From the author: published in the collection "Rodnik School" First Steps." - Volgograd, Peremena, 1995. Orlyanskaya I.A., psychologist, Ivanova G.M., psychologist. Children's training group as one of the ways to develop a child's personality. Children come to school not only with different levels of school maturity, but also with different communicative readiness. Some had experience communicating with peers in preschool institutions, others did not. Not all children are ready to interact with classmates. This entails certain difficulties and problems both for the child himself and for those around him. We believe that in order to avoid this kind of problem, you need to teach your child to communicate. It is important to pay attention to the development of communication skills specifically at primary school age, since teaching a child the basics of communication will be the key to successful, effective communication in the future. Communication is one of the most important factors in overall mental development. By communicating, the child creates an image of another and at the same time gets to know himself, gets an idea of ​​himself, of some of his qualities and properties revealed in interaction. The developmental education system of academician L.V. Zankov, according to which our school operates, is aimed not only at teaching a child a certain set of necessary skills, but also at his overall development, especially the development of personality and creative thinking. The learning process is structured in such a way that “qualitatively transforms all aspects of the personality of a primary school student.” And one of the means of developing a child’s personality is psychological training. Kurt Lewin, the founder of the first training groups, argued that most effective changes in people’s attitudes and behavior occur in a group rather than in an individual context; therefore, in order to change something in oneself, to develop new forms of behavior, a person must learn to see himself as others see him. The training group creates opportunities for valuable personal change. Group activities can enhance individual communication skills. Children's development of communication skills during classes leads to increased sensitivity, self-affirmation, increased self-esteem, and development of self-esteem. The main goal of socio-psychological training - increasing competence in communication - is specified in a number of tasks related to the acquisition of communicative knowledge, skills and abilities. The work of the training group is distinguished by a number of specific principles: 1. principle of activity - in training, children are involved in specially designed actions: role-playing, doing exercises, observing the actions of others, etc.; 2. the principle of an exploratory creative position - during the training, children independently discover ideas, patterns, as well as their personal characteristics and capabilities;3. the principle of awareness of behavior - the psychologist creates conditions for effective feedback, children’s behavior is gradually transferred from impulsive to a conscious level, which entails the development of reflection; 4. the principle of partner communication - an atmosphere of safety and trust is created, which allows the child to experiment with his behavior without being embarrassed by mistakes. There are always two sides to the work of a training group - content and personal. Personal is understood as a group atmosphere, against the background of which meaningful events unfold, and the state of each participant individually. We see the main task of the training group as helping the child realize his individuality, creating conditions for his self-development through communication with other people, himself , the surrounding world. In addition, classes with a group allow the psychologist to study the child’s personality much more deeply and comprehensively, influencing the children’s attitude towards the world as a whole. Living in a group of fellow students, classes under the guidance of a psychologist, the need to subordinate one’s behavior to certain requirements leads to the fact that the child developsarbitrariness as a special quality of mental processes. When solving problems, performing exercises and assignments, the child faces the need to foresee the results of his actions, plan their order, and outline the means by which he can achieve the goal. This becomes possible with the development of the ability to plan and carry out actions on the internal plane. During classes, you constantly need the ability to analyze your actions, evaluate them: were they successful, did you manage to achieve your goal with their help? At the same time, the child’s self-esteem develops, which is an important regulator of his behavior. Relationships with others - adults and children, and attitudes towards successes and failures depend on it. Thus, by teaching a child to communicate effectively, we contribute to the faster formation of the above qualities in him. It is important for us to create conditions in which the child is not afraid to express himself: to create an optimal environment that brings to life flexibility, spontaneity of thinking and behavior of the child, developing “the ability to give a new answer to an old request and an adequate answer to a new one” (Ya. Moreno). In other words, the main goal of a psychologist’s work is to create a developmental environment. As an experiment, we developed a special training program, which was divided into two parts: the first part - communication training for the 1st half of the year - was aimed at developing children’s communication skills, the second was a discovery creative potential of every child. The program itself is based on the ideas of C. Rogers, A. Adler, T. Gordon, L. S. Vygotsky. One of the main ideas of the program is the idea of ​​self-actualization and personal growth of Carl Rogers, one of the leaders of humanistic psychology. He said: “We should not interfere with the development and growth of natural potential.” Conducting group meetings, he emphasized that communication with other people makes it possible to see one’s essence - by communicating, people understand themselves. When working with children, three main conditions necessary for development were taken into account (according to C. Rogers): unconditional acceptance of the child, regardless of his actions, experiences, etc., empathy as penetration into the world of the child’s emotions, congruence as an adequate expression of experiences and feelings in the process of communication. No less important is the theory of Alfred Adler, his ideas about compensation and overcompensation. “Every person is a genius,” Adler believes, “and only circumstances prevent the development of this genius.” The program included several areas of work: 1. intellectual (development of intellectual abilities, creativity); 2. socio-psychological (development of the ability to understand other people, adults and children, understanding oneself, increasing self-confidence); 3. emotional (differentiation of emotional subjective experience); 4. motivational - volitional (development of regulatory components of behavior). If in the first part of the program the development of communication skills was considered as the main aspect, then the second part was essentially creativity training[1]. According to the definition of the outstanding modern psychologist Erich Fromm, “Creativity is the ability to be surprised and cognize, the ability to find solutions in an unusual situation, a focus on discovering something new and the ability to deeply understand one’s experience.” All classes were structured in such a way that psycho-gymnastic exercises alternated with intellectual tasks and games - warm-ups. For example, as a psycho-gymnastic exercise, we offered children K. Rudestam’s game “Break into the Circle” [2], creative tasks like “On May 27, two flies flew into the barn. Every day the number of flies in the barn doubled, and on June 30 the barn was full of flies. On what date was the barn half full? (June 29)”, and as a warm-up - the game “Confusion” (Children stand in a circle. The leader goes out the door. Those standing in the circle “get confused” without separating their hands. The driver must “untangle” them, also trying not to separate their hands .) During the lesson, exercises are often given, in essence., 1991.