What would make TV viewing beneficial or problematic? Picture your children watching TV. Where is everyone in the room and what are they doing as they watch? As you listen to the discussion, use this picture to assess your use of TV.

What can make TV viewing more of a learning experience? What strategies were familiar to you? What new strategy could you try with your kids while you watch TV? Did what you hear match the picture in your head of your children watching TV?

Main Points:

• TV is a useful tool for learning another language
• View together with children
• Pause to ask questions and discuss what you see
• Follow-up with things like related dolls, songs, books
• Interact by clapping and imitating sounds
• Let them imitate what they have seen on screen
• Watch video rather than live TV
• Set time limits: 1-2 hours max of watching time
• Keep TV out of the bedrooms
• Turn off TV during homework and meals
• Watch with children and talk about it
• Don't make kids sit still
• Check the ratings of shows
• Provide interaction

Keep your questions and the active learning questions in mind and take notes. Why is viewing interactively important if you want children to learn? What rules do you have for watching TV? How do you implement these rules? What strategies might you use to engage your kids with TV?

Consider what you do with your children. How are your practices the same as what you saw? How are they different? What techniques appealed to you? Can you see yourselves using these techniques?

Viewing interactively:

• Activates the brain in ways that make it more receptive to learning
• Provides reinforcement of key concepts
• Improves memory because "doing" means more than just "seeing"
• Increases the amount of attention paid to key content

Techniques for Active Viewing:

• Preview programs
• Ask questions (e.g. How do you know?)
• Play a related game or do an activity that reinforces what you want them to learn
• Point out and name interesting objects
• Give children a problem and solution to watch for (e.g., "Today Elmo and his friends solved a problem when they wanted to play together but wanted to do different things. Let's see how they solved their problem.")

What do you do after watching a TV program or video? What follow-up activities could extend the lessons from the programs? What do your children learn from TV at different ages? What were the panelists' reactions to the video?

Think of a video that your kids enjoyed recently. What could you do with your children that would relate to that video? What did the video teach that you could reinforce with an activity?

Ideas of how to reinforce lessons from TV:

• Take a related field trip
• Use vocabulary from the show throughout the day
• Refer back to the way that characters in a video solved a problem to help make a rule or solve a real-life problem that has come up
• Read aloud from a related book

Main Points:

• It's important to preview and know what your child is watching
• Ratings are an important tool but not infallible
• Teach kids to establish guidelines for themselves
• View interactively

Here's your chance to think about how to apply what you've learned. How can you make watching TV more active? How can you take what's on the screen and make it real and hands-on?

What do kids learn from doing the related activities? How is it similar to or different from what they learn from watching the show to begin with?

Ways to promote interaction with a TV or video program:

• Have children help choose what to watch
• Sing, dance, play instruments, clap
• Do the things that TV characters do
• Use props for dramatic play
• Draw
• Ask children what they need in order to play
• Talk back to the TV
• Use video so you can stop and discuss or play