The playground is a classroom too: why social skills need explicit teaching

 

During a single interaction, children may need to interpret words and body language, follow changing rules, understand another person’s perspective, manage their own emotions and decide how to respond – often within seconds.

Children learn a great deal through experience. But experience alone does not necessarily make the hidden expectations of social interaction clear. Just as educators explicitly teach literacy, numeracy and other complex skills, there is value in intentionally teaching the skills that support children to participate, communicate, navigate challenges and develop a sense of belonging.

Why hidden social rules need explicit teaching

Social interaction involves many skills that adults can easily take for granted. Joining a game, responding to disagreement, negotiating roles, recognising when someone feels uncomfortable, repairing a misunderstanding or speaking up for yourself all require multiple social, emotional and communication skills.

Research into social and emotional learning supports an intentional approach to developing these capabilities. A major review by Durlak and colleagues (2011) examined 213 universal social and emotional learning programs involving more than 270,000 students and found improvements in social and emotional skills, attitudes, behaviour and academic performance following universal social-emotional programs.

The strongest programs shared four features: skills were taught in sequence, children actively practised them, sufficient time was devoted to learning, and each skill was clearly named and explained.

This reinforces an important principle for educators: social development should not always be left to chance. Children can benefit when adults make an implicit skill explicit, model what it can look like, provide opportunities for rehearsal and support children to apply it in everyday situations.

The CASEL framework similarly identifies five connected areas of social and emotional learning:

● Self-awareness: noticing emotions, thoughts, strengths and needs

● Self-management: managing stress, impulses and goals

● Social awareness: empathy, perspective-taking and recognising differences

● Relationship skills: communication, cooperation and conflict resolution

● Responsible decision-making: problem-solving and considering safety, fairness and impact

A single playground interaction may draw on several – or all – of these areas. A child who pushes in front of another child waiting for the slide, for example, may need to notice the other child’s frustration, pause before responding, consider their perspective, communicate clearly and work towards a solution.

Making abstract social concepts visible

One challenge in teaching social skills is that many of the concepts involved are abstract. Stories, visuals, role-play and modelling can help make them more concrete.

Stories allow children to explore what another person might notice, feel or understand without the immediate pressure of managing a real conflict. Visual supports can reduce language and memory demands, while modelling and video can demonstrate the words, gestures and responses that might occur during an interaction.

These approaches are most useful when they act as a bridge to discussion, rehearsal and real-world practice rather than as an end in themselves.

Importantly, educators can demonstrate more than one way of responding. Social competence is not about teaching a single script or requiring every child to communicate in the same way. The aim is to expand the range of strategies children can draw upon in different situations.

Why universal teaching matters

Explicit social teaching does not need to be reserved for children who appear to be struggling.

Whole-group approaches can create shared language and expectations across an educational setting. When children and educators understand the same concepts, cues and strategies, they can draw on them naturally during everyday interactions.

Universal teaching also recognises that social interaction is reciprocal. In a difficult interaction, one child may need support to join, repair or advocate for themselves, while another may need support to notice, include, negotiate or listen.

This shifts the emphasis away from locating the entire difficulty within an individual child and towards building a social environment in which everyone has more tools for successful interaction.

A universal approach may also reduce stigma because children are not singled out as needing “social-skills training”. Instead, social and emotional capabilities are treated as useful skills that everyone continues to develop.

This is particularly important when taking a neurodiversity-affirming approach. Explicit teaching should not aim to produce one “correct” communication style. Rather, it can give children more options for expressing their needs, understanding others, navigating differences and participating authentically.

Regulation supports social learning

Explicit teaching also needs to account for a child’s capacity to access a skill in the moment.

When children become overwhelmed, stress can affect the executive-function skills involved in impulse control, working memory, flexible thinking and problem-solving. A child may temporarily have difficulty accessing perspective-taking, communication or problem-solving strategies that they have successfully used at other times.

This means that when a child does not use a previously taught social skill, an important question for educators is not simply:

“Why aren’t they using the skill?”

It is also:

“Are they able to access that skill right now?”

That distinction can shift the adult response from immediate correction towards appropriate support.

Educators can notice signs of overload, reduce demands where appropriate and provide co-regulation or familiar support. Once the child is ready to engage again, the interaction can be revisited and the relevant social skill explored or practised.

Supporting regulation first when a child is overwhelmed does not mean abandoning social learning. It means recognising when the conditions for learning need to be restored before teaching can be effective.

What explicit teaching can look like in practice

Effective social-skills teaching can begin with one specific, functional skill: asking to join a game, inviting another child to participate, responding when someone says no, negotiating a disagreement or repairing play after a misunderstanding.

Educators can then break that skill into manageable components. For joining play, for example, children might explore how to:

1. Watch and notice what is happening.

2. Find a way to ask about or suggest a role.

3. Join in a way that works for the game and the children involved.

These steps should be presented as flexible options rather than rigid social rules, recognising that children communicate and participate in different ways.

The skill can then be modelled through role-play, stories, puppets, visuals or short videos. Showing several possible responses helps children understand that social situations rarely have only one “right” answer.

Children also need opportunities to practise away from the pressure and speed of the playground. Small-group games, role-play and hypothetical scenarios allow them to experiment with different words, gestures and strategies.

The next step is applying the learning in authentic situations. Educators might briefly remind children of a strategy before play, make visual prompts available or coach a child with a question rather than immediately solving the interaction for them.

Finally, reflection helps consolidate learning. Educators can ask what the child tried, how other children responded, what worked and what they might try differently next time.

Generalisation should not be assumed. Like other complex skills, social capabilities develop through repeated opportunities to practise across different people, activities and settings.

Treating social development as learning

The playground should not be viewed simply as the place where children demonstrate whether they already possess the social skills expected of them. It is also a rich learning environment in which those skills can be developed.

When educators explicitly name, model, practise and reinforce social and emotional skills, they make expectations more visible and give children a broader range of tools for navigating relationships.

The broader shift is from expecting children to simply “work it out” towards recognising social participation as an area of learning worthy of the same intentionality we bring to other areas of education.

When that happens, the playground becomes more than a place where children are expected to cope. It becomes a place where they are supported to learn, participate and belong.

 

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