Social Skills: Cool Ideas for Cool Kids

For professionals planning social-skills groups for pre-teens and teenagers, Lynn M. Dudek's recording connects games, movie discussions, and shared projects to specific communication goals, including listening to answers, considering another person's perspective, and planning around someone else's preferences.

Presenter biographies: Lynn M. Dudek, Michele LaMarche.

Michele LaMarche opens the session; Dudek leads the activity instruction. The scavenger-hunt example focuses on question appropriateness, gaining attention, and listening long enough to record an answer.

Movie examples examine characters' thoughts, visible cues, possible actions, and consequences; comic strip conversations distinguish thinking a request from speaking it aloud.

The caregiver party and surprise dinner trace shared decisions, task assignments, rehearsal, and debriefing across several weeks.

What does this recording cover?

• The scavenger hunt links question choice, attention-getting, waiting, and recording answers.
• Two Truths and a Lie explores perspective taking and includes simpler versions for younger children.
• Movie discussions examine characters' thinking, evidence for an interpretation, and possible consequences of actions.
• Comic strip conversations distinguish thoughts from spoken requests.
• Party, dinner, and garden projects organize communication around shared tasks and other people's preferences.

Recording context: The recording date is unavailable, and the transcript documents a failed video example and audience reports that Dudek's face was not visible during the game demonstration.

Three selected learner comments

The six-item evaluation mean was 4.06/5 across 11 complete responses, from 90 recorded rating responses. This mean includes only complete six-score responses. Source: Special Learning's course evaluation records, snapshot October 11, 2026.

Three selected anonymous responses appear below, with the wording and spelling retained. They describe learners' experiences and requests; they are not a guarantee of results or a claim that these comments represent every learner.

Providing a list of resources to find more of these activities and to buy social skills games

Course evaluation response, 2023

This was a great training!

Course evaluation response, 2023

More visuals; the ability to correct things that didn't work when presented live (e.g., playing a video example) so that those of us watching weeks/months/years later can get the presentation without original technical glitches

Course evaluation response, 2023

Explore related recorded discussions

• Social Skills Part 2: Elementary Social Skills Predictors of Future Success
• Peer Mediated Interventions- More Than Just Play Skills
• View this course's purchase and access details