- Encourage Peer-to-Peer Conversations – Encouraging peer-to-peer interactions gives children the opportunity to interact and converse with one another. For example, if a child comes to you and says, “I want the red crayon,” you could redirect the child to the other child who has the red crayon. You could say, “Ask Brett, ‘May I use the red crayon when you are finished?’”
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- Promote Choice Making – There are many times throughout the day when you can offer choices of two or more objects to children. Some of these choices include materials during play activities or foods during snack time. Children are most likely to make a choice when a preferred object is presented with a non-preferred object. During snack time, you can offer a choice by saying, “Would you like the raisins or goldfish?” Then encourage the child to verbalize his/her choice. Keep in mind that children are more likely to communicate their desire for preferred objects.
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- Narrate Events – Narration is like being a commentator for a sports event heard over the radio. Your role as narrator is to talk about everything that the child is doing as if you were describing it to someone who is not in the room to see it. The goal of narration is to pair the child’s play and actions with the appropriate language. As a child repeatedly hears the words that go along with what he/she is doing, that child is more likely to use more productive language about his own play. For example, if children are in the block area, you can narrate by saying, “Look how Jimmy is taking the red block and placing it on the very top of the tower. Oh no! I think it’s going to fall! Crash!! The tower fell to the ground.”
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