If you’d like to receive our Episode 92 bonus resources on teaching soft skills, click this link [ Ссылка ]

The term soft skills refers to a broad set of behaviors, attitudes, and skills that people use to effectively interact in their environment. These skills are relevant to other skills such as academic, vocational, and technical skills. There are many different soft skills that students will use in school, home, at work, and in their relationships including:

• Arriving on time and being prepared
• Showing a desire to work
• Being in control of their emotions
• Completing tasks on time
• Solving problems
• Taking initiative

As we know, one of the key components of education is to prepare students to be positive, productive, and happy members of society. One important aspect of succeeding in life is the ability to gain employment. Soft skills are also sometimes referred to as life skills, because many of these skills relate to aspects of life including in the workplace. In many cases, a person who has can successfully utilizes soft skills will be chosen for a job before someone who has mastered the hard skills required for a job, but struggles with the necessary soft skills.

When thinking about soft skills related to employment, there are 5 key soft skills that will greatly help an individual including social or interpersonal skills, higher order thinking skills, communication skills, self-control, and having a positive self-concept.

Here are some suggestions to things to do to help students with soft skill development in each of the five key areas:

• Social or interpersonal skills – playing social skills board games; showing a video or reading a story based on emotions and then discuss it in a group; talk about appropriate social and interpersonal skills; assign group activities where students have to complete tasks together; and encouraging students to volunteer
• Higher order thinking skills – Use KWL charts with assigned activities; play board games (like Cashflow, Stratego, Forbidden Desert); daily brainteasers, analogies, mysteries, and puzzles; Math, Science, and Writing
• Communication skills – record students giving directions for doing something they are good at so they can see and/or hear themselves later; discuss types of communication that are appropriate or inappropriate based on different settings; and providing opportunities for students practice listening to others and ask them to remember the key points and articulate what they heard
• Positive self-concept – discuss personal hygiene, appropriate dress, body language and positive self-talk
• Self-control skills – role play how to handle challenging situations including talking about behaviors and consequences; talk with students about their behavior and/or communication could contribute to a misunderstanding; have students practice visualizing successful situations, deep belly breathing for relaxation, and identifying a healthy distraction when they are upset

As part of each episode of Transition Tuesday, we provide additional tips, teacher tools, and resources related to the topics we cover. For this week’s bonus, we are providing a PDF with a great resource to help teach soft skills, which can be accessed by clicking this link - [ Ссылка ]

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We hope you enjoyed this episode and that the information we shared to help teach soft skills to students.

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