Increasing Opportunities for Students to Talk & Think

In this video, two teachers discuss the benefits of letting children talk, both with each other and with the adults in the classroom. It is good for children to be able to talk about their thinking, at school and at home. In this clip, one teacher describes how children's conversation about building a structure in the block area helped them think through what made a block structure stand or contributed to its collapse.

  • Think about your child's play and work. How can you help her/him have interesting conversations with you and other children? What are they are doing? What they are thinking about?
  • When your child asks questions, work with him/her to figure out how to answer them. Help them look at books, predict or suggest hypotheses and then try things out.
  • READ, READ, READ. Books, both fiction and non-fiction, open up endless possibilities to talk about feelings, life experiences, shapes, letters, weather, animals, transportation etc.