When I applied for North Carolina State University's New Literacy and Global Learning program, I knew that I wanted to find a way to engage my students in deep reading and thinking. I just wasn't sure how to make that happen. From my very first class in the program, the benefits of dialogic instruction and productive classroom conversations grabbed my attention. My students already loved to talk. What would happen if I used their aptitude for conversations to engage them in reading and writing? How could giving them a chance to talk deepen their thinking about text?
Over the past two years I have learned as much as possible about this kind of classroom instruction. I have implemented opportunities for my kids to talk through Socratic seminars, conversations during “silent” reading, partner revisions in writing, and student-driven inquiry reading during interventions when students struggle in literacy. Through using these methods in my classroom, I have seen students grow to love reading (and writing) more than ever before. Their questions and conversations have spurred them on to deeper reading and thinking as they build on each other’s thoughts. Their opportunities to talk with partners have strengthened their writing. My students feel like a true community of learners as they think and read and talk together.
As teachers, we must make time for talk in our classrooms. For our students to become literate citizens - masterful readers and communicators - in our global community, they need to know that their thoughts and words matter. As we teach our students to speak and to listen actively, we will watch as their literacy engagement grows.