Dialogic Readers: Children talking and thinking together about visual texts

Dialogic Readers: Children talking and thinking together about visual texts celebrates the sophisticated and dynamic discussions that primary-aged children can have as they talk together to make meaning from a variety of texts, and it highlights the potential for talk between readers as a tool for critical and creative thinking. It proposes a new dialogic theory of reading comprehension that incorporates multi-modal media and adds further weight to the argument that talk as a tool for learning should form a central part of primary classroom learning and teaching.

The book explores:

• the language of co-construction

• children’s critical and creative responses to text

• the dialogic transaction between text and readers

• the use of language as a tool for creating a social cohesion between readers.

This significant work is aimed at educational lecturers, researchers and students who want to explore an expanded notion of reading comprehension in the twenty-first century, realizing how opportunities for children thinking creatively together might transform the potential for learning in the classroom. It provides a framework for analyzing co-constructive talk with suggestions for promoting children’s critical and creative thinking.

Fiona Maine is a lecturer in literacy education at the University of Cambridge with many years of experience working with teachers as they develop their own practice. Prior to her teacher educator roles, she worked as a primary classroom teacher.