Application Activity

Observe a live or videotaped interaction between an adult and a child. Divide students into three or four small groups. Distribute a handout containing the verbal prompts listed below. Ask the students to identify the prompts the teacher used to scaffold the interaction.

1. General statements that help the child focus on the task (e.g., "Oh, look at this.")
2. Elicitation questions that invite the child to give a response (e.g., "What's happening?")
3. Sentence completion tasks, in which the child has to provide the last word of the adult's sentence (e.g., "Jose is riding his" [pause].)
4. Indirect models, in which the adult invites the child to repeat a model in a naturalistic, indirect manner (e.g., "Jose is riding his bike. What's Jose doing?")
5. Direct models in which the adult waits for the child to spontaneously imitate an utterance (e.g., "Dog run" [pause])
6. Direct models plus an elicitation question by which the adult asks the child directly to imitate an utterance ("Dog run. Tell me dog run.")
7. Shaping, in which the adult breaks down an utterance into smaller components for the child to imitate (e.g., "Dog. Tell me, 'dog.'" [pause] "Tell me, 'run.'" [pause] "Tell me, "Dog run.'")