Hastening slowly on classroom-based conversational skills teaching: A commentary on Abbot-Smith et al., 2023

The focus of classroom instructional time continues to be debated among educators, policy makers, academics and health professionals such as speech-language therapists. In this commentary, we emphasise the importance of reserving precious instructional time for developing children’s biologically sec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	First language Vol. 43; no. 6; pp. 655 - 659
Main Authors:	Snow, Pamela C., Weadman, Tessa A., Serry, Tanya A.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London, England SAGE Publications 01-12-2023 Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects:	Child language Children Classroom communication Conversation Medical personnel Native language instruction Reading instruction Speech-language pathologists Spelling instruction Writing instruction pedagogy Conversational skills child language Response to Intervention discourse
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	The focus of classroom instructional time continues to be debated among educators, policy makers, academics and health professionals such as speech-language therapists. In this commentary, we emphasise the importance of reserving precious instructional time for developing children’s biologically secondary skills such as reading, writing and spelling. We argue that maintaining a focus on these core curriculum areas is critical. We advise against committing Tier 1 classroom time to conversational skills at the current time, due to the paucity of research evidence to support this. We propose an alternative model for including conversational skills in classroom practice, through the application of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, and in particular, Response to Intervention.
ISSN:	0142-7237 1740-2344
DOI:	10.1177/01427237231200443