Supporting conversational growth visually
Beware the bouncing egg!!! Curious? Read on!
Often, after a holiday break, students come to group with lots they want to share. I love it when great material comes walking in the door! 🎉✨
As group started, I pulled up the question practice template from CPPEV and quickly set it up with their names and date. I explained that, since they had so much to talk about, we would practice being curious about each other’s info. 🤔💬 Although questions are not always part of a conversation, that conversational frame is something these students are working on. The entire activity took about eight minutes. Here’s the completed template:
I previewed the activity by saying that they would each get a turn to talk about their exciting news, and that the other two students would demonstrate their curiosity by asking two questions. 👀❓
We were off and running, with the first share about skiing! 🎿 The two students who were in the position of being curious (the question askers) aren’t skiers, but, with the help of the list of questions on the template, came up with great questions – “Do you ever get hurt?” and “When did you start skiing?”
The second topic was an amazing rubber ball shaped like a super realistic egg. 🥚 It had already been bounced around my office a bit. First question: “Where did you get it?“ Answer: “Good Earth” (a local grocery store). Second question: “How high have you ever bounced it?” For the answer, the egg holder stood up and bounced it as hard as he could. It careened around my office, bouncing loudly off my computer keyboard (yikes!! 😳), and almost broke the window. Great demo, but we did touch base on how a demo wasn’t exactly what the question had asked…
Third and final topic – the movie Sonic the Hedgehog 3. 🎬 The others hadn’t yet seen it. Great questions again: “How would you rate it?” and “Where did you see it?” We ended the work with a recap of how asking our friends about what they are interested in makes them feel good – and we might learn something interesting! I think two students were headed to Good Earth to acquire the bouncing egg… 😆
Why use the template instead of just telling them to ask each other questions? Well, it was helpful for these students to see what was being asked of them. They liked having the plus signs put on the screen when they asked a question – it showed them that they were moving through the task successfully. ✅ Also, these students definitely benefited from having the Questions “cue card” at the bottom of the template. In the moment, they just aren’t facile (yet) at remembering words that can start them on their way with a question. Having the list there meant that I did not have to cue verbally – they could help themselves, and supporting our students in finding what they need independently is always a plus. 💡 Of course, if they hadn’t needed it, one click quickly would have removed it.
Just one example from the Practice Activities in CPPEV. As a reminder, both the entire CPPEV 2.0 package and Just the Practice Activities (they’re available as a stand-alone product) each come with a helpful onboarding email sequence to get you started! Learn more.
Happy February! ❄️😊
