An example of employing the CHAMPs approach to classroom management to story time in a preschool or kindergarten classroom. 

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Context 1

... their opinions or likes and dislikes. So, a child can be asked to select between two or more choices of which outfit to wear to school, which book they would like the adult to read and discuss with them, what type of sandwich they would like to take to school, and so forth. Even “directives” from the adult can be couched as a choice. A child might be asked, “Which would you like to do first, put on your shirt or put on your pants?” In an intervention context, the child could be asked to choose from one of two or more activities planned for the session. Children can also be asked their opinions about all matter of things, such as asking, “Did you like the story I just read?” Requests for verbal display: Children from mainstream culture families in the U.S. are often called upon to display skills they are in the process of learning. This casts them into what anthropologists have referred to as an exhibitionist role [21]. Schools, being mainstream institutions, operate similarly regarding this exhibitionist role. More collectivist cultures expect children to learn more by observing, and cast them into more of a spectator role [22]. One particular type of display children from mainstream culture backgrounds are often called upon to engage in by adults has been referred to as verbal display [21]. That is, they are requested to answer many questions in which the goal is to show what they know, and not to provide information that is unknown to the person asking the question, as is typical in the CT register. Educators have referred to these kinds of questions in a number of ways, with examples including known information questions [23], questions with known answers [24], and test questions [25]. Van Kleeck and Schwarz [26] suggested another type of verbal display that requests that children display what they are thinking rather than what they already know. As such, they distinguished requests for verbal display of already acquired knowledge from requests for verbal display of thinking. In school [27] and often in mainstream culture homes, children are very frequently called upon to verbally display what they know. Ideally, they are also frequently called upon to verbally display what they are thinking, because their exposure to these more challenging kinds of questions predicts their later language and literacy skills [28]. Verbal display of thinking relates conceptually to what educators have referred to variously as progressive discourse [29,30], instructional conversation [31], learning talk [32,33], and accountable talk [34]. Not all children get extensive experience responding to requests for verbal display in their homes. Professionals need to be certain that children with LI, and in particular children with LI from CLD backgrounds where AT is often much less frequently used, understand what their role is when such questions are asked. This may be particularly necessary because at least a small amount of evidence indicates that children from some backgrounds may be discouraged from answering such questions [35], or they may be used to tease or chastise in their cultural groups [36,37]. Van Kleeck and Schwarz [26] came up with scripts to suggest ways in which a teacher, for example, might explain to a group of children the nature of the kinds of questions that are often posed to them in school and the protocol for responding to them. In explaining requests for verbal display of knowledge, the teacher might say something along the lines of the following: “Because we are in school, I’m going to ask you and the other children questions I already know the answer to. . . . That helps me know if I’m doing a good job teaching you. If you don’t know the answer, that’s okay, too. May be another child or I will give the answer” [26]. Page 4 of 13 To explain requests for verbal display of thinking, the teacher might say, “Sometimes, you might not know the answer to questions I ask, but you can think about what the answer might be, and you can tell us what you are thinking.” The teacher might then model such a request, and a possible response to it, and introduce this by saying, “Let me show you what I mean.” She or he could then follow up with, “I wonder who this book is going to be about? I haven’t read this book before, so I don’t know for sure who it is about. But I can use hints from the cover to guess who the book might be about.” The teacher or clinician could then pause and ask the class if they see any hints on the cover that help them guess who the book is about. Likely some children will come up with viable answers, but if not, the teacher could continue, “There is a picture of a bear and a bird on the cover, so maybe the book is about the bird or the bear, or maybe about both. But, I’d have to read the book to find out if I made a good guess or not” [26]. Nature of topic participation: The third area considered under Rules for Participation in the Interaction is topic participation. In everyday Casual Talk (CT), the participants in the interaction often equally control the topics discussed, contributions are spontaneous, and the length of contributions made by various participants tend to be more or less balanced. When the AT register is used in school, the teacher typically controls the topic, the teacher most often either elicits contributions to the topic or manages spontaneous contributions by requiring some kind of request for permission to speak by the child (typically by raising a hand), and the teacher dominates the talk by engaging in a fair amount of monologue. Effective teachers will make rules for participation in any activity in the classroom explicit to children; that is, they directly teach children how to behave in different classroom situations or activities as well as during major transitions [38-42]. Teaching children the rules that specify the teacher’s behavioral expectations sets the stage for student success [39,40,43-46]. In contrast, poor behavior management in classrooms can lead to negative academic outcomes [47,48]. Although this research on classroom management has not directly measured an impact on children’s language skills, it does demonstrate the power of explicitly teaching children the rules for participation in any given activity. One frequently used evidence-based approach to classroom management, CHAMPs, provides a set of strategies for supporting positive behavior in the classroom [49]. It might also be able to be used effectively in small group therapy sessions with children with language impairments. The acronym CHAMPs specifies five categories in which expectations for student behavior should be explicitly taught– Conversation (Can students talk to each other during this activity?), Help (How do students get the teacher’s attention and their questions answered?), Activity (What is the task or objective? What is the end product?), Movement (Can students move about during this activity?) and Participation (How do students show they are fully participating? What does work behavior look or sound like?). The subset of these rules that focus on conversation and participation provide an example of how the rules for participation in the AT register in one particular activity might be conveyed to young children. Examples of rules for all aspects of the CHAMPs acronym that might be used during classroom story time are given in Figure ...