This document provides an overview of the Conversation Skills program which aims to develop children's conversation abilities from ages 3-4. It includes an initial screen to assess children's skills, checklists of conversation behaviors to target, and guidance on classroom interventions including small group work, whole class activities, and informal interactions. Teachers are advised to use highlighting, modeling, prompting, and rewarding to explicitly teach conversation skills. Progress is monitored using the checklists. Developing strong conversation skills lays the groundwork for literacy and school success.

1. 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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2. 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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3. 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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4. 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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5. 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 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!
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6. 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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7. 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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8. Conversation Skills
INITIAL SCREEN
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9. 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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10. 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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11. 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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12. 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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13. Conversation Skills
SKILLS CHECKLISTS
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14. 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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15. 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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16. 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 long
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17. 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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18. 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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19. 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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20. 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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21. 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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22. 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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23. 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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24. 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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25. 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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26. 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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27. 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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