Support friendships with structured approaches
Suggestion for implementing the strategy ‘Supporting and strengthening peer relationships’
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Circle of friends
Circle of friends
Creating a student support network.
A teacher shares how she uses the Circle of Friends strategy to tackle challenging behaviour and promote inclusion in year 7.
Video hosted on Youtube
http://youtu.be/dYCsvr_rQLc
No captions or transcript
Develop buddy systems
Develop buddy systems
Use buddy systems to promote social skills.
- Buddies are given training on how to help students develop specific skills, such as recreation, social, and communication skills.
- Buddy systems result in personal growth for non-disabled peers.
- To promote high quality interactions, students should also have opportunities to interact in activities that are not always instructional.
Utilise peer support
Utilise peer support
Ben has ASD. He needs support with communication skills. His circle of friends and teachers model and explain how the group works for him.
Video hosted on Youtube
http://youtu.be/jHtWDNmaC_E
No captions or transcript
Facilitate friendships
Facilitate friendships
Friendships are an important foundation in an inclusive classroom.
Strategies to create and maintain friendships:
- Identify interests – Allow learners to express their interests through discussion, surveys, games, and clubs to help them discover other students who are like-minded.
- Highlight strengths – Highlight student strengths to help learners to feel valued and confident amongst their peers.
- Emphasie social skills – Embed opportunities to teach social skills through the curriculum, for example: games, problem solving activities, class meetings or discussions.
- Provide opportunities – Encourage friendships through social opportunities such as play, group work, class trips or school wide activity days.
Useful resources
Useful resources
Circle of friends: A type of person-centered planning
Publisher: Friendship Circle Special Needs Resource Blog
Springboards 2 Practice: Friendship
Publisher: Ministry of Education | Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga
Download PDF (428 KB)
Next steps
More suggestions for implementing the strategy “Support and strengthen peer relationships”:
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Guide to Index of the guide: Positive peer relationships
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