Are you looking for ways to motivate students to interact with their peers? If so, keep reading.
1. Select an outgoing, non-menacing peer to help the student interact more properly with peers.
2. Organize their surroundings so that the student has many chances to interact with peers.
3. Get the student to run errands with a peer to enable interaction.
4. Organize a sociometric learning experience with the class to ascertain the peer who would most prefer to interact with the student.
5. Make sure the student knows that interacting with a peer is contingent upon appropriate interactions.
6. Teach the student appropriate ways to interact with another student (e.g., how to greet another student, suggest learning activities, share learning materials, problem-solving, taking turns, converse, etc.).
7. Observe interaction closely, so the peer with whom the student interacts does not encourage the student’s unacceptable behavior.
8. Make sure that the interaction is not so stimulating as to make successful interaction with another student complicated.
9. Include the student in extracurricular learning activities to urge interactions with peers.
10. Select an older peer with desirable social skills to interact with the student (e.g., in the play area, cafeteria, hallways, etc.).
11. Minimize the emphasis on competition. Failure may cause the student to be reluctant to interact with peers.
12. Teach the student problem-solving skills so they may better deal with problems that happen in interactions with another peer (e.g., talking, walking away, calling upon an arbitrator, compromising, etc.).
13. Select a peer with whom the student is most likely to be able to interact successfully (e.g., a student with similar interests, background, classes, behavior patterns, nonacademic schedule, etc.).
14. Organize interactions (e.g., create rules, limit the stimulation of the learning experience, limit the length of the learning experience, consider time of day, etc.) according to the needs/abilities of the student.
15. Restrict chances for interaction on those occasions when the student is not likely to be successful (e.g., when the student has experienced academic or social failure prior to the scheduled nonacademic learning experience).
16. Consider using an adaptive behavior management app. Click here to view a list of apps that we recommend.
17. Click here to learn about six bonus strategies for challenging problem behaviors and mastering classroom management.
