Abstract
http://digitallibrary.utah.gov/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=28840
Text Talk is an approach to reading stories to children designed to enhance children’s ability to construct meaning from decontextualized language (Beck & McKeown, 2001). Reading teachers in Utah were trained in the principles of Text Talk. These teachers then developed Text Talk lessons for 101 picture books that are frequently read aloud to children from preschool through early elementary. The lessons can be downloaded for free from http://digitallibrary.utah.gov/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=28840. The lessons were developed several years ago, so there are no lessons on more recent books.
Beck and McKeown developed Text Talk after observing problems that frequently arose in read alouds:
Prevalence of responding on the basis of pictures. Children tend to rely on pictures to construct understanding of stories. Focusing on characteristics of pictures may interfere with constructing meaning from the story. When focusing on the pictures, they may miss opportunities to engage in constructing meaning from the linguistic content.
Prevalence of responding on the basis of background knowledge. Teachers often invoke background knowledge to integrate it with text content to assist in comprehension. But Beck and McKeown noted that this is not necessarily the way children use background knowledge. Rather, children have the tendency to respond to questions from background knowledge alone and ignore what had just been read to them from the story.
Text Talk attends to children’s language in two ways:
The kinds of questions asked elicit great language production.
Text Talk takes advantage of some of the sophisticated vocabulary found in young children’s trade books by explicitly teaching and encouraging use of several words from each story that is read.
The lessons use the principles of vocabulary instruction from the book, Bringing Words to Life (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2013). In Bringing Words to Life, the authors define three tiers of words:
Tier 1 consists of the most basic words that commonly appear in spoken language. These words rarely require direct instruction and typically do not have multiple meanings.
Tier 2 consists of high-frequency words that occur across a variety of domains. That is, these words occur often in mature language situations such as adult conversations and literature, and therefore strongly influence speaking and reading. Tier 2 words may contain multiple meanings, they allow students to describe concepts in a detailed manner, and they are used across a variety of environments.
Tier 3 consists of low-frequency words that occur in specific domains. Domains include subjects in school, hobbies, occupations, geographic regions, technology, weather, and so on. We usually learn these words when a specific need arises.
Tier 2 words are the most important words for direct instruction because they are good indicators of a student’s progress through school. Each lesson in this set list potential Tier 2 words in the text, and the Tier 2 words specifically selected to be taught. Each lesson begins with a description of how to do the read aloud—the questions to ask and when to show the pictures. (Beck and McKeown advocate showing the pictures only after the text content has been discussed.) Then an explicit presentation is provided for teaching each of the selected Tier 2 words. Beck et al. (2013) recommend these steps for introducing and teaching Tier 2 words:
Contextualize word for its role in the story.
Have children repeat word so they create a phonological representation.
Explain the meaning of the word.
Give examples in contexts other than the story.
Children provide their own examples.
Children say word again to reinforce its phonological representation.
Here is an example of this teaching strategy with the word disturb from the book, Lilly’s Purple Purse (Henkes, 1996):
In the book, it says, “You may bring them back to school as long as you don’t disturb the rest of the class.” And later in the book, it says, “She peeked at them often but did not disturb a soul.”
Disturb means not to bother. Your teacher may ask you to walk down the hall very quietly so you will not disturb another class. If your baby sister is sleeping, Mother does not want you to wake her up or to disturb her while she is sleeping. Or another way to use this word would be, don’t disturb the glass of milk. It will make a big mess on the rug. That means to not upset or spill the milk. At the library there is a sign that reads, Do not disturb.
Say the word disturb.
Mr. Slinger was referring to Lilly’s quarters, classes, and purse as something that could disturb the class. How would these things disturb the class? What can Lilly do if she brings her things so that they will not disturb the class?
If any of the things I say would disturb someone or something, say the word disturb. If not, don’t say anything. Running in the halls, pushing in line, shouting in your face, getting poor grades on your report card, raising your hand to be called on.
Let’s say our new word: disturb.
After each word of the selected Tier 2 words are introduced in this manner, children are given a variety of opportunities for using the words in different ways. Four words are taught for the story, Lilly’s Purple Purse: disturb, privacy, amused, difficult. Children can be asked to choose between two words, for example,
Your brother uses you baseball mitt without your permission: privacy or disturb
Learning to play the piano: disturb or difficult
They are asked to give examples or explanations, for example,
When is a time you don’t want to be disturbed? Sleeping? Watching TV? Reading a good book?
Describe a time you were amused.
The Text Talk lessons plans provide well-structured integrated language activities for speech-language pathologists to promote kindergarten to early elementary school children’s acquisition of Tier 2 academic vocabulary.