Kari Franklin

In her article Kari Franklin describes how she created a successful learning environment in which students developed proper social skills through peer conferencing. Some kids go to school for purely social reasons, Franklin realized that by introducing in- class discussions, she eliminated the need for excessive chatter during instructional time. After realizing that the group sharing was not working out, she looked at the peer conferencing from a social competence point of view. In peer conferences, students team up and share what they have written with one another. Not only does this activity improve conversations about writing, it also builds on core conversational skills through peer collaboration. Through trial and error Franklin went from peer editing, to peer response and finally settled on peer conferencing. An effective peer conference consists of multiple social skills
such as: learning names, encouraging others, check ones understanding, or practicing eye contact. This allows students to safely share their ideas in a comfortable learning community as they built on their social skills needed later in life.
Before beginning, students were asked to write down what behaviors were and were not acceptable within a social setting.
To show students what an ineffective listener looks like, Franklin role played by painting her nails and combing her hair as they spoke. After this modeling, the class created a poster compiling what they wrote down. As he went through the suggestions, she encourage students to think deeper on their entries. For example, when she came across an entry that said “pay attention” she asked the students what it looks like to “pay attention”. Throughout the year, she added to the chart. By having students read the article “Map of Writing in Terms of Audience and Response” by Peter Elbows, she had the students chart their past social sharing experiences. In the top row of the chart students outlined the encounters they might have had and in the left hand column, they outlined the types of audiences they have had. When students read their works aloud she expected the audience to be supportive and create a support system for all speakers which is an important social skill to
have.
When creating the conference pairs, she encouraged students to pair with someone they already knew. In a class of thirty she had fifteen sets of two. She then paired the couples with another couple to create a group of four. The ally provided a sense of comfort as they shared with students they may not be familiar with. This provided an opportunity to improve on effective social skills while following a curriculum based activity and allowed students to safely share what they wrote in a comfortable social setting.
As a future special education teacher, I believe that it is crucial for students to develop effective sociability and social skills. This activity is a perfect way for a teacher to introduce social competence along with a standard based lesson. It is important for a teacher to create a positive learning community in which all students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas in a safe social setting. By grouping students with someone they know and someone they do not know, she allowed students with poor social skills, such as students with high-functioning autism, to observe and imitate what other students model in social interactions. Sometimes students are less likely to share with students that they do not know. For students that are shy, this is a great outlet for them to comfortably gain social competence within a small group setting. By doing peer conferencing, students were not only learning proper writing skills, but also earning how to properly interact socially in an academic setting. I believe that this article has really provided a great outline for me to implement the development of social skills when I begin teaching.