This week the Sharing is Caring Elite Blogging Cooperative is blogging on this week’s topic “Incorporating Soft Skills Into the Classroom.”

If you haven’t heard the phrase “soft skills” (I had to look that one up) basically it means, how to you teach that stuff students aren’t assessed on in class. We used to call them social skills, manners, etc… Now it includes a bit more like how to handle a bully, and what to do in an emergency.

These soft skills may be the most important things you actually teacher students this year. More than how well they read, how well they can navigate various social situations (Sometimes referred to as emotional or social intelligence), predicts how successful students are in their future lives.

Want to read about social Intelligence? Check out these sites (Yes I know Forbes isn’t a research magazine – but employers read it and they are learning what to look for in an employee of the future):

• Wikipedia:Social Intelligence
• Psychology Today
• Forbes Magazine
• Test Your Social Intelligence (This one is just fun)

Ok, So how do we teach soft skill in the classroom, when we have no time set specifically aside to do so?

In many schools (mine, my children’s, their grandmother’s to name a few) PBIS has become the norm. What it essentially amounts to is using loads of positive praise in the classroom daily to focus students in on what behaviors we want to teach. Schools tend to adopt school wide behavior incentives, such as praise tickets, used to purchase prizes in a school store, or admission to a fun event at the school. Teachers (or teaching teams) are often left to devise their own in class rewards and incentives. Read On