3 Ways To Teach Greetings and Names a Beginning Social Skill

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A potential friend is only a ‘Hello’ away. Paul Liebau

One of the first social skills that I love to teach is greetings and student’s names. As a speech and language pathologist I know that although it might seem like a very simple skill when you break the skill down it is more complicated. The person needs to acknowledge that there is another person in their environment. They need to be able to have some level of joint attention. The student needs to be able to give some form of communication to acknowledge this person and to wait for a response back. These are my three favorite simple social skills activities to teach greetings and student’s names that net great results. social skills for kids is greetings and names

The first activity is that I always begin my group sessions with a simple greeting song. I have all the children sing as we say each child’s names. One of the things that parents say is that their child does not know any of the children’s names in their class and this assists with this.

Hello ( child’s name)

Hello ( child’ name)

Hello ( child’s name) I am glad you came to group today!

For some children I ask them to wave, or say hi, or use their communication device to make a greeting. This might start just with the child acknowledging me. As the child’s communication grows then I extend it to that they need to greet someone else in the group. Usually students will greet another adult in the group. After they have become comfortable with this I say that they need to say hello to a peer. This is a great beginning social skills for kids, learning greetings and names

The second way that I like to teach greetings and students names is incorporating it into a song such as 5 Little Cupcakes in the Bakery Shop. This song has a child use a dollar to buy a cupcake. Each verse can have another child buy a cupcake. The song gives a function for knowing the other children in the class names. Some other songs that have this kind of activity are:

Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar? Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? CHILD’S Name stole the cookie from the cookie jar. CHILD says Who me? The group says ” Yes CHILD’s Name” . The child says ” Couldn’t be.” The group then says ” Then who” This child then says another name of someone in the group and the song begins again.
Hicklety Picklety Bumble Bee: Hicklety picklety bumblebee Who can say their name for me? CHILD’s Name (loud) CHILD’s Name (soft) CHILD’s name ( mouthed with no voice)
Where is _____? ( This is to the tune of Are You Sleeping?) Where is ( CHILD’s Name) ? Where is (CHILD’s Name) ? Please stand up. Please stand up. Do a little waving Do a little clapping. Sit back down. Sit back down

making-friends-in-school-rakovicspeechandlanguagechat

The third way and perhaps my favorite is to tell the school community what we are working on. In my school we have something called ‘bear paws’ which are given when we catch a student being kind, respectful or responsible. I tell them about the student and what kind of greetings that might be using and that they need practice with this. I request their help in this. I tell them to tell me what happened when they greet the student. This gives me a chance to not only gather information about how the student is greeting outside of the therapy room but it gives me a chance to talk to the model greeters and reinforce the interaction. Sometimes what might start out as something a child has done to see if they can be ‘caught’ being kind to something they do because they now are more engaged with these early communicators. Some great friendships have been forged.