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One Step at a Time: Presentation 5
CONVERSATION SKILLS
Introduction
Initial Screen
Skills Checklist
Classroom Intervention
Lesson Planning
Teaching Method
Vocabulary Work
Monitoring Progress
Moving On
Links to Literacy
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Conversation Skills
INTRODUCTION
Conversation Skills
is a programme for developing children’s ability to talk easily and fluently with adults and other children, as a way of developing the language skills they need for literacy and other aspects of the early school curriculum
It is intended for children aged 3 to 4 and is expected to take about a year to complete
Some children of this age, and possibly older, are not ready for systematic work on their conversation skills and should do Getting Started first
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Conversation Skills
INTRODUCTION
Conversation is the most basic of all language skills. It is:
how we learn to talk
a basic social skill
the basis of all teaching and learning
especially teaching and learning spoken language
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Conversation Skills
INTRODUCTION
Conversation is more than just talk. Children need to be able to:
make social contact with other people
respond to them, and take turns as speaker and listener
follow and keep to a topic, or change it appropriately
help others understand what they mean
start and end a conversation appropriately
Children also need to be able to use conversation in different contexts, and for different purposes.
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Conversation Skills
INTRODUCTION
Many children entering early years education have very limited conversation skills.
They may not have sufficient skills for systematic work on conversation, and will need to work through Getting Started first.
These are children who are nottalking frequently and spontaneously to other peoplejoining words together in most of their utterances
There may be more of these children than you expect!
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Conversation Skills
INITIAL SCREEN
The Initial Screen helps staff to
‘tune-in’ to the relevant skills at this level of the programme
identify children’s current development of these skills
determine the amount of support they are likely to need.
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Conversation Skills
INITIAL SCREEN
The Initial Screen identifies children as:
Competent: they seem to be acquiring these skills without too much difficulty and are not expected to need special attention
Developing: they seem to be slower in acquiring these skills and are likely to need some assistance and monitoring.
Delayed: they seem to be having difficulty in acquiring these skills and are likely to need more intensive support and monitoring.
Getting Started: they lack basic skills and need to do Getting Started first.
These groupings are intended to be flexible and are likely to change in the course of a term or year.
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Conversation Skills
INITIAL SCREEN
While children are settling into their new environment, staff can be observing them informally in a variety of situations, focusing on the behaviours to be assessed
Working together wherever possible, staff complete the initial screen for each child separately
A behaviour should only be credited if a child is using it confidently, competently and consistently. If there is any doubt or disagreement, the behaviour should not be credited
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Conversation Skills
INITIAL SCREEN
The initial screen has three bands. Children are assessed band by band:
If they do not have all the behaviours in Band 1, they do not need to be assessed on Band 2
If they do not have all the behaviours in Band 2, they do not need to be assessed on Band 3
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Conversation Skills
INITIAL SCREEN
Children who lack either behaviour in Band 1 should do Getting Started instead
Children who have both behaviours in Band 1 but lack any of the behaviours in Band 2 are identified as Delayed, even if they have some of the behaviours in Band 3
Children who have all the behaviours in Bands 1 and 2 but lack any of the behaviours in Band 3 are identified as Developing
Children who have all the behaviours in all three bands are identified as Competent
The Delayed and Getting Started groups may include some children with special needs but should not be thought of a special needs groups
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Conversation Skills
SKILLS CHECKLISTS
Conversation Skills has three checklists (one checklist divided into three term-sized chunks):
Early Conversation Skills
Further Conversation Skills
Additional Conversation Skills
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Conversation Skills
SKILLS CHECKLISTS
Each checklist identifies three or four general skills, sub-divided into separate behaviours or sub-skills
Skills and behaviours are listed in rough developmental order as a guide to intervention
Children normally work through each checklist in sequence, one
skill at a time, but teaching of different behaviours will often overlap
Every child and every behaviour needs to be assessed and monitored separately
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Conversation Skills
CLASSROOM INTERVENTION
Conversation skills are taught primarily through small-group work, supported by whole-class activities and informal interaction with individual children
The checklists set teaching objectives for all children on a rolling basis, while the initial screens determine the amount of support needed for each child
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Conversation Skills
CLASSROOM INTERVENTION: Small-Group Work
Children are assigned to small teaching groups on the basis of the initial screen. If possible, each group should be no more than six children, and should always work with the same adult
Children identified as Delayed should receive at least one small-group teaching session every day
Children identified as Developing should receive two or three small-group teaching sessions a week
Children identified as Competent should receive at least one small-group teaching session a week, for as long as they need it
Each teaching session should be 10 to 15 minutes long16
Conversation Skills
CLASSROOM INTERVENTION: Whole-Class Work
There should be at least one whole-class activity every day focusing on the skills and behaviours currently being worked on
This need not be a separate ‘conversation lesson’; it can be incorporated into any familiar classroom activity
Other whole-class activities can be used to support current learning, at any time, several times a day
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Conversation Skills
CLASSROOM INTERVENTION: Informal Interaction
All children, especially children identified as Delayed, should have at least one personal conversation with an adult every day
A list of the skills and behaviours currently being worked on should be displayed prominently and given to parents, so everyone can use it to guide their interaction with individual children
All staff and other adults should be encouraged to use every available opportunity to practise these skills with children individually
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Conversation Skills
CLASSROOM INTERVENTION: Informal Interaction
Encouraging Talk in Young Children
Use the context as content
Comment, reflect, expand
Talk with, not at
Be personal
Allow time
Take care with questions
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Conversation Skills
LESSON PLANNING
The skills checklists provide learning and teaching objectives for all children
Suggestions for appropriate activities are given in the Notes to each checklist
It is not usually necessary to plan separate activities or prepare special materials: almost any familiar activity can be used, and any materials needed should already be available in the classroom
As well as allocating times for small-group or other language work, staff should also identify some activities every day where current learning can be consolidated
Longer-term planning needs to be flexible, allowing time for groups to go back and repeat any work they have found difficult
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Conversation Skills
TEACHING METHOD
Parents normally teach their children spoken language (usually without realising they are doing it) by:
Highlighting: drawing attention to a word or behaviour by indicating or emphasising it
Modelling: providing an example for the child to copy
Prompting: encouraging him to respond, directing him towards an appropriate response
Rewarding: rewarding any appropriate response with praise and further encouragement
Staff should use the same techniques, but use them explicitly and systematically.
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Conversation Skills
VOCABULARY WORK
Vocabulary is crucial for children’s progress through school but is too large to teach systematically in any detail
Vocabulary work is an optional element in Conversation Skills and should not be introduced until children and staff are thoroughly familiar with skills teaching
Conversation Skills includes a Vocabulary Wordlist of 100 essential words selected from the vocabulary of properties and relations and the vocabulary of feelings and emotion
This Wordlist is intended to be supplemented with essential topic vocabulary
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Conversation Skills
VOCABULARY WORK
Staff can start by selecting 3 or 4 words from the Vocabulary Wordlist, and 4 or 6 items of essential topic vocabulary from the current curriculum, to provide 6 to 10 words for explicit teaching as ‘this week’s special words’
These words can be varied week by week, phasing some words out and some new ones in, and returning from time to time to any words that have proved difficult
This will ensure that all children are exposed to the relevant vocabulary, but will not ensure that every child does in fact know them
Some children may need detailed vocabulary work in small groups, using vocabulary checklists to assess and monitor their individual learning
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Conversation Skills
MONITORING PROGRESS
Each child is monitored separately using the checklists. As each child acquires a behaviour it gets ticked off on the checklist
A behaviour should only be credited when the child is using it confidently, competently and consistently. If there is any doubt about a behaviour, it should not be credited
Staff need to ensure that each behaviour has been properly consolidated, and should return later to any items that have proved difficult, to confirm that previous learning has been retained
It is always more important that children consolidate basic skills than that they move on to more advanced ones
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Conversation Skills
MOVING ON
Each group normally keeps working on the same skill until everyone has learnt all the relevant behaviours, but it may sometimes be better to move on to another skill and come back again later, or to reorganise teaching groups
Each group can go at its own pace through the checklist but staff should wait until all groups have completed that checklist before proceeding to the next checklist
Special arrangements may have to be made for children or groups who are having particular difficulty
Each checklist is expected to take about a term to complete
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Conversation Skills
LINKS TO LITERACY
Fluency in conversation supports reading and writing. Conversation:
expands children’s vocabulary
extends their sentences
improves their understanding
adds to the content of what they can talk and think about This will help them:
follow the meaning when they are decoding written script
identify or anticipate unfamiliar words from sounds or meanings
express themselves in coherent sentences and narratives
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Conversation Skills
LINKS TO LITERACY
At this age children should also be developing:
an awareness and understanding of reading, by listening to stories and looking at and talking about picture books
their auditory and phonic skills, by learning songs and nursery rhymes, and learning to march or clap in time to music
their visual-motor skills, by learning how to sort shapes and use simple craft tools
an awareness and understanding of writing, becoming aware of its different uses and starting to show an interest in ‘writing’ themselves.
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