During the first few years of life, every sound that a child hears and every conversation the child participates in contributes to the development of language processing skills in the brain and benefits the child’s ability to communicate using language in the years to come. The teacher describes how she was eager to put this research into practice.

“I chose to participate in a study on the teacher’s role in classroom conversation and how teachers might study their own behavior in this crucial activity. My classroom consisted of eight two and three year olds with hearing losses ranging from mild to profound and varying degrees of language ability. Language facilitation was individualized so that each child received the specific instruction needed to help build language competency,” she wrote.

After getting a baseline, the teacher experimented with using different activities, like reading, to boost conversation in the classroom, and found valuable insights for her own professional development.