Teaching Conversation Skills

Developing good conversation skills is both one of the most helpful and the most difficult skills you can help your children acquire. You can help your children become better conversationalists and at the same time brush up on your skills as well. Here are some you and your children can do together.

Practice contributing to discussions by:

• Looking at the people who are talking.
• Waiting for a point when no one else is talking.
• Making a short, appropriate comment that relates to the topic being discussed.
• Choosing works that will not be offensive or confusing to others.
• Giving other people a chance to talk.

Practice keeping the conversation going by:

• Maintaining a relaxed but attentive posture. Nod your head to give ongoing encouragement.
• Asking follow-up questions that pertain to what the other person has just said.
• Avoiding fidgeting, looking away or yawning.
• Not interrupting
• Taking turns in the conversation and saying excuse me when interruption of others occurs

Closing the conversation by:

• Changing topics only when everyone appears to be finished talking about a particular issue.
• Changing to a topic that somehow relates to the previous one.
• Allowing everyone a chance to talk about the current topic.
• Waiting for a comfortable break in the conversation to leave.

For this and other tips for parents go to:

www.boystownpediatrics.org/ParentingTips/Pages/TeachingChildrenConversationSkills.aspx

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent-Teacher conferences for the second trimester will be held February 28-March 3rd. Mrs. DeYoung will be sending home conference letters this week. Parents who did not meet with Mrs. DeYoung after the first trimester are encouraged to schedule a meeting. The conference schedule forms need to be returned by Monday February 28th, or parents may contact Mrs. DeYoung at mdyoung@ccsd66.org, or call (630)783-5157 to set an appointment.

Using Prefixes

Some of the fourth and fifth graders at Prairieview are reviewing prefixes as a strategy to discover meanings of unfamiliar words. We are learning these prefixes:

Prefixes
Prefix

ir, il, im, in, un means not
aqua, means water
uni means one
bi means two
tri means three
pre means before
post means after
multi means many
co, con, com means with, together
inter means between
re means again
geo means earth, land
sub means below
dis means opposite
trans means across
mis means wrong