Conversation Board

This teaching material aims to provide a visual cue to remind student what conversational skills they should use when talking to others.

Teaching Objectives:

1. Teach conversational strategies
2. Develop a means for social interaction, making and sustaining friendships
3. Teach students to attend and respond to verbal input of others

Prerequisites:

1. Basic responsiveness to others’ initiations
2. Able to answer variety types of questions (Yes/No, statement-statement, negative statement & reciprocal, etc.)
3. Able to ask different WH-questions (Who? What? Where? When?)
4. Able to make comments

How to use this material:

1. Put the written prompt card in front of the student and initiate a conversation that student might be interested in or familiar with.
2. At the beginning phase, you may prime the student to use the skills in the written prompt card.
3. Put a sticker or a tick next to that particular elements when student displayed the skill, for example, put a tick next to commenting when the student said “It’s cool”.

Teaching Tips:

1. Students need not to use the written prompt card in a specific order. Parents and teachers should randomise the three elements each time to avoid forming conversation patterns and rote responses.
2. Topic and Questions should be age-appropriate, and the type of questions that peers would ask.
3. Responses should also be age-appropriate. Peers usually say “Okay” instead of “Fine, thank you” when someone asked “How are you today?”.
4. It is common to see some students mainly use one type of conversational skills (e.g. keep asking questions without making any comments). Parents or teachers should point to the element where there is no tick or sticker in the check box to remind them to give more comments.
5. It is essential to develop other pivotal social skills (e.g. observational skills, social interaction and social awareness). Simply put, emphasis on becoming more SOCIAL!!!!