Ellen McGinnis, the author of the recently published Skillstreaming the Adolescent: Lesson Plans and Activities, discusses her newest release in an episode of Research Press Publisher’s Prosocially Yours, hosted by Elizabeth Hess.
McGinnis shares insights on how the activities in the book are designed to be used, providing examples from the text. She also reflects on the success of Skillstreaming and offers guidance on navigating the materials in Skillstreaming the Adolescent: Lesson Plans and Activities.
Listen to the podcast below, or follow along to the transcript to learn more about Skillstreaming the Adolescent: Lesson Plans and Activities.
RP: Welcome back to Prosocially Yours, a podcast developed by Research Press.
I am your host, Elizabeth Hess. I am joined today by Ellen McGinnis, author of Skillstreaming the Adolescent: Lesson Plans and Activities. Ellen, thank you so much for joining me today.
Ellen: It’s good being here.
RP: Let’s talk about the book. I know this book is targeted towards adolescents, obviously, but can it be tailored for other age groups? Say, younger than 11 or older than 18?
Ellen: Our students and the children who are younger than 11, we typically refer them to Skillstreaming: Elementary School. That has been used successfully with students all the way through middle school. For older individuals, absolutely this can be used.
In fact, Skillstreaming was originally developed for adults, and was used successfully at that level, and then was adapted to younger people and then, all the way through preschoolers.
RP: Let’s talk about the lesson plans and activities. Are they meant to be used for one-on-one activities, for small groups, or can a teacher implement them for an entire classroom?
Ellen: Well, as presented in the book, the activities are designed for use in classrooms or small group work. It can be adapted for one-on-one, but ideally, it would be in a classroom or small group, because it’s really helpful for peers to also understand the skill that is being taught to target individuals. I would say it could be adapted to one-on-one.
RP: Can you sort of dovetail into a few examples of some of the activities that are pulled directly from this book? What can we expect? Maybe pick a skill and describe what you can do with it.
Ellen: Out of the skills…activities that we try to keep it pure to what Skillstreaming is. The modeling, roleplay, feedback, and generalization. So, a lot of the activities in the book focus on refining skill use and then moving to generalization.
For example, let’s take the skill of dealing with feelings. We work with kids on how to identify feelings by attending to their physical being. You know, what is happening in their bodies that is indicating that there’s a feeling? The activities also talk about how much that feeling is impacting them. Is it on a scale of one to ten, for example?
That in itself, kind of acts as an impulse control strategy, gets them to think, “Well, this happened to me, but how angry really am I?”, then we also have activities that would help them learn different coping strategies, calming strategies, roleplay, and then how to implement that, for example, saying it in an assertive way, instead of in a very, shy, worry or a very angry, aggressive manner.
All of those different types of activities help the students learn to perform the skill of dealing with their feelings in a more acceptable way. We also have some new information related to the impact of stress on the brain. And some of the activities then will teach students with what is happening to their brain, what is happening to their body, with all the chemicals that are released during a stressful episode, so that they understand that they need to handle the stress, instead of giving in to the stress, in a sense.
We also work with the non-verbal and the verbal language that is used in responding to individuals when they feel stressed. And then the roleplay, we have situation cards, which gives individuals opportunities to roleplay in given situations. Now, some of the roleplay situations are not stress-producing, because we want them again to practice skill use, the skill steps, and be successful. Once they have their own situations, they can learn to use the skill at more stressful situations, and monitor them by strategies such as an anger log, where they will keep track of times they were angry, how angry they were, and what their response was, and if they used the skill or not.
RP: Skillstreaming has been so successful for decades, and you’ve been part of this whole program. Kids have changed, but they really haven’t. How would you say, and why would you say that Skillstreaming has been so successful all these years?
Ellen: Well, Skillstreaming was developed, obviously, by Arnold Goldstein, who developed the adolescent book, and he really understood the research of learning principles. The modeling, roleplay, feedback, and generalization. And so that’s one of the pieces. That’s one. It’s good instruction. It’s good teaching. And students learn from good teaching. The skills are also relevant to the kids’ lives.
I know some social skills programs may focus on strictly compliance, and while Skillstreaming does have skills that help kids be more successful in school by being more compliant, and asking questions, and responding to questions, etc., but they also have skills such as dealing with your feelings, dealing with anger.
Those types of skills really meet the needs of students. We also focus on generalization. We know that students can learn social skills, or as we call them, fundamental life skills, such as problem-solving, and getting along better with others, but they could learn that it doesn’t automatically generalize to other situations. So, I think the focus on generalization that is in Skillstreaming is very helpful and has been proven very successful.
The lesson plans and activities help with the sustainability of instruction. We know that it’s more likely for individuals to learn something if they have good, sustained instruction. And so, the lesson plans and activities allow students to use the skill in a variety of situations, understand the subtleties of the social skills, such as assertiveness, and they learn all this through action, rather than solely discussion.
So, I think that really helps. Some programs I did, it’s nice to have the cute activities, but you really try to keep the activities related to the specific learning strategies, and I think that gets better results.
RP: I’m glad you brought up the instruction. The way that this new book and Skillstreaming, in general, is laid out is very user and teacher-friendly, but somebody may be overwhelmed opening it and wanting to know where to begin. If somebody, a provider, has questions, what’s the best place for them to turn to for help?
Ellen: Good question. First of all, I think they should check with peers and see if there’s other individuals in the building using Skillstreaming. Or in a clinical setting, another therapist using the skills. If they don’t get their questions answered, I suggest they contact Research Press directly.
I’ve been contacted by Research Press, and it depends on the specific question. Sometimes individuals want training, want somebody to come in and do training, and so Research Press would contact a different individual to provide the training. Research Press has acted as kind of a central location, and they also have a good understanding of how the program works. A lot of times, they will refer questions to me, and I’m very happy to answer those questions and contact the individuals.
RP: You have mentioned today, and every time we talk, you’ve mentioned Dr. Arnold Goldstein, your mentor, the creator of Skillstreaming. Dr. Goldstein developed the original Skillstreaming the Adolescent program, you have adapted the materials to reach the elementary school age, and preschoolers, also autism. You have created additional materials, including workbooks, and lesson plans. Why was this latest edition of the Adolescent Lesson Plans and Activity book so important to complete the series?
Ellen: Teachers specifically asked for it. They kept saying, “When is this going to come out? When are the activities going to be available for us to use?”. We tried to piece things together from the elementary that we really would like to have an adolescent program.
In my teaching career, I taught adolescents. I also taught elementary students with Skillstreaming, and preschoolers as well. So I had the information, but sometimes life gets in the way of getting things completed. It just took longer to get the adolescent program completed.
In addition, there was more information coming out about the stress and the impact on the brain and the body, so I wanted to be sure to get that in the activities book as well.
RP: Is there another set of Skillstreaming to be prepared? Are you working on another angle that even I haven’t thought of?
Ellen: At this time, no. What I’m focusing on is making the adaptations on the new information that we have about brain development and stress, the impact of stress and anxiety on behavior, and including that in the other versions of the Lesson Plans and Activities, most specifically the elementary book. So, there will be some changes, some additions made to the Elementary Lesson Plans and Activities. But not at this time, not specifically a separate book or document. So, unless people start asking for it.
RP: The original program book, A Guide for Teaching Prosocial Skills, it serves as the anchor, and all of the books, and the cards, and the posters go back to that original book. So how do they work with the newly released Lesson Plans and Activities? How do you need the original book to implement this program?
Ellen: It’s very important to always start with the original book. That gives you that history of the development of Skillstreaming, but most importantly, gives you the direct instruction format. And there’s certain principles that are included in that book, that are very clear that need to be implemented from what the research suggests.
If somebody goes directly to the activities and lesson plans, it’s not going to be effective. [The instructor] Needs to start with the actual book, and once a teacher gets familiar, the teacher or therapist, gets familiar with teaching the skills, and students get a sense of how the learning process goes, and have found some success with roleplaying, then it’s time to move into the lesson plans and activities and to continue it.
Some of the activities will require students to go into their classrooms and try out the skill, for example. And those are very important. But they need to know how to do it appropriately, where it is a successful learning opportunity. Arnold Goldstein says, “It’s not practice to be perfect, it’s practice of perfect”. That’s what we want kids to do, and individuals to do, is to practice the perfect so they’re successful on their own, without us prompting their skill.
RP: Ellen, before I let you go, since this was our last in the series together, I know we’re not supposed to ask somebody who their favorite is, or what their favorite is, but is there a skill that you think is the most important that carries you into adulthood, that people should never, ever stop practicing?
Ellen: Well, I know for myself, I never stop practicing the problem-solving. And really thinking of the short-term consequences of my actions, and the long-term consequences of my actions. I think in, I look back at my work with students, and parents, and bosses, and I think, you know, sometimes the emotions, it’s understandable to get carried away. Some people quit their job. Some people respond in anger, and there’s not a positive outcome.
So I think the stopping and thinking, those strategies, learning how to deal with stress, a lot of adolescents, and adults don’t do so well with dealing with stress and living to problem solve is also a way to handle that. So, I guess that would be one skill that I continue to suggest to my family that they use as well, as I use it myself.
RP: I appreciate your honesty. Thank you for listening to Prosocially Yours, produced by Research Press.
Skillstreaming the Adolescent: Lesson Plans and Activities is now available on the Research Press website, researchpress.com. And as Ellen mentioned, please log on to researchpress.com if you have any questions and send them through our portal. Ellen McGinnis, thank you so much for your time today.
Ellen: And thank you for having me!