SUPERFLEX ® LEARNING MODEL TO IMPROVE SOCIAL SKILLS

Social skills are the skills we use to Communicate and Interact with Each Other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language and our personal appearance. Human beings are sociable creatures and we have developed many ways to Communicate our messages, thoughts and feelings with others. Social skills as the cognitive functions and specific verbal and nonverbal behaviors that an individual Engages in when interacting with others, Including both verbal and nonverbal skills. Behavior contained in the learners are not fully passed on just like that. When students think harder to solve problems, ask better questions, explain the answer in a more logical or hear with more attention, means that learners are in the process of learning. Problem inability of learners in social skills can be trained with Superflex® learning model where students are invited to become a social detective invited to do your own search problems regarding their behavior so as to become a social thinker and solve social problems.


Introduction
Man is a social being influencing the conduct of others and being influenced by their behavior, in his turn.Social relationships depend upon the mutual adjustment between such behaviors.Every society has some norms and standards regarding social development.A child who accepts and obeys the traditions, customs and adjusts with the social norms is said to be sociable (Rashid, 2010, p. 69).
Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language and our personal appearance.Human beings are sociable creatures and we have developed many ways to communicate our messages, thoughts and feelings with others (http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/socialskills.html#ixzz3XidlEKoE,n.d.).Without social skills, the classroom environment as we believe it should be would be in peril.
Most teachers, from pre-school to college campuses, hope their students actively listen, stay on-task and are problem solvers.In an ideal world, these social skills would be universal; however, within these teacher researchers' classrooms students showed weak skills in these areas of actively listening, staying on task, and problem solving.
Coleman and Lindsay (1992) found social skills as the cognitive functions and specific verbal and nonverbal behaviors that an individual engages in when interacting with others, including both verbal and nonverbal skills (Rashid, 2010, p. 70).Caldarella and Merrell (1977) derived taxonomy from their review that included five broad dimensions of social skills: (a) peer relations skills (b) self-managements skills (c) academic skills (d) compliance skills, and (e) assertion skills.Namka (1997)  This model utilizes the comic book as a medium of learning and handouts superhero named Superflex® and a group of opponents called Unthinkables Team (Team unreasonable) to teach flexible cognition in children who have problems of social thought (social cognition).Superflex® is a flexible thinker and have the power to solve the problem.Unthinkables Team is a group of opponents, amounting to 14 characters that have inflexible thinking.Each character has different strengths of the mindset that leads to abnormalities of social behavior Madrigal & Winner (2008) in Baker (2011, p. 33).Superflex® figure can be seen in the following figure: The main premise of this curriculum aalah everyone can follow to become a superhero is not only the crew and everyone faced with a situation to overcome Unthinkables Team (Baker, 2011, p. 33).Through learning through adventure Superflex® each individual can minimize the power Unthinkables to learn how to use the strategy undertaken by Superflex® to change thinking and behavior.
The "Unthinkables" are characters that invade your brain and make your thinking inflexible and make you have unexpected behaviors (Madrigal & Winner, 2008a) Here are pictures of Team Unthinkable to be defeated by Superflex®: In doing Superflex® learning there is 10 (ten) things that can and can not do, it can be seen in the following table:   According to Bandura learning principle sufficient to explain and predict changes in behavior by considering that humans can think and adjust its behavior itself and the involvement of the interaction between the individual and other individuals (Alwisol, 2006).The theory of social cognition can be seen in the image below:   The following image is an image of a learning lesson 2 on Dr. Superflex® and how to make the brain becomes superflexible After understanding facial expressions, teaching the students to look at the picture and identify the body cues to help them determine how someone else feels.Looking for the meaning of body language.Teach the importance of listening to different tones of voices and how the tone of how something is said can impact how someone else interprets what is said.
Give the students an opportunity to listen to different tones of voices and match the picture to a tone of voice.After recognizing the characteristics of a good attitude to be a social detective, then students can be introduced to Superflex®.Superflex® have a strategy to address the problem and facing the Unthinkables.The following table illustrates Superflex® strategies to solve the problem and defeat the Unthinkables.ability to interact with others in a social context in specific ways that can be accepted by the environment and at the same time can benefit individuals, or is mutually beneficial or benefit others.Social thinking is required as part of social skills.Without social thinking then one would not have social skills.Superflex® can be studied with the find strategies that work for you and your child.These are not new kinds of strategies but they give you a way to address issues that come up.Use an incentive system to defeat the Unthinkable and always share your strategies

Figure 1
Figure 1 Superhero Superflex ® Source: (Madrigal & Winner, 2008b, p. Appendix B) Superflex® Learning aims to help children to use strategies to regulate itself, social thought and have social skills.Another aim is to help a person with difficulty social thought and help develop flexibility in thinking in the social conditions of any kind.The main premise of this curriculum aalah everyone can follow to become a superhero is not only the crew and everyone faced with a situation to overcome Unthinkables Team(Baker, 2011, p. 33).Through learning through adventure Superflex® each individual can minimize the power Unthinkables to learn how to use the strategy undertaken by Superflex® to change thinking and behavior.

2. 2 .
Social Skill and Social Thinking Social skills are defined as the set of skills people use to interact and communicate with one another.Social rules are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways.Social thinking is a way to train your brain to help you figure out the people around you-what they may be thinking, how that compares to what you're thinking, and how to vary your actions based on what you and other people are thinking.Social Thinking is social cognition (Coppola, Haratine, Bethel, & Biling, 2011, p. 1).Need to be a social thinker to understand social skill because Social Thinking® is required prior to the development of social skills.Successful social thinkers consider the points of view, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, prior knowledge and intentions of others.Kay Burke (2009) mentions social skills are the foundation of social interaction, especially in cooperative learning.Teachers can choose the needs of the students by level of education.Social skills hierarchy shown in the following figure.

Figure 3
Figure 3 Social Skill Hirarchy Source: (http://www.phschool.com/eteach/professional_development/teaching_the_social_skills/figure1.gif)Social Thinking is what to do when interacting with other people and think about how to do social interaction with others.In addition, also in social thought, faced with how a person thinks about the people that influence behavior.Someone will respond in accordance with the behavior of others and will ultimately affect one's emotions (http://www.socialthinking.com/what-issocial-thinking/introduction,2011).Social Thinking developed by Albert Bandura (1986) in (Tarsidi, n.d., p. 1) which mentions the social cognitive theory is based on the proposition that the process of social and cognitive processes is central to an understanding of the motivations, emotions and human actions.According Feist & Feist (2006) in (Mahabbati, 2012, p. 3) Bandura concept combining the internal side of the child in the form of personality and behavior, with the external side of the child

2. 3 .
How to Teach Superflex ® The curriculum is designed to take the students through a progression of lessons which (Madrigal, 2008): a. Lessons 1-5: Explore and increase the student's understanding of flexible thinking and other related skills b.Lessons 6-9: Introduce the Unthinkable characters and explore the child's own social weaknesses c.Lessons 10-13: Students develop and utilize Superflexible strategies to "defeat" their own Team of Unthinkables.

Figure 5
Figure 5 Dr. SuperflexSource:(Madrigal, 2008) This character gets the person to twist the topic around to what he wants to talk about and goes off on tangents when talking to others.This person may then go on and on about topics he wants to talk about, not realizing that others may be bored or disinterested in what he is talking about.12. Worry Wall: He makes the person worry or feel nervous so much about the people around him or the social situations that he or she "hits a wall" and stops being able to talk at all to the people nearby.13.Body Snatcher: Person wanders away . The figure in Unthinkables Team is: 1. Rock Brain: Person gets stuck on their idea of what they want to do and will not negotiate with other people.The person is not a good problem-solver and tries one solution that's not working over and over again.This person may be very rule bound and have rigid thinking, only seeing one 4. Mean Jean: This person is mean to other people.They insult or criticizes others.They may take things away from others, be very bossy, or try to get all the attention when others are trying to talk. 5. D.O.F (Destroyer of Fun): This character often pops up during games or activities involving competition.The person becomes very competitive and insists on going first, playing only what he wants to play, and does not think about compromising or about how they make others feel.6. Space Invader: This character makes the person's body move into other people's space when others are not expecting it or do not want this.They do not realize how uncomfortable this makes others feel.7. Was Funny Once: This person will attempt to use a lot of humor to be funny.However, he does not realize that humor wears out pretty quickly or at times is not "funny" at all.He has trouble recognizing appropriate times for humor and may try to be funny during a discussion in a classroom or when the moment is serious and not funny or silly.Some people may get so silly, that the other children become silly also, making the group fall apart.This is called getting caught up in the "silly tornado."8. Energy Hare-y: This character gives the person so much energy so the person is constantly fidgeting, moving around, and doesn't think about what the people around need or how others are feeling around them.Sometimes, Energy Hare-y and Was funny once work together, which can quickly make the group fall apart.9. Grump Grumpaniny: Makes the person think the worst or feel like people are always unkind.He ends up believing it even when people are trying to be nice.He may also see everything as negative or bad and does not see how his emotion spreads and makes everyone feel unhappy.10.One-Sided Sid: This character gets the person to talk about his own set of topics or his own plan.Even when someone else brings up his interests, he just talks about his interests.He may interrupt to talk about what is on his mind, not seeing that someone may have another plan.11.Topic Twister Meister: from others, the group or person he is with.May also get the person to turn their body away from the group, not realizing the message they are sending to others.14.Un-Wonder: Stops the person from showing interest (social wondering) in others or thinking about what others may want to do.The person may not ask a lot of questions about others.

Table 1 Do and Don't in Superflex ®
Source:(Crooke & Winner, 2015, p. 3) Piaget said that cognitive development is a mental process that is continuous as a result of biological maturation and experience of the environment.A child develops an understanding of the world around them based knowledge acquisition, and if he found to not conformity between what they know with the things they encounter, they will accommodate it into new knowledge.(http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html).

Team of Unthinkables Superflex ® Strategies
Self-Talk: "I am starting to get mad.I need to move away and take a break.""This not a big deal."