Getting Children to Talk

From: Teaching Activities for Children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing: A Practical Guide for Teachers
The Moog Center For Deaf Education

You can encourage children to talk by the way activities are designed. Withholding materials and keeping supplies out of reach encourage children to ask for items that they need or at least verbalize to elicit a response.

Asking open-ended questions like “What happened?” are best for getting children to express ideas and thoughts or feelings. Other questions can be “Where did you get that?” or “You went to your aunt’s house. Tell me about that.” Leading questions take away a simple “yes” or “no” answer and encourage the child to talk more.

The key is that “children talk when teachers listen.”

The Importance of Conversation
Conversational activities are designed by the teacher to practice selected language targets in the context of an interactive activity. The materials are introduced and selected to stimulate the children to talk and to use the language structures the teacher has identified for practice.

Practicing language in conversational activities serves as a bridge between the lesson and the spontaneous use of those language forms. The activities are guided by the teacher as she has pre-planned the language of the activity to ensure the practice of specific targets. Children are encouraged to relate their own ideas and experiences while the teacher helps them use targeted language to do so. Learning to talk is best learned in situations in which the child is talking and wants to communicate.

Examples of Conversational Activities:
Experiences, Chart Stories, Sentence Cards, Show & Tell, and Sequence Stories

These lessons lead to really talking.

Really Talking
Instruction at this level means that the teacher capitalizes on everyday events, conversations and communications that occur naturally as opportunities to teach syntax. These real-life situations offer the child the most meaningful context for learning spoken language and therefore, for many children, these are situations in which the child learns quickly how to improve what he is saying, integrates the corrections and carries it over to other situations.

Every time the child talks, the teacher is presented with a “teachable moment.” As the teacher listens carefully to what the child says and how he says it, she is likely to identify something to improve in the child’s production.

Lesson Examples and Ideas

Vocabulary Lessons: teacher should make them interesting and fun, creating games that get the children to practice new words without realizing how hard they are working.

• Should last about 20 minutes and include both receptive and expressive practice.
• Can be done in small groups. Taking turns and paying attention is expected. Keeping a fast pace where each child gets a turn quickly keeps them interested allowing each child to get many turns.
• Lessons are done either at a table or on the floor, with a routine.
• Child identifies a picture or an object or performs an action as the teacher names the item or gives directions. Then the child names the item or picture and/or imitates the teacher model. Teacher provides immediate feedback concerning if the response is correct and you can connect the correct response with a game. The child gets to move one space, put a puzzle piece in, put an x or o in a tic-tac-toe square.
• Examples: Put a block on the picture card that was said, turn over the picture card named, Play a lotto or bingo game with different pictures on it, cover up the picture that was said, simple puzzles with individual pieces like animals, toys, clothing. Child can take the pieces out or put them back in when named, while playing Memory when the child gets a match he needs to name the match.
• Switch roles having the child “be the teacher” and the lesson becomes an expressive task.

Syntax Lessons: An activity designed to provide a lot of repetitive, focused practice with selected targeted structures in a short period of time. Usually short, lasting 10-15 minutes. Can be done in small groups.

• Toys, pictures, games, books or just about any material can be used for a syntax lesson. It can also be incorporated into content areas such as science, social studies, math, and reading, a “guess what‘s in the bag activity” can be done.
• Teacher can make a dog run, walk, or jump to represent a sentence. A horse and a table can use prepositions on, around, and over.
• Using picture cards spread around the room, “Get the card that is under the table. Get the card that is on the window…”

Example Lesson:
Language Level: simple sentences of 3 or more words
Target:

What is in the box?
Is it a _____?
No, it is not a ____.

T: What is in the box?
Child: It a pig.
T: Is it a pig?
Child: Is it a pig?
T: No, it is not a pig.
Child: Horse?
T: Is it a horse?
Child: Is it a horse?
T: Yes, it is a horse! Now, Lucy, it’s your turn.

Conversational Activities

Language Experiences: A hands-on activity or experience that is designed to get children to talk and to provide practice producing specific targeted language as they participate in doing something fun and interesting.

• Activities like food, art activities, pretend activities, holiday or seasonal activities, games
• The activity is the vehicle through which the teacher encourages the children to practice language.
• Language experiences provide opportunities for the child to: express wants and needs (I want a ___), protesting or rejecting (No, I don’t want to.), asking for information (What is in the bag?), transferring (Here, you can have the yellow crayon.), giving directions (Put a big nose on the clown.), expressing opinions, feelings (This tastes good.), asking for help or permission (Will you help me fold this?), predicting or speculating (I think the paper clip will float.), explaining a problem (Joey broke my truck.)
• Should last 20 to 30 minutes.
• New vocabulary can be pre-taught and then it should be used as it comes up naturally throughout the lesson and the teacher should create opportunities to reinforce and provide chances for the children to use the words also.
• Teacher labels what she does and gets the children to label what they do, want to do, or have done.
• Some ideas: making chocolate milk, washing dishes, making a craft, dressing up, making fruit salad, pretend play at a grocery shop, beauty shop, kitchen play, planting flower, measuring how tall you are.
• Good to begin with the materials and supplies hidden, tell them what you are going to make and have them guess and predict what you need for the experience.
• Create a chart story, sequence cards or sentence cards about the experience. They provide language practice, vocabulary work, can be used for auditory work through listening alone, comprehension practice.
• The charts or cards can be made into games: lay out 3 or 4 on the floor, teacher reads a card and the child throws a bean bag on the card that was read, teacher holds several cards and fans them out in her hand, child picks one to read then puts it under his chair, hide the cards around the room-take turns finding the cards and reading them out loud, can be laced together to make a book when finished with several repetitions to be visited later.