Fostering social-emotional growth through collaborative game play

Created by Andrew Harris

The Guild Chronicles Program is an innovative, small group intervention designed to foster and develop social-emotional competencies and understanding. Group activities focus on playing a collaborative storytelling game, with narrative themes customized for each group. The game invites the participants to work together to overcome challenges. The educational objective of the game is twofold. First, it serves as a motivation to practice and develop skills. The game is exciting, challenging and entertaining, and students look forward to playing it weekly. Second, it serves as a meaningful, naturalistic opportunity to practice skills. In order to succeed in the game, the students must constantly practice a host of collaborative, communicative and executive skills. The group facilitator acts as a moderator, model and coach – offering feedback and strategies, and making connections to real life situations where similar skills would be applied.

While it is especially relevant to students with autism spectrum disorders, Guild Chronicles has also been used with diverse groups of students, with a variety of needs and goals in the public school setting. It has been used effectively to create a sense of belonging for students who struggled to fit in, to give students opportunities to develop their spoken English language skills and to support students suffering from anxiety and school avoidant behaviors. The program is exceptionally flexible – the narrative elements of the story can be tailored to address virtually any topic.

The Guild Chronicles Program has been used by over 100 teens in five settings. Participants report enjoying the game and feeling more self-confident. The students are able to identify their social-emotional goals as well as opportunities they have had to develop them. Group facilitators report strong group bonds, high levels of engagement and student growth that exceeds that of conventional small group interventions.

The Guild Chronicles Program’s curriculum is currently under development, and unavailable for download.  For more information, please contact the program’s creator, Andrew Harris, at guildchronicles@gmail.com

© 2018