Grab you ukulele! It’s time for a little “Small Talk” with our friends. I wrote this song for my “Circle of Friends” social skill group in the Therapeutic Arts Program. My goal was to have the participants practice asking each other questions and learn how to respond to those questions with a to-the-point answer! So to bring that short and concise visual to the session, I decided the ukulele would be too fun.
I started the session by having the group think about the topics they like to talk about with their friends. Our list included: family, friends, weather, news, sports, music, and different activities both at Blue Ridge and in the community. Under each topic, we composed several possible questions we might ask our friends. We made sure that the questions weren’t “too personal”.
Ex. Friends
- Did you see any of your friends this weekend?
- Did you go anyplace with a friend this weekend?
- Who was the last friend you hung out with?
By preparing some questions ahead of time, the students now had a visual reference to use during the experience. I then added these topics into the song and we sang through it.
The next step was to practice answering the question clearly and concisely. I gave examples of different SHORT responses and LONG responses. The students had to decide if the response was too long or just right.
*Another addition would be to provide two students with a prepared question and a prepared response and have them act it out. Then the group can vote if it was a good example of “small talk”.
We then sang “Small Talk” and left breaks in the song for the students to practice their short conversations. The whole session was a beginning step in developing conversation skills.
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