Group play interventions for children: strategies for teaching prosocial skills

Description

"The goal of this volume is to offer professionals (e.g., school counselors, nurses, teachers, social workers, occupational therapists, school psychologists, psychologists) a user-friendly book on group play intervention that targets the most common prosocial skills for children. In this book, group play interventions are well-defined and well-designed, guided by developmental theory and developmentally appropriate, based on empirically supported principles, theoretically driven, skill intensive, and easy to adopt and implement in schools or clinics. The usefulness and effectiveness of group play interventions are reinforced through the modeling, role playing, and coaching of complementary group play skill sequences (see Part II of this volume) and implementation of group play interventions (see Part III). Group play skill sequences are step-by-step cognitive and behavioral instructions for performing a specific prosocial skill (e.g., introducing oneself to others, inviting others to play). Group play skill sequences teach, reinforce, and refine children's prosocial skills through structured instruction, modeling, role play, coaching, and feedback. Group play skill sequences are essential prerequisite skills for children to successfully participate in group play interventions. This book offers practitioners the first generation of group play interventions for prosocial skill development in elementary age children. Many of the group play skill sequences (Part II) and group play interventions (Part III) were developed from clinical practice, developmental theory, concepts and principles, and research on children's social, emotional and behavior functioning. It is my hope that the volume fosters future intervention development and research in this area. This book was designed to provide practitioners with the ingredients to assemble a developmentally appropriate, highly engaging, and skill-intensive group play intervention program. To this end, the book is organized in four parts. Each part provides an overview, research results, and essential steps for conceptualizing and implementing groups for elementary school children"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).