Students discuss provided tactless statements, learning to identify properties of offensiveness, bragging, inappropriateness, over-generalization, and prejudice
Social Skills: Writing a Complaint Letter (Reader Presupposition & Perspective Taking)
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Writing a Complaint Letter (Reader Presupposition & Perspective Taking)
This activity is unlike any I’ve found available for perspective taking and is one of my very favorites! It addresses the intricacies of writing while keeping your reader in mind and the all-important skill of modifying your wording to give another person a targeted impression of you, all while working on a practical high-level life skill! It combines writing skills and social skills. It begins with an actual complaint letter requesting monetary compensation, extensive therapy notes on how to conduct the activity (including sentence by sentence interpretation of the effectiveness of the complaint letter’s wording), and novel situations from which students must write their own complaint letters. When writing their complaint letters, students are tasked with choosing both content and wording which will give their readers two targeted impressions of them: honest and reasonable. I have watched many of my students notably improve their perspective taking skills to a more sophisticated level from this activity. (Plus teenagers love being given not only permission, but also the expectation, to complain!)
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