The Learning Success Blog

Are you concerned your child's social skills may not be up to scratch?

Here you will find some strategies, tips and activities to help your children improve their social skills. You will also learn where to look for online programs and professional help. And if you want to dive deeper into the topic, there are some links to resources from around the world.

But first, what are social skills anyway, and why should you care about them?

Social skills include behaviours and emotional competencies

Social skills include a range of behavioural and emotional competencies such as:

Researchers suggest that engagement in risky play provides children an opportunity to navigate and cope with uncertainty, resulting in decreased anxiety, according to a recent Canadian study.

Risky play is defined as a thrilling activity involving challenges that test limits and the possibility of getting injured. Typically, children love trying out new things and, in the process, seek opportunities that allow them to engage in challenging activities or risky play.

While risky play might seem dangerous for kids, it offers many benefits, including improved social, motor, and spatial skills, critical aspects in building student learning capacity. Below are some of the essential roles of risky play in early childhood learning and development.

Australians are enamoured with video games and a recent survey has shown that more than two thirds of the population are avid gamers. While some people believe that gaming is just a shallow way to pass the time, 60 percent of those who were polled say that playing video games can be beneficial for students.

And over 50 percent said that their children use games for school purposes. Apart from being an interactive and fun way to learn, video games can also have surprising benefits for kids as they can pick up positive values and develop new skills from gaming.

Here are the valuable lessons your child can learn from playing video games.

With millions of Australian kids back in school, learning has been kicked into high gear as the country’s children try to make up for any lost time in the classroom. While experts have reiterated the importance of classroom learning in a child’s education, there is also plenty of learning opportunities beyond the traditional classroom setting.

For years, studies have shown the benefits of play to a child’s development and provide a great platform for encouraging learning and bonding at home. From developing their financial skills at home to encouraging the growth of their social skills, here is how parents can use role play and games to teach their child key life skills and support their classroom learning.

Dink Donk! Big Ben struck as I got out of the London airport.

The next morning I got out of my patterned hotel bed to wake my sister so we can go on some London Adventures.

Meanwhile, at the Big Ben tower a shy man was drinking some refreshing Coca Cola out of a recyclable can. When he put his fizzy drink down, he tried to press the shiny red button… suddenly, pshhhh! The fizzy cola spilt everywhere!

Back at the hotel, we were just getting ready to checkout to leave the hotel. The cars screeched on the road! I said to Dad “what’s going on?” Dad said “I have no idea, shall we call the police?”. My sister Mahalya said “good idea”. We typed in 000 and then all we heard was “blblbl”.

Should all primary school students be required to qualify for a “Social Media Licence”?

That’s the proposal prominent Australian child psychologist, Michael Carr- Gregg has made to the government.

His idea is the licence would be needed before a student could bring a digital device to school.  Students would qualify for the licence by passing an on-line test with questions including privacy, cyber-bullying and how to spot a stranger online.

Great idea, but is it sufficient?

Should we concentrate our teaching on trying to improve where students are performing badly, or focus more attention on helping them build on their existing strengths?

It shouldn't be an either /or choice. But according to positive psychology expert, Penny Nesbitt, working on a student's natural strengths will be more rewarding for both the student and their teacher.

Penny spoke to The Learning Capacity Podcast about the movement to positive education and how the strengths approach is being used in classrooms around the world.  She also spoke about the power to two little words:  "NOT YET".

New research shows behaviour in high school is a stronger predictor than IQ or socio-economic background of better jobs and higher income.  

The research has been published by the American Psychological Association based on data collected from 346,660 U.S. high school students in 1960 and follow up research 11 and 50 years later.

The 1960 high school phase measured a variety of student behaviours and attitudes as well as personality traits, cognitive abilities, parental socioeconomic status and demographic factors.

The follow-up surveys measured overall educational attainment, income and occupational prestige.

A tiny minority in our community think kids who are bullied should just ‘suck it up” because it “builds character”. 

That’s nonsense.  It’s mid 20^th century thinking. And even then it was a minority belief.

We now know that bullying can have devastating impacts. Students involved in bullying can develop behavioural and emotional problems and have trouble learning, according to many academic studies.

Parents and teachers know this, of course. They don’t need studies to tell them what they see happening to their children and students.

How can schools take a stand against bullying? 

Children who are co-operative, socially responsible and helpful in kindergarten achieve higher scores on reading, writing and numeracy tests in primary school, compared with children with less pro-social behaviour.

This is the finding from a 5-year study of more than 52,000 kindergarten students from nearly 2800 schools.  The study was led by Dr Rebecca Collie at the University of New South Wales School of Education. 

Test scores from the children’s NAPLAN (Australia’s National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) in 2012 and 2014 were compared for four different social and emotional behavioural profiles observed when they were in kindergarten: