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In this video clip, four infants and a teacher sit together on the floor exploring objects. As they play one of the infants utters a series of consonant-vowel syllables that sound something like a song verse. She says, “Da-dah, da-dah, dah”. Notice how the teacher treats the infant’s babbling as an intentional effort to communicate and follows the child’s lead by responding with a verse of her own. Also observe how the teacher repeats the same consonant-vowel syllable introduced by the infant but works to extend the child’s initial contribution by varying the rhythm and creating a longer verse. In addition, the teacher scaffolds the infant’s knowledge about the pragmatics of language use by highlighting the turn-taking structure of their exchange. She cues the child by saying, “You’re turn.” As their game continues watch how the infant works to imitate the sounds modeled by her teacher by incorporating rising intonation into her next series of sounds.

Length of stand-alone master video clip: 2 minutes 3 seconds

Keywords: Infants, Body, Communication, Nonverbal, Teaching, Children-Teacher