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Literacy PK-3

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Literacy PK-3 > Factors > Social Awareness & Relationship Skills

Social Awareness & Relationship Skills

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How Social Awareness & Relationship Skills connects to...

Learning is powerful when it is social—when we learn with and from each other. Social Awareness & Relationship Skills are essential for forming and maintaining positive relationships so that peers and educators can become learning partners. When each individual sees how they can use their strengths to contribute to the success of a group, they can better engage in class.

Main Ideas

Social Awareness is the understanding of social norms for behavior and the ability to recognize and understand the perspectives and feelings of others. Social Awareness allows children to empathize with people from diverse backgrounds that are different from their own. This awareness continues to develop into adolescence.

Relationship Skills are the specific interpersonal skills based on Social Awareness that allow students to communicate and get along with others, including cooperation and preventing and resolving interpersonal conflicts. These skills can also include cross-cultural competence such as understanding different norms and conventions and using appropriate verbal and nonverbal behavior in diverse cultural situations. Greater intercultural contact can help build these skills.

Strong Social Awareness & Relationship Skills are associated with better social adjustment and academic achievement, as well as lower levels of conduct problems and emotional distress. Children with learning disabilities, and particularly those with ADHD, tend to have more difficulty with peer relationships and are more likely to be rejected and excluded by their peers, often due to stigma.

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