Conversation Skills: Building Language for Literacy

1. One Step at a Time: Presentation 5CONVERSATION SKILLS Introduction Initial Screen Skills Checklist Classroom Intervention Lesson Planning Teaching Method Vocabulary Work Monitoring Progress Moving On Links to Literacy

2. Conversation SkillsINTRODUCTION 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

3. Conversation SkillsINTRODUCTION 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

4. Conversation SkillsINTRODUCTION 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.

5. Conversation SkillsINTRODUCTION 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 not • talking frequently and spontaneously to other people • joining words together in most of their utterances There may be more of these children than you expect!

6. Conversation SkillsINITIAL 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.

7. Conversation SkillsINITIAL 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.

8. Conversation SkillsINITIAL SCREEN

9. Conversation SkillsINITIAL 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

10. Conversation SkillsINITIAL 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

11. Conversation SkillsINITIAL 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

12. Conversation SkillsSKILLS CHECKLISTS Conversation Skills has three checklists (one checklist divided into three term-sized chunks): • Early Conversation Skills • Further Conversation Skills • Additional Conversation Skills

13. Conversation SkillsSKILLS CHECKLISTS

14. Conversation SkillsSKILLS 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

15. Conversation SkillsCLASSROOM 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

16. Conversation SkillsCLASSROOM 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 long

17. Conversation SkillsCLASSROOM 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

18. Conversation SkillsCLASSROOM 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

19. Conversation SkillsCLASSROOM 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

20. Conversation SkillsLESSON 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

21. Conversation SkillsTEACHING 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.

22. Conversation SkillsVOCABULARY 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

23. Conversation SkillsVOCABULARY 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

24. Conversation SkillsMONITORING 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

25. Conversation SkillsMOVING 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

26. Conversation SkillsLINKS 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

27. Conversation SkillsLINKS 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.