ALBANY — Savanna Nettesheim, special education teacher at Albany school, started to brainstorm different ways to incorporate social skill building within the elementary special education classroom. 

After speaking with many staff members, she decided to start a “Lunch Bunch;” an opportunity for the students in the elementary special education classroom to bring a friend every week to the resource room to eat lunch and play social skills games. This allows the students to build both their social skills and new friendships. Administration and the cafeteria staff approved the idea and the students were on board right away with the idea. 

Nettesheim did more research on different types of social skills and which types of games would be appropriate to boost students’ social skills, focusing each week on a different skill which students could work on. 

These types of social skills are organized into four-skill areas: communication, interpersonal, problem solving and conflict resolution. Each of these areas can be further broken down to specific skills such as active listening, following directions, constructive feedback, sharing, joining an activity, taking turns, asking for help, decision-making, being left out and peer pressure. Each activity or game was designed and prepared for one or more of these social skills. 

The students loved the “Lunch Bunch” and wanted to do it more than once a week. They have enjoyed playing card games, bingo and board games and doing obstacle courses and collaborative scavenger hunts in the classroom.