Text Talk

During my reading, I found a number of important points. I learned that children benefit to a greater extent from read alouds when you ask them contextualized questions, and show the pictures after discussing content. The questions that are formed should be open ended, so that the students can stimulate their imaginations. It is important to keep children on task and keep their minds on the book. If they begin to place experiences from personal incidents it is important to redirect their focus to the text. Vocabulary acquisition and development are important aspects of children’s development which helps them become better readers.

The key steps to a Text Talk lesson include, firstly, choosing books that are intellectually stimulating. Next, the teacher would ask questions that develop a students understanding and help students to understand the parts of a story, like the plot and the climax. After you cover a particular part of the book, for example the first couple of pages, you show the children the pictures so that they can see the illustrator’s point of view. As you progress through the book, build on the comments that were made by the students so that you can enhance the knowledge of what is occurring in the story.