Rich Talk with Young Children

Every early childhood professional knows how important it is to talk with young children. Now there's a practical guide to taking talk to the next level through rich, intentional conversations that nurture all aspects of child development. Engaging, conversational, and grounded in the latest research, this book highlights the transformative power of rich talk with children ages 2-8 and gives you clear, actionable guidance to bring its benefits to any learning environment. You'll learn how to apply Rebecca Rolland's popular Rich Talk model through ready-to-use strategies, authentic examples, real-world scenarios, and more than 20 downloadable exercises and planning tools.

A must-have for pre- and in-service educators, SLPs, and other professionals, this book is your complete action plan for fostering young children's learning and development through meaningful, high-quality conversation.

Learn How To:

• Use rich talk to strengthen children's development in seven key areas: learning, empathy, social skills, confidence, play and creativity, openness to others, and the ability to work with their temperaments
• Initiate and sustain rich talk with simple, effective strategies such as using open-ended questions and encouraging elaboration
• Connect rich talk to your curriculum goals across all domains - including language, literacy, math, science, and social studies - plus activities to nurture social-emotional skills
• Create more joy and engagement by weaving rich talk into morning meetings, book reading, and other daily routines
• Encourage inclusive thinking and enhance cultural and linguistic responsiveness in your classroom
• Empower families by teaching them about the benefits of rich talk and helping them develop these skills at home

Practical Materials: Put rich talk into action with planning worksheets, checklists for assessment and progress monitoring, reflective and role-playing exercises, age-appropriate questionnaires and parent handouts, plus lists of apps, books, and activities to further children's language development at school and at home.

She is the author of The Art of Talking with Children (HarperOne, 2022), a book designed to enhance relationships with kids. The book is being translated into eleven languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Spanish.

She has served as an oral and written language specialist in the Neurology Department of Children's Hospital Boston, where she worked as part of an interdisciplinary team to diagnose children with learning disabilities and provide recommendations for parents and schools. She also served as the academic learning specialist at Kingsley Montessori School and as the project coordinator for the Rigorous and Regulated Learning Environment project.

Her creative output includes writing for new adult readers and ESL learners, including a novella from Gemma Open Door. She is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and serves on the faculty of Harvard Medical School's Effective Writing for Health Care program, where she was a founding Module Director.

She holds an Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an M.S. in speech-language pathology from the MGH Institute of Health Professions, an M.A. in English from Boston University, and a B.A. in English from Yale.