Text Talk

I feel that read alouds  and shared readings are a very important way for children to experience reading. I really enjoyed reading the article and found it to be very interesting. What stood out to me and made me think about my own experiences was the fact that during the study, teachers were asking questions that only required short answers that didn't really call for the children to think. Instead of using questions like that, they should use open ended questions that require the children to think about what was being read. This reminded me of what we did in class the other day. Have the children think about their own experiences as you read the story to them. This will allow them to think about their own experiences and be able to relate them to the text.  This also allows the children to really think about what is being discussed in the text and forces them to think about the message behind some of the reading. This will also help build their language and vocabulary. I really enjoyed seeing the examples that were listed in the article. It gave different scenarios of how to change your questions to challenge the children to think further. The past few classrooms that I have been in have not used any of these strategies during reading. I have never seen the children really engaged in a story or reading that they were reading aloud or during shared reading. I have seen several examples of "round robin" reading where the children take turns reading in a circle. I think that this is awful. The children are definitely not engaged in the reading and are just sitting waiting for their turn to read their part.
Something else that stood out to me was when the article discussed pictures. The children often ignored the content and relied only on the pictures to capture what the story was about. When  the pictures were taken away and they only used the reading, the students paid much closer attention because they couldn't rely on the pictures to tell the story. I am a huge lover of children's books, but the pictures definitely don't always do the book justice. The text is often much greater than the picture represents. I really enjoyed the material in the chapter and in the article. Reading a story to a child seems like something that isn't a big deal, but can be a huge impact on a child's educational growth.

Questions:
1. Why don't all teachers feel the importance of these type of activities? It's so obvious that the children are not paying attention during the "round robin" (read alouds, shared reading)
2. Is the fact that the children's attention is being taken away by the pictures actually research based? or is that just an assumption or opinion of one researcher? I have often been told that for some children the pictures help them to focus on the story and remember certain things.