​Suggestions to Extend Verbal Reasoning Skills

Verbal reasoning thinking skills include using reasoning, flexibility, fluency, and adaptability in working with words and solving verbal problems. Some things you could do to support children’s growth in this area include:

• Read a variety of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, poetry, memoir
• Generate a list of questions about a vocabulary word, a story, a character, a setting, etc.
• Create a drawing, model, or action for vocabulary words
• Write vocabulary word definitions in your own words
• Write synonyms and antonyms for unknown words
• Learn Greek and Latin word roots
• Learn which English words are based upon words from other languages
• Analyze multiple-meaning words and decide when to use each meaning
• Use fantasy to discuss vocabulary words or write stories
• Write a sentence where each word begins with letters in alphabetical order
• Create new titles for pictures, stories, cartoons, etc.
• Create riddles, jokes, cartoons
​• Create new idioms (“in hot water”)
• Create new similes (“mean as a snake”)
• Create analogies, “How is a ____ like a ____?”
• Write poetry in different styles.
• Put poetry to percussion music.
• Use adjectives and adverbs
• Perform plays, puppet shows, readers’ theatre.
• Create dialogue from an unusual perspective, like that of an animal, an object, a historical person, etc.
• Research the facts behind historical fiction, write historical fiction
• Learn a foreign language
​• Attend plays or puppet shows at such places as Center for Puppetry Arts or Kudzu Playhouse
​• Read books that use content creatively, such as The Phantom Tollbooth by Juster and Lost in Lexicon by Noyce