Raise your hand if you think the most talkative kid in your class is your best communicator. While our talkers might be the most vocal, communication is about so much more than who speaks the most. It’s about listening as much as speaking, expressing thoughts and feelings clearly, and finding the confidence to use your voice even when it’s hard.
The good news is that communication isn’t a fixed trait. It’s a skill. And like any skill, it can be learned and taught. Research has found that the long-term impact on children who struggle with communication can show up across academics, relationships, and emotional well-being. That’s not a small finding. It’s a case for making communication instruction a priority, not an afterthought.
Here’s what effective communication looks like in kids, why it matters so much, and six ways to build it in your classroom, including resources from the Van Andel Institute for Education.
What Does Communication Actually Look Like in Kids?
It’s easy to assume the best communicators in a classroom are the most talkative ones. But effective communication in children is more nuanced than that.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Janice Galizia reframes what communication skills actually look like: “Effective communication in children doesn’t always look like the fastest hand raised or the most talkative student. In fact, one of the most important and often overlooked parts of communication happens before a child even speaks. It’s the pause.”
That pause—the moment a child asks themselves, “What am I trying to say and why?”—is where real communication begins. According to Dr. Galizia, when kids are supported in taking that brief reflective step, they’re better able to organize their thoughts, communicate more clearly, and feel more confident expressing themselves. In the classroom, it might look like a child rephrasing mid-sentence or saying, “Wait, let me try that again.” That’s not hesitation. That’s skill-building.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, effective communication in children involves far more than speaking clearly. It encompasses things like active listening, nonverbal cues like reading facial expressions and body language, emotional regulation, and the ability to understand and respond to others. These skills develop together and reinforce one another over time.
Why Communication Skills Matter Beyond the Classroom
Communication skills do more than shape how kids interact. They shape how kids feel about themselves. Dr. Galizia sees this directly in her clinical work. “There’s a strong relationship between communication and confidence. When children feel more confident, they’re more willing to express themselves. And when they’re able to communicate effectively and feel understood, that confidence grows.”
The inverse is equally true: Kids who can’t find the words or are nervous to communicate often stop trying. That’s a cycle teachers are uniquely positioned to interrupt, but only if communication is taught deliberately. Here’s how.
6 Ways To Teach Communication in Your Classroom
1. Normalize the pause and write it down
There are lots of ways to communicate beyond spoken words, and letter writing is one of the most intentional. VAI Education’s Letter Template from the March Into Reading Timely Topic gives students a structured way to organize and share their thoughts with someone who isn’t in the room.
When kids have to write what they mean, they slow down, make choices, and can discover that communication is as much about precision as it is about expression. That’s a shift worth modeling too. As Dr. Galizia puts it: “Shifting from ‘Who knows the answer?’ to ‘Let’s all take a few seconds to think’ reinforces that clarity matters more than speed.” When teachers say things like “Let me think about how I want to say this,” they show students that communication is a thoughtful process, not a performance, and letter writing is great way to help build this practice.
2. Say it with images
Sometimes the most effective communicators know when not to use words. VAI Education’s Craft a Collage activity, from the Crafting Our Classroom Timely Topic, invites students to represent classroom norms visually—a low-pressure entry point for kids who struggle to articulate ideas verbally. Choosing images to stand in for concepts is its own form of communication, and it often reveals how much students understand (or don’t yet).
3. Debate respectfully with a game
Academic vocabulary gets a lot more interesting when students have to argue for it. VAI Education’s Apples to Apples Science Edition, from their Games & Activities section, gives students the chance to discuss, debate, and make their case, all while reviewing key content terms. The game creates exactly the kind of low-stakes, high-engagement practice that builds real communication confidence.
4. Out-communicate a robot
Here’s a challenge students will actually care about: Say it better than AI. Beat the Bot from VAI’s Games & Activities section gives students writing or speaking prompts and asks them to respond with the kind of warmth, nuance, and specificity that a language model can’t fake. It reframes communication as a distinctly human skill, worth developing in this increasingly AI-driven world.
5. Hold your ground (and listen anyway)
Expressing an opinion is one skill. Holding it respectfully in the face of disagreement is another. In VAI Education’s Man of Steel, from the Daily SEL Activities, students are challenged to share their own viewpoints and genuinely engage with someone who sees things differently. That combination—advocacy plus active listening—is exactly what real-world communication demands. Dr. Galizia puts it well: “When we give children permission to slow down and reflect, we’re not just improving how they communicate. We’re helping them trust that what they say has value, and that they have choices in how they say it.”
6. Guide someone through the unknown
In VAI Education’s A-Maze-ing Maze, from the Daily SEL Activities, one student talks a blindfolded classmate through a maze using only verbal directions. It’s a vivid, immediate lesson in what it actually takes to communicate clearly: word choice, sequence, precision, patience. This activity makes that abstract idea concrete, as students feel in real time what it costs to be unclear and what it means to get it right.
The Bottom Line
Communication isn’t just a soft skill. It’s the infrastructure of learning and what makes collaboration, critical thinking, and self-expression possible. When teachers build communication deliberately, through the activities they choose, the questions they ask, and the culture they create, the payoff shows up everywhere. It improves how students engage, how they connect with one another, and how they see themselves.
The kids who learn to pause, reflect, and say what they mean carry that skill far beyond your classroom.
