Comprehension Through Conversation: The Power of Purposeful Talk in the Reading Workshop

by Richard L Allington

Maria Nichols offers not possible lessons but full descriptions of actual lessons. Here youll find no ivory-tower examples of what might be, but examples of what is already available in many classrooms. These are classrooms of the sort that we hope our children and grandchildren are lucky enough to encounternot once in a while but routinely.
Richard L. Allington To say this is an exceptional book about teaching comprehension would be to trivialize it. With superb examples and flawless logic Nichols demonstrates how to orchestrate conversations that build literate habits of mind.
Peter H. Johnston, author of Choice Words Comprehension Through Conversation captures the power and essence of purposeful, engaging instructionand reminds us of the real purpose for comprehension to understand the deeper issues in texts and discuss these ideas to construct meaning.
Nancy L. Akhavan author of How to Align Literacy Instruction and Standards When it comes to reading comprehension, talk isnt cheap, its a valuable way to help children think, articulate their opinions about a text, and get the most from their reading experiences. Comprehension Through Conversation is a practical guide to comprehension, conversation, and collaboration. Maria Nichols invites you to listen in on reading workshops where purposeful book talk leads students to deeper understandings of fiction, nonfiction, and the world beyond. Moving forward from the widely understood concept that exchanging ideas builds students comprehension, Nichols shows you specific ways to use conversation as a scaffolding that bridges prior knowledge to more advanced reading skills and techniques as well as to big ideas such as themes. Her useful ideas for conversations begin with lesson designs that use read-alouds to spark discussions, lead to suggestions for units of study that support children as they read progressively more complex texts, and ultimately build toward fully independent reading and thinking. Start a new dialogue with your students about reading, thinking, and sharing. Open your curriculum to the types of smart book discussions in Comprehension Through Conversation . Youll discover that when it comes to increasing reading comprehension, encouraging critical thinking, and creating literate habits of mind, purposeful talk is priceless.

Genres: Professional Development, Education, Teaching, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 24, 2006

Reviews

[Molly]

read for a grad school class and got a lot out of it! good mix of theoretical ideas about the goals of classrooms with practical ideas about what it takes to guide students to more purposeful talk. my favorite part had to be the transcripts of student conversations. some of the ideas in this book seem like things many teachers already do, but nichols thinks deeply about their purpose. overall looked forward to reading for class every week and this made me listen more closely to my students and more considerate of how/when they speak

[Rosemary Karnowski]

Provided some good ideas, but drew many ideas from what I consider to be common sense.

[Robin]

I began this book as part of a Professional Learning Lit Circle. I am now using it to inform my development of several units of instruction I'm working on.

Nichols' writing is accessible and clear, and her process for scaffolding the skills - from Read Aloud through to Literature Circles - clear not only in terms of how they could (should?) be put into practice in the classroom, but also in terms of why they are vital to the success of developing mastery of Purposeful Talk, Listening with Intent and Making Meaning among other vital 21st century skills in our students.

I was struck, in particular, by two things - how explicitly Nichols laid out the changed in the habits of mind that a TEACHER must take on in order to support students in this endeavour, and in the verbatim example of students - generally from elementary grades - utilizing the process of true dialogue (vs. chatting) to not only explore complex issues rather than simply 'cover content', but to internalize the very process of learning through thinking critically, seeking information and most importantly, perhaps, coming to a respectful and collaborative understanding of their world, even to the point of respectful disagreement and savvy awareness of artist/creator bias, as a starting point for examining how they can personally contribute to making the world a better place.

For such a thin tome it covers a lot of ground, both philosophically and practically. The sort of learning demonstrated in these pages is the sort that inspired me to become a teacher; this book reminds me that not only is it possible, it's well within reach for ALL children, of all ages, of all aptitudes with language, and that the shift that needs to happen, needs to happen among the grown ups - we are the ones holding both ourselves and our kids back from the best, most exciting and most effective elements of learning: possibility.

I will be able to mine the nuggets in this book for years to come, in part because it's so easy to fall back into the models that have served us (so ill) for so long. The kids I work with deserve nothing less, and as an educator who joined the profession because I love sharing what I learn and get excited about, I deserve that, too.

[S R]

I read this book for a professional development book study at the school where I work. As a speech and language pathologist, I also found the book useful even though the book moved into conversation around text that was a bit too abstract for the students whom I work with. However, the charts and supports that focus on sentence stems to begin discussions and using conversation to develop habits of speaking are useful not only for a class of students, but can be accomodated for the students who have language processing difficulties. The books main emphasis is that by teaching children to read, think, and talk about their thinking, we enable them not only to have purposeful conversations that construct meaning with others, but also to learn to think about text. In this way, we create self-sustaining, purposeful literate beings who question, build on the thinking of others, pursue more information, seek out and actually listen to other points of view, and in the end, make up their own minds.The strategies in the book are very useful for teachers and I recommend this book

[Melissa]

I am reading this with the Leadership Team at school. We are trying to learn more about how to have students talking about what they are reading more than on the surface level. It's pretty good so far!

[Lea]

It was pretty good. There were a couple new ideas in there but mostly it was strategies we already use in the classroom. I think the best part was to get students to really notice when an author is trying to persuade them even though it's a non-fiction text.

[Marilyn]

The author does a good job of explaining how to get students to talk about their reading. The "purposeful talk" will grow the more time you spend on this strategy. Kids need to talk about reading and what it really means, especially before they get to college.

[Brigit]

Provides excellent descriptions of how to teach students to talk about what they read so that deeper understanding can be attained. Quick and easy read. Practices supported by research, but filled with descriptions of classroom scenarios.

[Kimberly Davis]

Great resource to build an active learning community through conversation and books. Pretty easy read. I did find myself skimming thourgh sections to get to the meet.

[Karen]

For anyone who has a reading workshop up and running this book will nudge your thinking about how to facilitate meaningful, purposeful talk between students.

[Jen Munnerlyn]

This book has been ordered for the 2009-10 school year on the advice of Katherine Casey who led the NESA Literacy Coaching group meeting in Jordan in November, 2008.

[Sandra]

a must have for teachers ! think about how language takes place in your class--

[Jacquie Leighton]

This one has a special place on my PD shelf...and will be read again.

[Wendy]

I felt this book was a very basic introduction and I was looking for something more.

[Trina]

This is a short, yet practical and powerful professional resource for why we need a model of constructivism in our teaching and how to accomplish this in classrooms through reading workshop. Although the examples are geared at the primary level of teaching, I feel that this information could be applied K-12.

Maria Nichols reminds me that dialogue harnesses collective intelligence - something we desperately need in our classrooms and also in our society.