This week, I’d like to highlight the newest in our line of conversational lessons: Teen Talk: Social Squares, featuring our new teen characters. As a language task, this fun game is a powerful way to practice asking and answering yes/no questions. This lesson is well-suited to Learners who already know how to ask and answer questions and are working on how to pose social questions to new acquaintances, and yet, it is also a powerful vehicle for those who are practicing question formulation. Here are a couple of thoughts on pre-teaching that might be helpful for some Learners as well as a post-Floreo follow up activity. 

Before starting this lesson, consider how well your Learner is able to formulate questions. If your Learners have difficulty with this, I suggest a classic resource: “Teaching Kids of All Ages to Ask Questions”, by Marilyn Toomey as a pre-Floreo activity. This book was initially published back in 1994, but the strategy holds up, even after all these years. The book includes a wealth of resources, but centers around a strategy of taking a declarative sentence, writing each individual word on an index card, and then inverting the word order to formulate a question. For example, the declarative statement, “Brandon is jumping,” would be adjusted to become the question, “Is Brandon jumping?” The book covers “WH” question words (what, who, when, etc.,), negative questions (e.g., “Didn’t you have a ticket?”) and a variety of verb tenses. In preparation for the Social Squares lessons, the Learner would need to start by knowing how to ask “yes/no” questions, using verbs such as  “is/are” and “do/does”. 

While playing the Social Squares lesson, the Learner needs to respond to questions also. Many of the questions posed by the teenagers in the scene are asked as yes/no questions, but, in social situations, the responder often adds a few more details or qualifiers to the response.  The teens also spiced it up a bit with the occasional choice question, or ‘WH” question as well. The Toomey book may also be helpful in teaching students to answer questions, first as a factual statement. As they progress, they could add some additional personal information. 

After completing the lesson, try playing this game with your Learners in real life. Make up your own game boards with getting-to-know-you questions. This lesson would work really well with a small group. If it is just you and your Learner, it might be a short game, but you can still ask each other questions. Also, consider who else you can recruit to field a yes/no question. If your Learners are practicing writing e-mail, they could reach out to the contacts to get a quick response from their family and friends. In the Floreo game, the Learner needs to find people who respond in the affirmative. ("I do like burritos." Or "Swimming is one of my favorite sports.") When receiving responses, the Learner would need to know how to interpret a response as an affirmative or a negative response in order to mark the game board. 

This new lesson brings quite a bit of new functionality to the Floreo-verse. Students have agency to decide who they talk to next, how many conversational turns to have  with that character and what type of question they ask. For more details on this lesson, check out the quick video: Floreo Fireside Chat Teen Talk Social Squares where Floreo's Director of Customer Success Heather Manning and Director of Therapy Content Marsha Stepensky, MS.Ed, BCBA describe and demonstrate it. 

Floreo's Director of Applied Digital Therapy, Rita Solórzano MA, CCC-SLP, is a Speech Language Pathologist with over 30 years of experience.