This thesis is based upon our experience as contact teachers in elementary school. We register that an increasing number of pupils experience major challenges concerning the ability of cooperation being a part of a social community with mutual rules and exercising self-control in various situations at school. In our work with young people, we focus the development of both academic and social skills. The purpose of this thesis was to develop an educational tool, a tool that should give each single teacher the opportunity to work preventively with the attitudes of the pupils. The tool we developed was named the HASS Model. The acronym HASS is formed by the (Norwegian) words for the skills politeness, responsibility, self-control and cooperation. Our objective was to conduct and document a systematic work with social skills in elementary school. The trial would provide a basis for establishing a common practice of systematic work in these skills in our own workplace. “How can class tutors and pupils work with social skills in elementary school?” We wanted other class tutors to conduct this evolving work in their own classes. The evaluation of the project is based on accumulated data from, student logs, observations, student forms and interviews, and this has given us an insight in what experiences pupils and teachers get from systematic teaching in social skills. After completing the third action of the project, the pupils were quite similar in their conclusion. They concluded that the class environment had improved and that teaching with social skills should continue, as they could see the benefit of what they had learned. Based on the feedback from the pupils, we chose to expand our work on the HASS model. In the next action, the aim was to give the pupils an opportunity to practice all the new knowledge in different arenas with different people. A bemused comment came forward in the last interview we conducted with teachers; «Social skills are also scarce in adults » The teacher's role is not easy to complement when we realize that we as adults not necessarily possess the same values and attitudes

Master i yrkespedagogikk