Text Talk Article Responses

What seems to be the most important points?

Reading books aloud & discussing them with students helps them to think about the things & ideas that the book presents and helps them remember these things for future reference.

Text talk gives the students time to reflect on what they have heard read by using different techniques such as initial questions & new vocabulary introductions.

Talking about something as soon as it happens is more beneficial than discussing it after the whole book has been read because students may forget what happened early on in a story and with this approach they can analyze what they have heard right after they hear it.

Children sometimes respond to the pictures more often than the actual text. Because of this it is beneficial if teachers show the pictures after reading and discussing the text of the story.  

Summarize the key steps in planning and performing a Text Talk lesson.

Selection of Texts

            Choose stories that will enhance & encourage questioning. Stories that students aren’t familiar with will invite them to think harder about what is going on in the story, and they won’t just go off of what they already know.

Initial Questions

            Students will respond to the questions with short responses during & before the story. These initial questions are meant to begin student inquiry but are not that in depth.

Follow up Questions

            The teacher will go off of the initial questions to develop follow up questions that go deeper into exploring student responses about the story. These questions are meant to gauge students understanding of the text.

Pictures

            The teacher will show students pictures after the text has been read and questions have been answered so that students will not simply go off of the pictures in the story.

Background Knowledge

            Students will be encouraged to add in any background knowledge concerning the text, just to cement knowledge concerning the story.

Vocabulary

            The teacher will select a few important vocabulary words to focus on while reading the story, sporadically asking students to define & reuse them.

Flanigan Article (2005)

What role does fingerpointing play in developing concept of word and phonemic awareness?
Fingerpointing helps students to keep their place and focus on the individual words. Through fingerpointing, students can break down words & see for themselves what each letter in a word stands for & sounds like. Fingerpoint reading also helps develop phoneme awareness in addition to the development of concept of word in text.

Describe the 4-stage model of early literacy.
The 4-Stage model of early literacy consists of: Beginning Consonant Knowledge (students are cued to the beginning consonant letter-sound), Concept of Words (students have an understanding of the initial and the ending consonant letter-sounds in words, in other words the word boundaries), Breaking Down by Phonemes, & Word Recognition.
Describe what this means: “It is not in the telling, but it is in the very act of reading that Jack will actually learn how to read.” p. 10
This excerpt from the article means that by breaking the words down, Jack will learn to read for himself, not just by repeating what others say & finger pointing at the wrong things.

What instruction helps develop beginning readers’ awareness of words and phonemes?
I think that Sounding out words & Finger Pointing are two ways that help develop beginning readers’ awareness of words & phonemes. Some examples of this include echo reading (teacher reads some, student reads some), choral reading (all read together),  & buddy reading (read with a partner).

Robbins & Ehri Article

How do children increase their vocabularies?

One way that children increase their vocabularies is by being read to. Many times as they are being read to, children recognize words that they previously didn’t know. Especially after hearing a book read many times, they commit these new words to memory. Another way that children increase their vocabularies is by hearing others speak. Just like when they are read to, when they hear an adult say an unfamiliar word they remember it & then use it themselves.

 

What evidence is there that reading aloud to children can increase their vocabularies?

The evidence from the article is that after children are read to aloud, they usually know many words from these stories that they didn’t know before these stories were read to them.

Does it matter what teachers read to students? In other words, if you are reading aloud to students in your kindergarten class, should you care about the richness in the language that a book does or does not have? What kinds of books are best to read aloud to students if we want to build their vocabularies?

Yes, it does matter what teachers read to students & I would definitely care about the richness in the language that a book may have. The kind of books that should be read aloud to students are books with larger vocabulary words than they already know because if they are just reading & hearing the same words, they aren’t learning anything new.

 

Why do you think you should focus on emphasizing vocabulary in your lessons with students? Does this apply to read aloud activities?

I think that I should focus on emphasizing vocabulary with students so that they will know what things mean in the future when they come in contact with the same words, and this does apply to read aloud activities. Sometimes students do not learn these words other places like in their homes and vocabulary is so important because of it’s relationship to reading. I would rather a student stop & ask a valid question than be in the dark for the rest of the story.

What role will reading to students play in your teaching?

Reading to students will play a large role in my teaching. I will want my students to read to themselves sometimes but I believe that this article proves a very valid point & that is that by me reading some things aloud, it will help students to develop their vocabularies.