Text Talk (2001)

January 25, 2010 victorialucreasy

The goal of  Text Talk is to “enhance children’s ability to construct meaning from decontexualized language.  This goal includes not only promoting comprehension, but also furthering children’s language development.” (13) Children get a lot of their comprehension from pictures.  When teachers ask students what are go ing on in the story, children response by what is happening in the pictures.  Pictures do not always tell what is going on.  This article did a good job at describing how children do this.  It talked about how a teacher read his/her kindergarten class the book Socrates.  On the books cover was a dog wearing red glasses.  The teacher read the opening to the story and stopped to ask what was happening in the story.  The children answer that the dog needed glasses.  This was not how the story went.  Another problem the article addressed what the children’s background knowledge.  Students depend on their background knowledge to show comprehension.  Again, this is not always right.  The article discussed how a teacher read Curious George Takes a Job.  The teacher read part of the story to his/her students and asked what was happening.  The students responded by saying that monkeys like bananas.  Although, this is true, it was not was going on in the story. 

After reading this article, I see how effective Text Talk is.  When planning a Text Talk, teachers should first chose books that have an event structure.  The event should have some complexity because it help children to build meaning to a story.  Teachers should ask story’s to provide background to the important ideas of the story.  Student responses should have more than one or two words.  Questions should not have students just recall information but rather describe the idea’s in the text.  There should be follow-up questions that help develop students understanding of their inital ideas.  The story’s pictures should be shown after children have responded to the text.  Background knowledge can be used, but the teacher should build off of the idea.  They should keep asking questions that lead them from the background knowledge to what is going on in the story.  The last thing to think about when planning a Text Talk is how the vocabulary is in the story.   Unfamiliar words should be discussed with students.  Have students use the words in a different context and then explain the meaning of the word.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized

2 Comments Add your own

• 1. re3030  |  March 9, 2010 at 1:26 am

  Great discussion, Victoria.

  ~Dr. Ari

  Reply

• 2. Great Beck and McKeown (2&hellip  |  March 9, 2010 at 1:29 am

  [...] Victoria Brown [...]

  Reply

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to comments via RSS Feed