Social conversation and social skills: finding colour in student interactions

Abstract

Communication is a large part of relationships within and outside of school. The purpose of this study is to explore oral language development. The focus of this study is on how social conversation impacts the social interactions of students. Using the program, Color My Conversation (CMC) (Delmonico, 2013) the foci of this study are to discover the influence of the program on the following educational outcomes: 1) Review the participation in the CMC (2013) and its relationship to social conversation skills in my classroom. 2) Consider how this increase in social conversation will influence social skills; 3) The program CMC (2013) is interpreted through the new British Columbia (BC) Curriculum, Building Student Success (2015), to determine its educational effectiveness in a BC context. This qualitative descriptive, single case study design includes the following instruments: researcher’s journal, student assessment using a Social Skills Improvement System (SSiS) Teacher Rating Scale (2008) and the Color My Conversation Rubric (2013). The students’ social conversation and social interactions throughout the school are interpreted to determine a significant growth in communication and personal and social competency. There is a strong alignment between CMC (2013) and Building Student Success (2015) in the area of core competencies. Two additional outcomes that occurred in the use of this CMC (2013) program in this study – a strong sense of student enthusiasm and confidence in their learning of related curriculum, as well as a greater knowledge and integration of the BC curriculum by the teacher.