About this activity
Eight social errors with a repair to find: you interrupted, what's the repair; your joke landed badly, what do you say; you misread a text and replied angrily, how do you fix it; you forgot someone's name mid-introduction; you said something private in front of the wrong people; you cancelled last minute again, what does a real repair sound like. The errors are ordinary and the repairs are specific.
How to use it in a session
Ask for the words, not the principle. Apologise is not a repair; sorry, I cut you off — go on is. The distinction matters because students usually know they should repair and have no phrase to do it with. The cancelled-again card is the hardest, since a repeated failure needs a repair that acknowledges the pattern rather than the incident. Fifteen minutes covers the eight with actual phrases produced.
What to listen for
Listen for over-apologising. A repair that turns into a lengthy explanation makes the other person manage the student's discomfort, which is worse than a short one. Watch the forgotten-name item, which most students think is unrecoverable and which has a perfectly good repair — asking directly is normal and everyone does it.
Carrying it home
Real incidents supply the material. Asking what could be said now, rather than what went wrong, points the conversation forward and is more useful than an analysis.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Sixth through twelfth grade, where social errors carry real consequences and repairs are rarely taught.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all eight scenarios play with no account.
- Why teach repairs rather than avoiding the error?
- Because everyone makes these errors. What separates a recoverable moment from a lasting one is having a phrase ready, and students who have none tend to withdraw instead.