Beck and McKeown (2001) Assignment

This article has taught me that Text Talk is not just reading a book and having a discussion.  There are many parts to Text Talk and many important rules that need to be followed so that you can have a successful Text Talk.  The first thing that is important and that is the first step to preparing a Text Talk session is that you need to choose a book that is appropriate for your students.  The book needs to be challenging enough so that you can ask questions for understanding and have vocabulary words that can be introduced to the students.  Children need to be able to explore ideas through the selected texts and be able to think about the questions that are asked.  Another major aspect is the initial questions that are asked.  You want to ask questions that promote thoughts that cannot be answered using only one word.  Questions asked should have students responding with a few sentences.  Then as teachers the follow-up questions should help students expand on what their answers were.  A problem that was found was that students would answer the questions based off of pictures or prior knowledge.  So to prevent children answering based off of the pictures the teacher should wait to show the picture until after the questions are asked.

This is another important part of Text Talk.  You do not want your students to only be focused on the pictures.  You want them to be listening to the language rather than looking at pictures. Now when a student responds based on background knowledge you have to be able to refocus their answer and thoughts back to the story being read.  While reading an important component is that you want to emphasize some new vocabulary words.  Give the meaning of the words and make sure that the students comprehend what the word means.  At the end of the reading you can go back over all of the new words learned .

All of these components play a large role in Text Talk.  The best way for all components to flow is to pick a book in advance then choose the pages you will ask questions, and put the questions on the page.  It is easier to think of questions before hand rather than on the spot.  Ask follow-up questions to help students elaborate.  Then make sure that you have covered new vocabulary.  The main thing you need to remember while using Text Talk is “keeping important text ideas in focus while monitoring children’s often limited responses and scaffolding their ideas toward constructing meaning.” (page 19)

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