Activities to focus attention on listening and Spoken

Language Skills
Students entering kindergarten come to school with varying levels of oral language
and communication skills. By age three, which is far before kindergarten begins,
children with typically developing language skills should be comfortable answering
common questions verbally and should not be relying on head nods or gestures as
their main form of communication. A child’s parents, family, and early educators and
caregivers have an important role in modeling good oral language during these
critical years. Here are some strategies to start of with:
Talk to them! Just like other skills, language is a practiced skill. Start by asking
children questions about their interests or their daily activities to initiate a
conversation. Open-ended questions that require more than one-word answers will
better hone their conversation skills and their vocabulary. When asking questions,
make sure you have the child’s attention, lower your voice, and be very clear about
what you are trying to communicate.

Be a good listener. Remember to be an active listener. Facial expressions, eye

contact and close proximity will convey your interest in what the child is saying,
which will encourage them to keep talking. Modeling how to be a good listener will
also help the child develop good listening skills. When talking to children, get down
to their level, make eye contact and ask open-ended questions, listen to their
opinions and show interest in what they are saying.
Help them learn new words. A bigger vocabulary helps children communicate
more, but it also helps them better understand what they hear or read. To help
children develop their phonological awareness:

• Read books together

• Teach rhymes, poems and songs
• Practice the alphabet by pointing out letters and emphasizing their names and
sounds
• Use language apps that emphasize the development of phonemic and
phonological awareness

Know when to seek extra support. If a child isn’t picking up oral language skills,
lacks interest in vocabulary exercises or has issues following directions, it may be
time to consult with an SLP. Children develop at different rates, so they may be
proficient in certain skills while lacking in others. An SLP can conduct assessments
to determine if the child has a skill deficiency or a diagnosable speech-language
disability.

• Use audio resources as part of your children’s regular activities. Audio

stories, songs, and listening games such as environmental sounds will all
help your children to develop listening skills.

● Plan regular listening activities into your week. There are a huge number of
games and ideas available to develop listening skills. However, simple ideas
such as Stop/Go games, Listening Moments or Musical Statues can all be
easily played without the need for expensive resources or props.

● Encourage children to listen to each other in different situations and to value

listening.

● Think about where you position your seat: the window or picture behind you
may prove to be too distracting.

● Sit children with listening difficulties directly in front of you. This way, you can
make eye contact easily and use their name to prompt their attention.

● Use ‘good listening’ prompts and create your own good listening rules.

● Regulate the group size to fit the needs of your children’s listening skills.
Children who struggle to listen will benefit from working within smaller groups.
 ● Encourage participation. If children are struggling to listen to a story, pause,
ask questions or ask them to find objects in a picture.

● Your environment can contribute to distractions: such things as hard floors

and traffic noise can add to the noise level.

● Create quiet areas, dens and hideaway spaces for children to spend quiet
moments.

● Have a basket of ‘fidget’ toys to hand. You can also use special cushions to
help a child stay in the same place.

Shared Conversation:

Children of all ages enjoy talking with the adults in their lives, including their
parents, teachers and caregiver. Talking is one of the most natural things we do
with the children in our care, sometimes even without thinking about doing int.
When we talk about our day, sit down to snack or lunch we can help build
important language skills through our conversation. Caregivers can do more
intentionally to build children’s oral language development. They can help
children build language skills both through their own language interactions with
children and by setting up an environment that gives children lots of reasons to
talk and things to talk about. One of the best ways that caregivers can help
children develop their oral language skills is through shared conversations with
them. Shared storybook reading provides an especially good platform for
conversations with children. These language interactions are the basis for
building children’s understading of the meaning of a large number of words,
which is a crucial ingredient in their ability to comprehend what they read.

Children need practice having conversations with the important adults in their
lives. By talking with preschool children, you can help children build speaking and
listening skills.

Talking with other people—using language to ask questions, to explain, to ask for
what they need, to let people know how they feel—is one of the important ways
that children build language and understanding. Learning to listen while others
talk is another important avenue for learning.
How Adults Talk with Children Matters
HOW caregivers talk with children is important. To help children develop strong oral
language skills, it’s important for caregivers to be sure that their language interactions
are the kinds that give children practice with the following things:

1. Hearing and using rich and abstract vocabulary

2. Hearing and using increasingly complex sentences

3. Using words to express ideas and to ask questions about things they don’t
understand

4. Using words to answer questions about things that are not just in the here-and-
now

Caregivers can do this by thinking about the ways they interact with the children in their
care. Who does most of the talking? Whose voices are heard the most in the classroom
or care setting? The child should be talking at least half the time instead of the teacher
or caregiver. There is a real difference between talking with children when the
conversation is shared and the caregiver listens versus talking at children where the
caregiver does all the talking and the children listen. What kind of language is the
caregiver using? Is it rich and complex? Does the caregiver ask children questions that
require children to use language to form and express abstract ideas?

TURN-TAKING. The richest talk involves many “back-and-forth” turns in which the
provider builds on and connects with the child’s statements, questions and responses.
These extended conversations help children learn how to use language and understand
the meaning of new words they encounter listening to other people or in reading books.
They also often involve different kinds of sentences—questions and statements—and
may include adjectives and adverbs that modify the words in children’s original
statements, modeling richer descriptive language.

For example, a child may start a conversation by showing

the caregiver a just-completed drawing:

Child: “Look, it’s me in the garden with my Grandma.”

Teacher: (builds on the child’s statement and asks a question that encourages the
child to continue), “Yes, I see. Your grandmother is holding something in her
hand. What is it?”

Child: “It’s carrots. We planted the seeds together. Grandma told me how to put
the seeds in the dirt, but not touching each other.”

Teacher: (asks a question that encourages the child to use language to express an
abstract thought) “What would happen if the seeds did touch each other when
you planted them?”
The caregiver could then continue by talking with the child about plants and how
they grow from seeds, and what needs to be done to keep a garden growing.
Extending the conversation back-and-forth allows the caregiver to introduce new
concepts and helps children build language knowledge as well as learn how to
express their own ideas in words.

ONE-ON-ONE. Talking one-on-one gives the provider a chance to repeat (say

back), extend (add to), and revise (recast or restate) what children say. Children
have a chance to hear their own ideas reflected back. In addition, one-on-one
conversations provide opportunities to either contextualize the conversation
according to the individual child’s understanding or tap children’s understanding
of abstract concepts. Caregivers should try to hold individual conversations with
children each day.
Some good times for one-on-one conversations are arrival and departure (if
children arrive or leave at different times), center time, and during shared reading
with one or two children.

DESCRIPTION. Narrating children’s activities is a way for caregivers to not only

introduce new vocabulary but also encourages deeper understanding of new
words so they can begin to define and explain the meaning of these words.
Narrating also introduces and illustrates sentence structures. Verbs, prepositions
(such as for communicating direction, location), adverbs (such as for
characterizing intensity), and generally the kind of labeling that places new words
immediately in a natural context (because the objects or actions are present or
occurring at that moment). Describe what children are doing while they are doing
it. Talk with children during formal activities and in informal settings, such as
snack, clean up, outdoor playtime. Follow up with conversation about what
children did during the activities.
For example, the care provider is helping a child mix the paints for finger
painting. While the child is mixing, the teacher describes what the child is doing:
“Now you’re putting the powder into the cup filled with water. I see how the water
is turning the color of the powder. You’re stirring the mixture with the popsicle
stick so that the water and powder mix. Good job!
SUPPORTING CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF THE MEANING OF
MANY WORDS
Use rich vocabulary and support children in developing a deep
understanding of the meaning of words—providing multiple definitions and
examples, connecting new words with concepts children already know.
For example, as part of a science experiment in a real life preschool
classroom, the teacher is introducing a new concept, “absorption.” The
teacher is demonstrating the words absorb and repel by showing how a
paper towel absorbs water and a plastic lid repels it.
Teacher: “What do you see happening to the water?”

Child: “The water’s going into the paper.”

Teacher: “How is the water going into the paper?”

Child: “It’s soaking it up.”

Teacher: “It is soaking it up! Another word we use to say this is absorb. The
paper is absorbing the water and holding it the same way a sponge does.
How much water do you think I could pour onto the paper and it would still
be absorbed?”
Child: “Well, some of the water is already leaking out.

So maybe not any more.”

Teacher: “Let’s see what happens when we pour

water on the plastic. Does it absorb it?”

Child: “No! It’s sliding off.”

Teacher: “That’s right. The plastic repels the

water. It slides off just like your said.”

What can we learn from this teacher? The teacher is using this experience
as both a science and an oral language building experience. Questions are
being used to engage the child in conversation, and new vocabulary words
are being introduced—such as “absorb” and “repel”— to describe the
actions taking place, and relating the new words to something (the sponge)
that the child already knows about while providing information to deepen
the child’s understanding of the meaning of these words.

Children need reasons to talk and interesting things to talk about

How can caregivers make time for talking and include it in their day? How
do caregivers get good conversations going?
Think about the “talk times” during the day. Caregivers spend a lot of time
talking to and with children about rules and schedules. This is talking at
children and should be limited. That leaves talking with children time, and a
good place to start this is to talk about what the child is doing and things
that interest the child. By basing conversations with children on activities
and ideas that are of interest to the children themselves, caregivers can
help children practice expressing ideas and requesting information through
conversations throughout the day.
Setting up classroom and learning environments that encourage children to
use complex and interesting vocabulary and concepts help provide children
with the information needed for understanding the meaning of what they
will be asked to read. Environments that support a variety of types of child
language are optimal.
PERSONAL CONTENT Children like to talk about themselves (where they
got their new shoes, what their favorite color is) or about what they are
doing (what they are building with blocks, what they are making with Play-
Doh). Children will talk about things that are familiar to them and that draw
on their knowledge (family activities, playing with friends and neighbors). In
the example below, the caregiver asks a child about the structure she is
building but also takes the opportunity to recast the child’s statements
(adding a specific term, animal hospital; correcting by restating, in the
ambulance with the siren going) and to extend (by restating in a complete
sentence):
 Teacher: “What in the world are you making with those blocks,
Susan?”

Child (Susan): “It’s a place for sick animals.”

Teacher: “An animal hospital?”

Susan: “Yeah, this cow got hurt and the dogs brought him in the
siren.”

Teacher: “Oh my goodness, they brought her in the ambulance with

the siren going? What’s happening now?”

STORYTELLING When children can tell stories about their own lives, they
try out new vocabulary, use language to organize thinking, and exercise
their imaginations. The caregiver’s role is often to build on children’s ideas,
add new words, and model sentence structure by posing questions and
elaborating or extending what children say. For example:

Teacher: What did you do at your sister’s birthday party on Saturday?

Child: We had a piñata and some cake with [gestures]…

Teacher: With candles on it?

Child: Yeah, with candles. And also, we could use

those to start a fire if you aren’t careful.

Teacher: Right, what might happen if you weren’t careful?

Child: It could catch fire…

NEW INFORMATION Introducing new and stimulating experiences

(interesting objects, field trips) encourages talk about topics with rich,
interesting content. Children are more likely to have extended
conversations if they are talking about topics that stimulate their thinking. In
addition, talking about past and future experiences—experiences that are
not occurring here and now—is a crucial skill for children; it develops their
capacity for abstract thinking.

Teacher: Who remembers what we saw at the construction site?

Boy 1: There was a giant crane.

Boy 2: But not the animal, the truck.

Teacher: The construction vehicle, that kind of crane?

Boys 1&2: Yeah. It was HUGE!

Teacher: What was it doing?

Boy 2: It was picking up a big thing.

Teacher: Yes, it’s called an I-beam? Why do you think it’s called that?

Boy 1: Maybe because it looks like the letter I—it’s long

and skinny and has those short pieces on the ends.

Teacher: I think that’s right. What do you think they need an I-beam for?

PLAY Taking on new roles in play and performance provides the

opportunity to use language in new ways through songs, plays, show-and-
tell, dramatic play.
For example, two children in the dramatic play area are pretending to be at
an office. They use specific vocabulary words with each other about an
office, such as “computer,” “printer,” “Xeroxing.”