Teaching activities

[Carolyn Chaney]

Dear Colleagues:

I am once again teaching Children's Communication, for the first time with
60+ students.  I want to make the class as interactive as possible so am
asking you to share your interesting small group activities on any topic
in language acquisition or communicative development. I would dearly love
to receive a syntax exercise (perhaps bootstrapping?) but will
joyfully consider all offers.  It would help a lot if you would attach the
goal or rationale to the exercise.

To kick things off, I offer this exercise on semantic development that my
students greatly enjoy. Its purpose is to allow students to experience
what it is like to discover the critical attributes of things and their
associated names.

In small groups, one student acts as a caregiver and holds the solution to
the problem. Remaining 3-4 students are children, who may ask caregivers
to name objects.The child's goal is to discover how to name the objects.

Preparation:  With my draw program I made 6 each small squares,
rectangles, triangles, pentagrams, circles and ovals. and an assortment of
large shapes too.  Each shape has a different design inside (small dots,
larger dots, stripes, etc.).  The group receives about 50 items, all mixed
up.

Caregivers are given these instructions.  Cargivers:  You may answer
children's questions and provide names of objects when asked but do not
help the children categorize.  The critical attributes are: curvature (vs.
straightness) of edges and texture of inside (dots or lines).
	Dogs = straight sides, dots	Cats = Curved sides, dots
	Horses = Straight sides, lines	Pigs  = Curved sides, lines
Size is represented by adding an "er" suffix to the root; so large dogs
are doggers, large cats are catters, large horses are horsers, and large
pigs are piggers.  Color, shape and spacing of the interior textures are
not critical attributes.


I am looking forward to reading my mail, so send me your exercises,
please!

Regards,

Carolyn Chaney
SFSU