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A Social Skills Lesson Plan Teaching Collaboration by Baking

By , About.com Guide

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Objectives:

  • Students will plan baking cookies and bake and decorate them collaboratively.
  • Students will debrief and list the skills they used to bake the cookies together, including: turn taking, sharing responsibility, choosing preferred jobs and sharing credit.

    • Notes: If you don’t have access to an oven, you can make this activity just decorating cookies you have prepared ahead of time. Be sure you know what your school’s/district’s policy on preparing food.

Difficulty: Average
Time Required: Three session: one of 45 minutes, one of an hour, and a third of 45 minutes.

Here's How:

  1. Procedure Session One:

    1. Put the Sugar Cookie Recipe up on the smart board, or pre-print it on chart paper.
    2. On chart paper write the steps out in the order.
    3. Go back to the list. Decide which tasks can only be done by one person (turn the oven on) and which tasks can be shared.
    4. Ask each child to write their first, second and third choices for each task. Let each child have one of the their choices, until every task is covered. When this is a mixed class of typical and disabled students, find a student with good skills to record, and another to lead the process. It might be worthwhile to do this in a fishbowl first.

  2. Procedure Session Two

    1. Put your recipe on the wall in your kitchen. Put your task chart on the wall. Review with students.
    2. Have students wash hands and don safety equipment: hairnets, gloves and aprons (see if your school requires this extent for food to be eaten at school.)
    3. Have a high functioning student or typical student act as "crew boss" and direct people to do their jobs in correct order. When rolling and cutting, have students decide how they will decide who goes first, etc. Also have them decide how much or how many is a fair share to cut the cookies, etc.
    4. When cookies are done, leave them to cool.

  3. Procedure Session Three:

    1. Review what they have done.
    2. Make frosting (if that is your choice.)
    3. Decide how many cookies each student gets to decorate.
    4. Distribute decorations, frosting, spatulas. Let students decide if each one will decorate a certain number, or whether you want to have frosters, sprinklers, candy placers, etc.
    5. When the cookies are done, wrap them for distribution to favorite teachers, or for the Valentines Party.

  4. Debrief:

    A digital camera is an excellent tool for debriefing. You can even dictate a group book and then prepare it with your pictures.

    • Ask students to state positive things about their peers and how they worked.
    • Ask students to state any problems and how they would avoid those problems the next time.

What You Need

  • Chart paper for planning
  • A Sugar Cookie Recipe
  • Recipe ingredients
  • Baking sheets
  • Shortening
  • Hot pads
  • Waxed paper
  • Zip locks, plates for storage
  • Frosting (make it or buy it.)
  • Oven

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