The Art of Conversation

In order to encourage caring and sharing in my pastoral care group, I made little conversation cards. Each card had a question on it, e.g. "What's the weirdest dream you've ever had?", "What fruit would you say best describes you and why?", "If you were Prime Minister for a day, what's the first thing you would do?".

Every lesson, one student would choose a card and had a maximum of 2 minutes to answer the question on it. The rest of the students then each awarded the speaker a score out of 5 for "interestingness".

As is always the case in teaching, I have since realised that in making and laminating these cards I was just reinventing a wheel that already exists. It's called "The Art of Conversation" or TAOC - the children's version. This is a set of cards I bought from a local bookstore on sale for $5 which, as the packaging says, "includes 200 brilliant conversation builders for young people and above":

Each card has 2 questions of varying difficulty. According to the rulebook, you can allow children to choose which question to answer. Questions include: "What is something fun to do that doesn't cost any money?", "How can you help make another person's life happier?" and "What would be a useful invention for the future?".

The rulebook also provides useful tips for e.g. "What to do if someone talks for a very long time", and a list of manners, such as not correcting another player's answer or taking over the conversation.

Looks like a great resource for encouraging caring and sharing, and working on public speaking skills. Or maybe you could use it to entertain yourself and your friends on a rainy day!

Check out the TAOC website - they have many more interesting resources.