Race and culture intervention group discussion

Race and culture intervention group

Introduction
The socialization process is very vital in a child’s development process. Socialization agencies include family setups, communities, and schools. The socialization process in schools takes the medium of peer interactions between school children and interactions between the teachers and students. Many socialization and peer interaction skills are garnered at the school level. Social skills can be explained as how children communicate and interact with others, be it parents,teachers,or other children. These social skills enable the child to function competently at social tasks (Little, Swangler &Akin-Little,2017). Children struggling with social skills may develop personality disorders such as shyness, anxiety, and aggressive behavior, which affects them and the people around them.
The small group intervention discussed in this article will be for children suffering from shyness caused by a lack of social skills, and the preferred outcome is to develop those social skills. It will focus on elementary school K-5 students. This paper will cover the criteria forselecting group participants, acquiring the necessary permits, and permission from the relevant authorities to form this group’s intervention program. The active participation of parents and the administration and the cooperation of all involved parties to foresee the success of this group intervention objectives. The parties involved will include teachers, guardians, and the school’s social workers. The paper will also cover all possible factors to consider, including class time, venue for holding the meetings,and assessment of the effectiveness of the sessions. It will also look at the formation of rules and norms to be followed in the discussions, opportunities for parents and guardians’ involvement, and lastly, it will outline the nine session topics.The four essential stages the paper will look at are the planning stage, the initial engagement stage, the work stage, and the termination stage.
Topic and impact on learning
The main topic to be covered throughout the learning sessions is overcoming shyness by developing the required social skills. Shyness is a difficulty that is present in many students and inhibits their school learning (Hilton, Westermann,2017). Teachers and peers tend to get the wrong impression and believe that shy people are less intelligent and capable. These students find it challenging to demonstrate and share their knowledge in class, which may make their teachers poorly perceive them. This effect is that they may not be able to reach their full academic potential and non-academic areas such as public speaking, interpersonal relationship skills, teamwork, and self-confidence. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and medication have been used to help shy students, but the issue can be avoided by addressing this in group intervention programs.
Criteria for selection of group participants
The main class of people selected to join the intervention groups is shy. The school social worker will put up posters around the school compound advertising the formation of the intervention groups to create students’ awareness of the existence of the intervention groups. Teachers will also provide a list to the school social worker of the students that will benefit from this program. The school social worker will form small groups from the list given and those students who joined voluntarily. The group members will be placed by their level of education and their respective age. The reason is to influence the free and natural flow of group discussions. The group dynamic will be more of a heterogeneous group comprising students from different cultures, races, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status to foster various ideas in the group setups.
Obtaining administrative, teacher, and other staff approval/collaboration
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Every school has the relevant authority that governs the school. The highest in the hierarchy is the school’s board, followed by the principal and the allocated teachers. It is unethical to carry out matters of the school’s interest without getting the necessary permits and permission. The school’s social worker will get the required approval from the school’s principal to start the intervention program. The next step is to liaise with the teachers at the appropriate time possible to pull the students from the regular curriculum for the group meetings. The social worker will lead the groups to the venue, which is the school’s hall. The social worker will collaborate with the school’s guidance and counseling teacher for maximum learning in the intervention groups.
Obtaining parent permission
Parents are the legal custodians of their children. Since theseintervention groups involve elementary schools, it is essential to inform the parents of their children’s participation in the program. Parents think differently, and some might deem the intervention program not in the best interest of their child; therefore, the school must notify the parents first before the child joins the program. Communicating with the parents will be done by the principal office speaking with the parents through calls or letters. The students will also take the verbal message home.
Opportunities for parent involvement
Parents’ involvement in the intervention groups will be minimal. The reason is that the primary focus of this group is the affected children. The participation of parents at the early stages would make some students uneasy during these meetings. Engaging parents during sessions may pose a problem to the social worker due to the many people in the room and also balancing the needs of the two groups’ ideas. Many parents are employed, meaning not all would turn up during the weekly meeting. The parent will, however, be involved during the latter stages of the program to see their children’s performance in the learning process. The parents may also be interested in decision-making and recommendations regarding their children since different strategies work on other people.
Establishing group norms
For every group to succeed, it needs a set of rules and norms to be followed by every member. These norms are followed until the termination of the group when the desired outcome or result has been achieved. The social worker will let them form these rules and standards and give adjacent sanctions for violating the group norms. The social worker can also add on the expected level of behavior around and the form of punishment when one breaks the rules.Standards encourage cooperative behavior (Fiesler, Bruckman,2019). The setting of norms will be done at the first meeting. These rules include not speaking unless asked, raising your hand to answer questions, not interrupting others while they are talking, and keeping time.
Session one
The first lesson is meant to introduce the group members to each other. The social worker will first give an interesting story as an icebreaker to commence the day’s business. The social worker will ask the students to describe their favorite pet. In presenting the report, the student will be asked to introduce himself to the other group members by giving a brief history about themselves. This introduction will let the other group members know the names of their group members. After all the group members have introduced themselves, the social worker will introduce themselves to the students. The social worker will pose the study topic question. The main reason for the icebreaker is to create openness and trust among the students. The reason for asking the question is to prepare the students mentally for the weekly meetings.
https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/building-inclusive-classrooms/icebreakers#
session two
The second session is all about setting individual goals and group goals. Goals and objectives are important because they help improve behavior, increase personal focus, and help to sustain that momentum in life. The social worker will help the students break down the goals into short-term ones. The school social worker will do this by guiding them to create the goal ladder. In the goal ladder, the students will start with the most desired goal they want to achieve, followed by the objectives of how they will reach their desired destination.
https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-goal-setting
Session three
The school social worker will introduce a game of answering questions in this session. This game will serve the purpose of selecting other group members. The benefit of these is that once a group member is asked to comment on something or answer a specific question, the student must engage, or else the group member fails in the game and is deducted points. It’s almost impossible to memorize people’s names at a go; this game will make the students remember the other group members’ names.https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/social-skills-activities-and-games-for-kids
Session four
Outdoor activities
The school social worker will take the students on an outdoor activity. Such an activity might be to visit a place of interest, such as a historic place. Children are known for their liking of visiting new places. The school social worker will give them activities to carry out in groups during these activities. This effect is that the students will engage more with one another, reducing shyness.https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/social-skills-activities-and-games-for-kids
Session five
The students are playing with characters. In this session, the social worker will introduce toys to the groups. They will then play with toys mimicking voices and giving the toys characters of real objects such as houses, cars, and people.Having conversations through toys teaches kids to recognize behaviors and communicate their feelings.https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/social-skills-activities-and-games-for-kids
Session six
Play pretend. Students will assume other people’s responsibilities, such as parents, teachers, and doctors. Each game they will play will help them interact with different social skills. Playing these games requires everyone’s participation, which will help decrease shyness among the group members. https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/social-skills-activities-and-games-for-kids
Session seven
Building a game. These games require more than one hand to create something. For example, building a tower or molding. To do this, the group members must communicate and understand each other to bring their idea into something. In trying this, the object falls sometimes, and it is only successful after various attempts.Working together will make the group members understand that other students are not better than them, learning a special skill. The school social worker will remind the students that their sessions are about to be terminated.https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/social-skills-activities-and-games-for-kids
Session eight
Team sports. The school social worker will engage the students in sports that require many people for it to take place. Such a game may be football or basketball. The students will learn to communicate with each other in directing their teammates in case the opponent is approaching or telling them when to score the goal. The effect of this is that the students will learn the importance of communicating and teamwork.The school social worker will remind the students that they only have two more sessions before terminating the group.https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/social-skills-activities-and-games-for-kids
Session nine
Staring contest. This game requires the students to stare at each other. Shy students face trouble maintaining eye contact. Several attempts to make them stare at each other will reduce their shyness. It will also help them focus in class while answering questions in the presence of other students. In this session, the school social worker will remind the students that they only have one last meeting.https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/social-skills-activities-and-games-for-kids

Evaluation plan for monitoring student learning/progress
It is essential for the school social worker to assess the group’s performance to determine if the program is headed in the right direction in achieving its objectives and goals. The school social worker will use different strategies to monitor individual goals (Dibble et al. l, 2012). The school social worker will use qualitative and quantitative methods to track the student’s outcomes. The school social worker will use the goal attained scale, which measures the performance of individuals. This scale identifies markers of success and describes the behavior at specific points.
Conclusion
This paper has explained how to create an intervention group program to tackle social skills problems such as shyness in students at elementary school. It has demonstrated the importance of dealing with the issue of social skills at an early age rather than treating it with medicine and cognitive therapy. It has explained the process of forming the required groups for elementary school students. The paper has demonstrated the importance and impact of social skills on students learning. The article has looked at methods to help shy students using games and activities throughout the nine sessions. The paper has looked at the importance of norms in groups in intervention groups. Lastly, the article has explained how to assess and evaluate the performance ofindividual students in collective groups.

References
Little, S. G., Swangler, J., & Akin-Little, A. (2017). Defining social skills. In Handbook of social behavior and skills in children (pp. 9-17). Springer, Cham.
Hilton, M., & Westermann, G. (2017). The effect of shyness on children’s formation and retention of the novel word–object mappings. Journal of Child Language, 44(6), 1394-1412.
Fiesler, C., &Bruckman, A. S. (2019). Creativity, Copyright, and Close-Knit Communities: A Case Study of Social Norm Formation and Enforcement. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(GROUP), 1-24.
Dibble, N. (n.d.). Using data to document the benefit of school social work services.
Retrieved from http://sspw.dpi.wi.gov/files/sspw/pdf/sspw/pdf/sswpgbenefitdata.pdf