What’s going on at The Academy Union Club
We were really pleased to welcome our members back for our 2nd week at the Social Skills group.
The members were really pleased to see the rules they had developed been transformed into posters and stuck on the door on arrival. All actually stuck to the rules without any prompting. The power of visual support! Plus rules are much easier to stick to when you make them up yourself! Don’t worry we will get them to the part where they have to comply with rules they didn’t make up!
Active Listening
We ventured on our Active Listening theme which we’ll be continuing for the next 2 weeks (yes… it’s going to take much longer than two weeks to get them listening 🙂 We encouraged our members to think about what it means to listen with not only our ears but also our eyes, hearts, hands and feet. Members made some very good contributions about what it means for them to listen and also what it meant for them to feel heard. Members who were unable to come up with their own ideas were able to repeat others’ ideas… now that’s active listening.
Dramatherapy
After all of that active listening our drama-therapy session started by having the group stretch out to get their energy flowing and then we revisited a game from the previous week, as requested by one of our members. The game ‘Anybody Who…’ involves each member of the group taking it in turns to suggest something they like or dislike to the group and seeing who also has that thing in common. For example, ‘anybody who likes ice cream’. All members who agree with the statement have to swap chairs and whoever is left without a chair stands in the centre and has a turn. This game promotes both speaking and listening skills and it also helps the group members to see who they have things in common with.
The main activity in the drama-therapy group was ….. The Academy Union Club’s X Factor! Rachael was the host with her trusty banana microphone! She started by interviewing one member of the group about their interests, talents and hobbies and then opened up the questions to the audience, who were using their best speaking and listening skills to think of questions to ask the ‘contestant’. This week 3 members of the group had a turn, with the rest watching and asking questions. We had some great questions such as ‘have you ever been to Helsinki?’ with the reply of “No, but I’ve been to Westfield.” Other questions included ‘Do you like Tai kwondo?’ and ‘what games do you like playing with your friends?’ and we learnt lots of new things about our members. We’re looking forward to interviewing the next ‘contestants’ next week!
During the break the members of the group talked about which music they like to listen to and they agreed on a couple of pop songs which they all like. Rachael played these two songs for the group and some of them danced and sung along, whilst others enjoyed their snacks or chatted to each other about their interests. See we really do do social stuff!
Homework
Parent received skills ticket. Parents were asked to pick one instruction that they’d like their child to respond to more often than they do now and provide them with a skills ticket for doing so. We look forward to receiving as many skills ticket as they can manage to give out.
