Read Alouds and Text Talk: A New Way To Look At Scaffolding

The first thing in this article that caught my attention was the contrast that the authors made between a student's need for engaging material and their inability to visually comprehend it.  I saw that first hand in my practicum experience today when the students were given independent reading that was on their level, but couldn't hold their interest.  I hear lots of "aww, man!" and "this stuff is so boring!".  The author's suggestion to read aloud to students what they can comprehend aurally but not visually is a valuable one.  The classroom that I was placed in is an inclusion classroom and almost half of the class has a special need of some kind.  One of the first things that I noticed was that some of the children had a lot of difficulty reading and writing, but when it came to verbal exchanges with the teacher, they were out of sight.  When the teacher was doing her whole class instruction, I could see some amazing thinking going on and it's a real shame to let an opportunity with text go to waste simply due to a lack of word recognition. 

The other thing that I want to address in this article is the authors’ section on text talk.  They stress the importance of asking questions trying to connect students to the story during the reading opposed to waiting until the end for any conversation about the book.  Again, my practicum experience today gave me some valuable insight into this.  The student I was working with during my tutoring session hates reading.  I could see immediately that reading was difficult for him, and that he shut down as soon as I started the read aloud.  I read Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion and I could almost see his eyes glaze over as I started to read.  The difference I saw was when I stopped at key points during the story to ask him questions and prompted him to make predictions.  If the predictions were too difficult for him, I gave him scaffolding to help him see a clearer picture of what was happening.  After the story was over, we did a retelling activity and the few things that he remembered were the things that we had stopped to discuss during the reading.  For my student, text talk during the reading was not just beneficial, but necessary for comprehension.  The only question I have is one that is student centered: how do I use text talk and prevent letting my student become dependent on it as a way to avoid his own thinking process?