The goal of this lesson, Follow-up comments and questions, is to teach your child to expand conversations by asking relevant, on-topic, follow-up comments and questions in response to a person’s previous statement. This lesson is important because it helps your child to maintain and expand a conversation and strengthens communication skills.

In order to get the most out of this lesson, the child should have mastered the following Conversation (Advanced) lessons:

Personal information

Simple statements

Follow-up questions

While visual cues can be helpful, this lesson is based on verbal interaction and requires no specific supporting materials.

Lesson guide

Data sheet

Glossary

In the lesson, Measuring exchanges, you will record the content and number of conversational exchanges that occur to measure your child’s increasing ability to maintain and sustain a relevant, on-topic conversation.

At this level, much of the teaching occurs naturally and is based upon the deficiencies noted when analyzing the data. For some children, it may become apparent that their primary difficulty is staying on topic; for others, they cannot maintain a conversation for longer than a few exchanges at a time; for others, they might have difficulty with interrupting their partner. This lesson seeks to measure and address each of these issues, as applicable.

Lesson guide

Data sheet

Glossary

This lesson, Simple statements, teaches conversation skills. The basic concept of verbal exchanges: when one person says something, then the other person replies. This reply should be a relevant, on-topic statement (or, later, question). Targets include: “I see____”, “I have_____”, “I like_______”, etc.

Use the downloadable PDFs below to get the most from this lesson:

Lesson guide

Data sheet

  Glossary