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We’re a Teen Residential Treatment Facility in Arizona & Idaho, offering support for teens and resources to help parents navigate their child’s challenges.
Teens can find talking with others or speaking to groups challenging. Strong communication skills help middle and high school students express themselves, build confidence, and connect better with others. This guide offers practical activities you and your teen can use to practice and improve these vital skills.
Verbal communication & public speaking
These activities help your teenager practice speaking clearly and confidently in both private and public settings. These activities include:
1. Public speaking workshops
Public speaking workshops provide opportunities for teens to practice talking in front of others. This helps reduce anxiety and builds confidence in speaking to groups.
To help your teen speak confidently, parents can:
- Find practice opportunities: Look for local or online groups offering teen public speaking practice. Encourage your teen to join one.
- Build comfort at home: Have your teen practice short talks (a few minutes) at home with family. Focus on clear speaking and making eye contact. This builds comfort in front of others.
- Offer focused feedback: After practice, share specific things you liked and one clear, kind suggestion for next time. This encourages progress without overwhelming.
2. Debate clubs
Debates teach teens to think critically, express their ideas clearly, and listen attentively.
Practicing debating builds assertive communication skills and helps teens understand different viewpoints.
To practice this activity:
- Locate clubs: Check if your teen’s school has a debate team or find local community clubs.
- Hold friendly debates: Pick simple topics and take turns arguing different sides at home. This helps teens organize thoughts and respond quickly.
- Practice active listening: Encourage your teen to listen carefully and understand a point before replying. Practice summarizing what was heard before sharing your ideas.
3. Storytelling sessions
Sharing stories helps teens improve using words to create vivid pictures and keep listeners interested. This makes them more engaging communicators, valuable for presentations or sharing experiences.
You and your teen can:
- Share personal stories: Take turns telling stories about funny or important family events. Focus on using descriptive words.
- Create stories together: Start a story with one sentence. Then, have your teen add the next part, going back and forth between the two. This practice develops and expresses ideas.
- Describe daily events vividly: Encourage your teen to describe their day by explaining what they saw, heard, and felt, not just listing what happened. This builds expressive language.
4. Poetry recitation
Reading poems aloud helps teens better understand the meaning and express their feelings with their voices. It builds language, emotional expression, and speaking skills, connecting voice to meaning and pace.
Here’s how you can practice poetry skills with your teen:
- Choose poems to read: Find poems your teen might enjoy. Take turns reading lines or sections, focusing on speaking clearly.
- Practice expressing emotion: Talk about the feelings in the poem and help your teen use their voice to show those emotions when reading. This connects voice to meaning.
- Focus on rhythm and flow: Read the poem several times, paying attention to the beat and how the words flow. Practicing this helps them understand vocal pacing.
5. Choral speaking
Choral speaking involves a group speaking together, with a focus on coordinated voice use.
It helps teens learn clear speaking, voice control, and teamwork in communication, which is beneficial for group projects or performances.
Consider practicing choral speaking with your family:
- Read aloud as a group: Pick something short, like a poem or song lyric, and read it out loud at the same time. Try to match speed and volume.
- Work on clear enunciation: Choose lines with words that are hard to say clearly. Practice saying them together slowly and clearly, focusing on making distinct sounds with your mouth.
- Record your reading: Use a phone to record your family reading together. Listening back helps you hear how you sound and find ways to speak more clearly or together.
Role-playing & simulation
Role-playing and simulation offer safe ways to practice real-life conversations and challenging situations. These activities help teens get ready for everyday conversations and feel more confident during tough ones.
Different ways to practice role-playing include:
6. Demonstration role-play
This role-play allows your teen to learn by watching someone else first. An adult, like you or a counselor, acts out a talk while the teen observes. This shows the teen examples of effective communication before they try it themselves.
This activity helps teens learn communication skills by watching:
- Have a model act: One person, like a parent or counselor, acts out the conversation while your teen watches.
- Help your teen observe: Guide your teen to notice how the person acted – calm words, body language, listening, kind responses.
- Discuss the demonstration: Talk with your teen about what you both saw the model do that worked well and why those actions were good communication choices.
7. Dyad/triad role-play
This practice involves just two or three people working together. Your teen has a conversation with one or two others, often including a parent or trusted person. It allows for focused practice on specific interaction types, such as asking for things or resolving minor conflicts.
You and your teen can practice conversations by:
- Act out simple talks: Have your teen practice a basic conversation with you, like asking for permission or sharing about their day. This helps them share what they need and feel sure doing it.
- Practice saying no: Have your teen practice situations where they need to politely but firmly say “no” to someone. This builds assertiveness.
- Work through small problems: Have your teen practice resolving a minor issue or disagreement in a pretend setting with you or another person. This helps them learn to handle conflicts.
- Give and get feedback: After practicing, talk together. Ask your teen what felt easy or hard. Offer ideas on what went well and what could get better. This helps them learn and grow.
8. Hot seat role-play
In this activity, a small group sets up a situation where one person takes on the role of someone else, perhaps someone your teen finds hard to understand.
Others ask questions to the person in the “hot seat,” who answers in character. This activity helps build listening skills and emotional intelligence by seeing things from another person’s perspective.
Families can set up and run a hot seat activity:
- Choose the person in the hot seat: Decide who will act as the person your teen wants to understand better. This could be you, another trusted adult, or a friend.
- Explain the situation: Briefly describe the situation or the relationship that the person in the hot seat will act out. You can also think of different situations together.
- Have your teen ask questions: Ask your teen to ask the person in the hot seat questions. They should try to understand the character’s thoughts, feelings, or reasons in the pretend situation.
- The person answers in character: The person playing the role answers the questions as if they were the character they are pretending to be.
- Discuss after the role-play: After the questions, talk about what was learned. Discuss how seeing the situation from that character’s side might help in real life.
9. Simulation exercises
These activities create a pretend situation similar to one a teen might face, including the setting and goal. Examples are practicing for a job interview or ordering food in a busy place.
This helps your teen feel more prepared and confident for real-life challenges.
You and your teen can use simulation exercises:
- Set up the scene: You and your teen can create a space that resembles the real place they are practicing in. For example, set up chairs in a room-like setting.
- Give your teen a goal: Give your teen something specific to do in the pretend talk. Maybe they need to gather certain facts, ask a specific question, or complete a task.
- Have others play parts: Ask family or friends to act as the people your teen would talk to in a real situation. This could be the person doing the interview, a store worker, or someone serving food.
- Practice the full scenario: Go through the whole experience from start to finish. This helps your teen practice staying calm and speaking clearly. It builds their confidence in real situations.
Emotional intelligence & nonverbal communication activities for teens
These activities help teens understand their own feelings and those of others. They also teach teens about communicating without words—with body language. Understanding emotional signals can improve relationships and increase self-awareness.
Examples of these activities include:
10. Expressive art therapy
Using art like drawing, painting, or clay can be a way to show feelings without words. This helps teens share emotions they find hard to talk about and identify complex feelings.
Parents can help teens show feelings through art:
- Provide art materials: Offer paper, pens, paints, clay, or other things your teen likes to use for art.
- Suggest exploring a feeling: Sometimes, suggest they draw how they feel about something or create a picture showing an emotion like happy or upset.
- Talk about the art: If your teen wants to share, ask open-ended questions about their art, like “Tell me about the colors you used?” or “What does this part make you think of?”
11. Emotion ball games
Using a ball with feeling words written on it makes it easier to talk about feelings and build emotional vocabulary. This fun game promotes self-awareness and sharing feelings.
Here is how families can play this game:
- Make a feeling ball: Write different feeling words (like happy, sad, calm, worried, excited) all over a softball. Use simple words your teen knows.
- Play catch and share: Throw the ball back and forth. When someone catches it, they look at the word closest to their hand. They share a time when they felt that way.
- Listen with interest: Pay attention when your teen shares. You can also share your own times when you feel that way. This shows them it’s okay to share their feelings.
12. Posture and body language
Our bodies send messages even when we don’t talk. Understanding this is important. Activities about how we stand and use our bodies help teens notice their own body signals and read those from others.
Parents can help teens practice body language awareness:
- Observe body language: While watching TV shows or movies, try to guess how the people feel. Look at their faces and bodies. Talk about the clues you noticed together.
- Discuss posture: Simply mention how standing in different ways can make you feel. For example, standing tall can make you feel more confident. Or how it looks to others. Encourage standing tall.
- Try different expressions: Look in a mirror together. Practice making faces that show different feelings. This helps teens connect how their face looks to how they feel.
Communication games and activities for middle and high school students
Games and fun activities can help teens practice positive communication skills, such as active listening and using “I” statements, in engaging ways.
Here are a few communication games and ideas to try:
13. Guess the object (with blindfold)
In this game, one person describes something. The other person wears a blindfold and tries to guess what it is. This helps teens practice describing things clearly and listening carefully.
Here is how to play this game:
- Pick an object: Choose an everyday object that is easy to describe but not too simple.
- Use a blindfold: One player puts on a blindfold so they cannot see the object.
- Describe the object: The other player describes the object using only words. They should focus on details such as size, shape, texture, and what it is used for.
- Guess the object: The player with the blindfold listens closely. They try to guess the object based on the description. Take turns playing each part.
14. Sending messages using emojis
This activity uses emojis to share ideas or feelings without using words. It helps teens think about nonverbal cues and how symbols can share meaning quickly.
Families can try this activity:
- Choose a simple message: Think of something simple to share. Like “I’m happy today” or “What’s for dinner?”
- Communicate with emojis: Send the message using just emojis.
- Have the other person guess: The other person tries to understand the message from the emojis. Talk about how easy or hard it was to understand the message after you finish.
15. Sit back-to-back drawing
Two people sit back-to-back in this activity. They only talk to each other to draw the same picture. This shows how important it is to give clear directions and listen well to follow them.
To do this activity:
- Get supplies: Each person needs paper and something to draw with.
- One person draws: One person draws a simple picture. Use basic shapes and lines. Keep it hidden from the other person.
- Describe the picture: The person with the drawing tells the person sitting back-to-back what to draw. They only use words. They cannot use their hands or show the picture.
- The other person draws: The person listening tries to draw the picture. They only use the words they heard.
- Compare drawings: After describing, look at both pictures. Talk about what made it easy or hard to talk and listen well.
16. Call-and-response ball toss
This simple game is tossing a ball and quickly answering a question or giving a word. It helps practice thinking fast and speaking quickly in a fun game.
Here is how to play:
- Stand in a circle: Have everyone playing stand in a circle.
- Toss and prompt: One person throws a ball to someone else. They say a word or ask a simple question. Like “Favorite color?” or “Dog?”
- Catch and respond: The person who catches the ball quickly answers the question or gives a related word. Like “Blue!” or “Cat!” Keep throwing the ball and answering.
If your teen barely speaks to you anymore, or if every talk turns into an argument, this guide on talking to teens can help you reconnect when things feel stuck.
Final thoughts
Communication is one of the most essential skills your teen can learn as they grow. It helps them in all facets of their life, from childhood to adulthood.
These activities are practical tools you can use together to improve your communication.
Start with one activity that fits your child’s personality – and make communication a habit, not a one-time talk.
Sources
1. Torres, M. L. G. M., Sampaio, A L L., & Caracas, H. C. P. M. (2023). Changes in the communicative skills of young people as a result of a communication training. Journal of the Society for Brazilian Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences / Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia, 35(5), e20220041. https://doi.org/10.1590/2317-1782/20232022041
2. Masduki, M., Zakaria, N., & Ismail, N. N. (2018). The Significant Effects of Communication Activities in the Co-Curricular Towards Reducing Shyness Amongst Elementary School Children. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1049(1), 012058. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1049/1/012058
3. Jackson, V. A., & Back, A. L. (2011). Teaching Communication Skills Using Role-Play: An Experience-Based Guide for Educators. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 14(6), 775–780. https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2010.0493
4. Nazri, E. N., Ahmad, N., Ahmad, N. K., & Bakar, A. Y. A. (2022). The Role of Group Play Therapy in Improving Adolescents’ Social Interaction. Creative Education, 13(10), 3364-3373. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2022.1310215