Guiding Children's Friendship Development Summary

Critique of “Guiding Children’s Friendship Development” “Guiding Children’s Friendship Development” by Kathleen Gallagher is an informative article that gives readers insights on how to help students through social and friendship developments. Gallagher shows educators ways to aid students in learning social skills through ideas and real teacher examples. A good portion of her article surrounds the idea of a social development pyramid, one in which helps teacher provide appropriate guidance to young students learning about relationships.

“Social-emotional development in the primary years” In this section, Gallagher begins to dive into the concept of friendships in young children through primary grades. As children prepare to attend preschool, they obtain a number of different skills in which that help them create friendships in school. What helps this process in the preschool setting is that the age group is starting to get a firm grasp of language and communicating (pg. 27). This age group can use their new communication skills in order to, “participate in play activities” and “share ideas for play,” (pg. 27). The students’ time in preschool interacting

This is due to how different aspects of school, including socializing, academics, and physical growth, are all intertwined. This can be a difficult task for teachers to relate together, and even more issues come from how to assess social growth and emotional learning (CITE). While the article shares that is can be challenging for teachers to weave socialization and academics together, there are plenty of ways for teachers to incorporate both into the classroom. This can be done with a number of different group activities, partner jobs, and whole class interaction. While it might be intimidating for teachers to try to teach both academics and social skills, it is critical that they are taught for the student’s