The Effect of Social Skills Instruction on Seventh-Grade Students Taking a Language Arts Class

mplementing programs in social skills development will affect academic achievement among children who are Grade 7 students. A quantitative study was conducted using a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest, nonequivalent control-group design to determine if direct instruction in social skills has an impact upon academic achievement and social skills development. Participants were 128 students drawn from six intact classes of seventh grade students from a rural middle school in West Georgia. Participants completed a pretest and posttests, the Social Skills Improvement System- Rating Scale. During the treatment period, the treatment group received social skills instruction through stories from William J. Bennett’s The Book of Virtues. The control group did not receive any social skills instruction. Data from both pretests and posttests were analyzed statistically using ANCOVA methods. Along with recommendations for further research are the results and interpretations