Right from the Start by Karin Donahue & KATE CRASSONS

Author:Karin Donahue & KATE CRASSONS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2019-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

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TEACHING CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS

Conversational skills are the basic building blocks of social interaction. It is virtually impossible to engage with other people successfully without possessing the ability to initiate and participate in reciprocal conversations. In this chapter we offer strategies that teach conversational skills to children on the spectrum who, as we have seen, often struggle with the unpredictable give-and-take of conversations.

WHOLE BODY LISTENING

Listening is a key component of conversational skills. “Whole body listening” is an important way to help children not only listen with their ears, but also to direct their faces, bodies, and minds toward the speaker (Winner, 2007). Encourage children to position their bodies (shoulders and torso) toward the listener and to look at the speaker’s face when talking with other people. Acknowledge that some people feel uncomfortable looking at another person’s eyes and tell children that they can look at the space between the person’s eyebrows if that feels better to them. This instruction gives children a way to focus on people’s faces without feeling anxious about having to make eye contact. Explain that faces give us a lot of information about people, including how they feel and what they might be thinking. Encourage the children to use their brains to think about what the speaker is saying. Also encourage the children to think of questions they want to ask that are related to the speaker’s topic.

Playing charades is a fun way to help children focus on body language. Children can practice their whole body listening while being entertained as others act out concepts and ideas. Charades emphasizes the importance of body language in a concrete way by foregrounding how it gives us essential information. In one version of the game, ask a child to make different facial expressions and have the other children guess what that person is feeling or thinking. This game also encourages social thinking and enables children to practice interpreting others’ intentions and emotions.

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