play and practice. First, we started including a ten minute interview role play a few times a week. We would start by watching an example video from YouTube. Then, I would ask the students to mimic the interviewers questions from the video. I would practice answering the questions in my own voice and then we would reverse roles. The role reversal allowed the students to practice in front of their peers and strengthen their skill sets.

This took some time to get buy in from all of my students, but we got there! I am happy to report that the next time we had a mock interview panel come in it was much more successful. Please note… not perfect but steps were taken in the right direction!

Resources for Teaching Interview Skills

In an effort to reinforce interviewing skills and vocational skills in general I developed a few resources. They work well in my special education groups and they maybe a good fit for you too.

This interviewing reading comprehension workbook is a culmination of all of my learning about what students need to know before walking into an interview. The topics included are: Getting the Interview, Researching the Company, What to wear?, Shaking Hands, Tell Me About Yourself, Why do you want to work here?, What are your strengths? What is your biggest weakness?, Do you have any questions for us?, and Saying Thank You. Like all of my Life Skills Reading Comprehension workbooks, each topic is broken into five activities to allow for easy scaffolding.

It is a small step towards teaching the things that we all “just know” or more realistically, “discovered” after a few failed attempts at having a successful interview. If you teach job skills, transition skills, or interviewing in a special education setting I would love to hear about your wins with teaching your students to interview!

by admin

Classroom Books: Birthday Book, Welcome Book, Thank You Book

Say Thank You, Welcome and Happy Birthday as a class! So much of building our classroom communities comes from recognizing the people within it! Small gestures like saying Thank You to generous classroom volunteers, Welcoming new students and celebrating Birthdays set the foundation for a classroom community that is cohesive, supportive and kind.

You have to have those warm and safe feelings if you want students to be vulnerable enough to learn. I use classroom books to help my students get in the habit of communicating these emotions. I am a huge fan of using writing in the elementary and special education classrooms to insert social skills lessons where I can (you can read about it here!). These books are just another way I like to sneak it in 🙂

Each book contains pages with primary lines, pages with standard lines, and graphic pages. This way students are able to work on a page that matches their ability level and everyone is held accountable for contributing. These writing tasks are both engaging and meaningful! More than that, they lend themselves nicely to the creation of a classroom culture that students can thrive in. You can try a sample of my Classroom Welcome Book, Classroom Thank You Book, or Classroom Birthday Book for free!

by admin

Make Time to Teach Kindness

Teaching kindness in my classroom is always a goal of mine. I became a teacher to help create good people. To be honest it’s sometimes a challenge for me to push academic rigger over developing quality relationships in my classroom. This strategy may not always be so good on state tests, but it maybe good for our world. Helping shape humans that care about themselves and each other is kind of it for me. (You can read about my classroom kindness kit here!) As some of you may know by now, I love sneaking character building content into academics anywhere I can (you can read about more ways I do this with early elementary students and with my older students too!).

Resources forCharacter Building

I created a series of character building quick write prompts that are meant to challenge students to respond to questions about growth mindset, college readiness, diversity, behavior at school and thankfulness in short fifteen minute daily writing sessions. It is always my hope to use their responses as entry tickets into more meaningful conversations. Learning this background information about my students helps me celebrate who they are, where they come from, and where they want to go. It reduces my urge to push my students down the paths that I think would be best for them and helps me support them in reaching their own goals.

And then, there is kindness. I could talk about being kind with my students all day. Kind is what we need more of in schools, in homes, and in communities. I infuse kindness into my reading comprehension groups and into my vocabulary word of the week. I have used kindness as theme for my classroom. We have a kindness word wall and classroom posters. It is a part of the fabric of our classroom community. I want to embed a universal language of kindness in my room.

As I foster relationships between students it has been helpful to have a structured way to approach personal and sometimes difficult topics. The outcome has been a kinder, more safe learning environment where students feel comfortable taking chances. I would love to hear how you infuse character building conversations into your classroom!

by admin

Teach Functional Life Skills

I teach functional independent living skills in special education. Have you ever thought about all of the individual steps involves in washing the dishes? How about in vacuuming a floor, doing the laundry, making a bed or cleaning a bathroom? How about in all of the functional life skills that we just, “get”? I have! In great length. In fact, I think of these steps every single time I plan a functional life skills lesson.

Working with students who were learning independent living skills made me realize just how much is involved in taking care of your home and how many steps I have “just picked up” without needed to think them through. Having to explicitly teach the “hows” of taking care of a house can be somewhat overwhelming when you consider everything involved.

Resources for Independent Living Skills

I created a Household Chores Unit to support my students in the process of learning those necessary independent living skills. Specifically, it provides read alouds, classroom discussion questions, writing prompts, math reasoning, sequencing, work work at several ability levels, student flash cards and a word wall. The chores discussed include chores in all parts of the house as well as outdoors, working with animals, and doing laundry. I wanted to include clip art as well as real photos to support students in making the connection to their own lives.

Try it for FREE

I hIf you want to try a FREE sample of the laundry section, click here. A teacher recently contacted me to mention that she used the real photos to create a laminated vocabulary flip chart… amazing idea! If you use this product in creative ways I would love to hear about it.

I love sneaking social skills, transition, and independent living lessons into my daily curriculum. You can read about other resources I use with my students in life skills here!

by admin

Establish a Language for your Social Skills Group

I have taught many, many social skills groups at ALL the levels. Starting with adults at a non-profit in my pre-teaching days, and continuing through to my current elementary students. Some would say it is my thing. I simply cannot resist a good social skills lesson.

High School Social Skills

My favorite social skills groups are the high school students. They are past the, “why do I need to learn this” phase of elementary school. They are beyond the “I am too cool to learn this” phase of middle school (shutter). By high school, students onto the “can we talk about real things” phase.

For high school Social Skills groups you need three things:

1. Trust: The students have to know that they are free to ask and tell without consequence or judgement. If this one isn’t there, just send them home. Nothing productive can happen.

2. Structure: This can be as loose or as rigid as the group needs but a structure of some kind has to exist. Students need to know how and when they will have a chance to participate.

3. Behavior Expectations: Will your group call out? Raise their hands? Can they ask anything at anytime or do they need to stick to the topic?

If you can nail down these three things up front, your group will be much more successful. Take as much time as you need to establish each one. It is worth it!

Social Skills Lesson Resources

In order to make progress with my groups, I discovered we needed one more piece to the puzzle. We needed a common language. A social skills dictionary with vocabulary that told us who we were, why we were meeting, and where we were trying to go. Words like advocate, conflict, emotion, participate and role model became the cornerstones of our conversations.

During those early, pre-classroom teacher years, with a group of high school kiddos, I scratched out a list of the words that we needed to define upfront. Originally on post-its and eventually in a doc. That list has evolved over the years into this Social Skills Dictionary. You can try a free sample of it by clicking here! The dictionary scaffolds students understanding of each of these words by providing context. Students are not only asked to define the word, use it in a sentence, illustrate it, and identify its part of speech, but also to use the dialog provided to act it out. Understanding and using these words will be a powerful tool for students who need to advocate for their own needs long after they leave my social skills group.

The journal is meant to take 30 days to complete on average. Although, with some groups I have had, it was longer. On the good days, the vocabulary turned into meaningful conversations and connections were made.

I hope you will find these tools helpful as you support your students in becoming adults (you can read about my Check In Check Out tools here!). If you find yourself scratching out your own list of words I would love if you shared them with me!