Welcome everyone to the Ready Set Connect program! Introduce yourself and explain that over five 30-minute sessions, students will build key social skills to boost confidence and success in relationships and teamwork.

Briefly walk through the agenda. Emphasize that each session has a mini-lesson, an activity, and a reflection to reinforce learning.

Define active listening. Stress the importance of eye contact, nodding, paraphrasing, and avoiding interrupting. Use an example dialogue to model.

Prompt students to share what helped them listen and any challenges they faced. Encourage them to set a specific goal for improving listening.

Explain passive, aggressive, and assertive styles. Highlight tone, word choice, and body posture for assertive communication.

Facilitate a discussion: ask students what felt easy or hard about speaking up. Guide them to craft one real-life assertive statement.

Define empathy as perspective-taking and validation. Share a short story or video clip illustrating empathetic response.

Encourage groups to discuss how empathy changed their response. Ask them to formulate prompts that invite empathy in future conversations.

Introduce the four steps of conflict resolution: identify problem, brainstorm solutions, agree on action, follow up. Model with a simple example.

After presentations, guide students to synthesize best practices. Emphasize respectful communication and shared ownership of solutions.

Explain that effective teams need clear roles, communication, and cooperation. Provide examples from sports or group projects.

Debrief the challenge: ask which strategies led to success and where breakdowns occurred. Have each student set a specific teamwork goal.