Our award winning Conversation Club curriculum was
written and evaluated by Ivymount staff. Conversation Club
provides a comprehensive curriculum for teaching both the
“how” and the “why” of conversation. During the program,
children will join the “conversation club” and throughout
their time together they will meet a cast of kid friendly club members. During club meetings the activities target conversation initiation, topic selection, topic maintenance, perspective taking, social motivation and body awareness, active listening behaviors, gaining attention behaviors and conversation repair. Parent resources will be provided to facilitate a home connection.

Student profile: Elementary aged students aged 6-11 with High Functioning Autism and other social cognition challenges. Because meaningful conversation is the goal, it is critical that participants are able to produce sentences of 4-5 words without support; are able to attend to a speaker (peer or adult) for at least 15 seconds; and are able to receptively and expressively answer simple WH questions (e.g., “morning” or “night” when asked a when question). 

Prerequisites: none

Program Length: 12 weeks

Time: One hour sessions on Saturday mornings 

Dates: This program is not being offered in the Fall 2021 Semester. Please check back in the Spring 2022

Conversation Street

Conversation Street is a social learning curriculum that teaches the “rules” of conversation in a concrete, systematic, and whimsical comparison to the rules of driving a vehicle. Like driving a vehicle, conversations involve other people and have clear rules and expectations. In this course, students are explicitly taught the “rules” of conversation, and provided opportunities to practice learned skills through fun and engaging activities.  Topics covered in this curriculum include: Keeping your eyes on the road (eye contact), sharing the conversation road (reciprocal turn taking), steering the conversation (how to ask questions), keeping the conversation moving (making comments), and using a signal to exit (scripts for ending a conversation). 

Student profile: Upper Elementary to middle school aged students who are highly verbal children (no expressive or receptive language challenges) without cognitive differences.

Prerequisites: none

Program Length:12 weeks

Parent Groups: No parent group. Parent resources will be provided to facilitate a home connection.

Dates: This program is not being offered in the Fall 2021 Semester. Please check back in the Spring 2022