What preschoolers learn when they talk to teachers more

Talking to learn

In Tools classrooms, children use private speech as a learning tool, strengthening their memories and developing self-regulation. It’s one of many ways children talk to learn. Another way is through conversations they have with teachers and peers. Many teachers of young children try to connect individually with every child in their class each day. These one-on-one conversations have lots of benefits, including strengthening teacher-child relationships and creating a strong classroom culture through positive social interactions. If approached in a particular way, they can also do something more. They can be a powerful lever in advancing children’s oral language development.

Sonia Cabell, Associate Professor in the School of Teacher Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University, wants to get teachers and parents talking with children more–and in a very specific way–to develop children’s oral language skills, setting the stage for reading and writing proficiency. The benefits hinge on a simple tweak to conversations adults are already frequently having with children. 

The benefits of “multi-turn conversations”

Cabell recently published a book outlining guidance that teachers, families, and caregivers can use to make sure that the conversations they engage in with young children are productive, even if they are very short, and that they provide children with long-lasting benefits. The idea is to engage children in “multi-turn conversations.” And it’s an idea Cabell and others have been thinking about and researching for years. In 2013, Cabell was a co-author on a study that found that conversation complexity between teachers and preschoolers was bi-directional, meaning that both the child and the teacher adjusted the complexity of their statements to more closely match those of the other. In another study, a few years later, she found that when teacher professional development focused on strategies to support children in conversation, teachers used those strategies more, and children in their classrooms talked more and used more complex language than children whose teachers didn’t have the training. 

Making a change that matters

Cabell recently discussed her book and the research behind it in an interview with EdWeek. She recommends that one-on-one exchanges between teacher or caregiver and child contain a minimum of five “conversational turns,” or back-and-forths that allow a child more than one opportunity to actively participate in the conversation. This is an extension of the more typical 3-turn conversations that happen regularly in classrooms and follow a question-answer-confirmation format. For example:

Teacher: What kind of bird do you think this is?

Child: A bluebird.

Teacher: That’s right!

A version of this conversation with the recommended number of conversational turns (5) might sound like this:

Teacher: What kind of bird do you think this is?

Child: A bluebird.

Teacher: How can you tell?

Child: I see blue on its wings. 

Teacher: Interesting! You see blue on its wings, so you’re guessing it might be a bluebird. I wonder if any other birds have blue wing feathers?

In the second version of the interaction, the adult has the opportunity to do something that Tools teachers are very familiar with, scaffold the child’s learning. By listening to a child’s responses to open-ended questions, teachers get a window into the child’s understanding and can choose to extend the conversation to either support the child in better understanding the content or add additional challenge when a child is ready for more.

Opportunities for every child…especially in Tools classrooms!

By having short conversations like these with every child in the classroom each day, teachers can scaffold children’s learning equitably, ensuring that children who are more reluctant to engage in conversation can access the same benefits to their oral language skill development as their chattier classmates. These benefits include building their vocabularies and developing increasing complexity in the way they put sentences together (syntax). 

Tools children have many opportunities to engage in these conversational turns with both teachers and peers throughout the Tools day, and especially during the Make-Believe Play Block. As children engage in increasingly complex make-believe play, they are challenged to use role-specific speech and respond appropriately and flexibly to peers in other roles, developing not only their oral language skills, but their self-regulation as well. 

Tools Takeaways

• Tweaking one-on-one conversations with children to ensure children have at least two opportunities to respond can be a powerful lever in advancing oral language development.
• Teachers can use this conversational structure when scaffolding make-believe play.  
• Adult-child exchanges can be as short as one minute and still be effective.