Hi I’m Jessica and I founded Alice Benzie Teaching in response to the limited awareness and resources available with regards to Social Skills. I am an ex-early years and primary teacher, who has worked as an Speech and Language Therapy Assistant Practitioner for the past 8 years; the last 5 years of the role mainly focused around working with children on their social interaction and communication.
Social Skills are some of the most important skills we will acquire in our life time but the least ‘taught’. There is often an assumption that children will simply pick up these skills; whilst this might be the case for some others will struggle with them. Failure to adequately teach social skills can have a long-term negative outcome. As children get older social skills become much more complex and they will need to draw on different strands to engage effectively with others. A child may have difficulty in only one or two areas of social skills but this can have a knock-on effect in other and can lead to a break down in social communication. Social communication skills cover; interaction, eye contact, looking, attention and listening, waiting, turn taking, sharing, memory, proximity, volume and rate of speech, pragmatics, emotions, awareness of self, awareness of others, handling constructive criticism, developing opinions, handling difficult situations, giving and receiving praise, saying ‘no’. I mainly support young children but have worked with young adults up to 16. My aim is to support individual children and families, as well as offering training and advice to schools and other education settings or professionals.
