Book Talk and Beyond: Children and Teachers Respond to Literature

Listen in on classroom conversations and learn how to motivate and facilitate students’ literary discussions. Prominent authors detail actual classroom dialogues that show how you can foster children’s literary development through such activities as forming teacher and student book clubs, teaching and using webbing and language charts, and exploring literature through drama and art.

©1995 | 260 pp | ISBN: 0-87207-129-4 | 129-553 | Elementary/Middle

Nancy Roser and Miriam Martinez capitalize on our tendency to talk and show us how to turn talk into valuable classroom currency. We discovered long ago that silent classrooms are not the best kind for learning: children talk to learn, teachers talk to teach. The wealth of resources Nancy and Miriam provide focuses on classroom talk about book-related topics. They encourage "book talk"; the "beyond" is what happens when rich, fulfilling literature surges into the classroom.

The teachers represented here not only make literature in classrooms available, they make it unavoidable. These teachers initiate literature discussion groups, book clubs, and literature circles -- small groups of students who read a common text and come together to talk about it. Students share the thoughts and feelings that reading a book stimulates. By experiencing a story, students discover literature's potential to illuminate life. They are young travelers on life's road: they learn from mentors and classmates who lead the way or walk beside them through literature...

Writers in this volume emphasize the importance of children observing the way adults think and learn. Children learn from seeing demonstrations of higher level thinking and observing informed responses to literature. Teachers need to be a part of literature discussion groups so they can "shoot literary arrows" guiding students toward intertextual links and more literary ways of responding to books.

Read and enjoy the conversations in this book. Talk with you colleagues about the ideas presented here. Invite your students into conversations about books and what they mean -- the same way these writers have done for us.