Talking+Back+and+Taking+Over

Sipe, L. (2002). Talking back and taking over: Young children’s expressive engagement during storybook read-alouds. //The Reading Teacher, 55//(5), 476-483. Retrieved June 21, 2009 from Academic Search Complete.


 * Quotes || Reaction ||
 * 1. "At times, young children seem almost mesmerized by a story, and their receptive engagement at these times is anything but passive: We can almost hear the cognitive wheels turning inside their heads. However, engagement can also be expressive and performative. Children demonstrate this type of engagement with words and physical actions. They become active participants in the story." (p. 476-477)

2. "I constructed a set of five conceptual categories in order to describe the conversational turns that indicated expressive engagement. The resulting typology has five parts: dramatizing, talking back, critiquing/controlling, inserting, and taking over." (p. 477)

3. "What do these five types of response have in common? Children who make such responses seem to view stories as invitations to participate or perform." (p. 479)

4. "We may be tempted to see the five types of response as a disruption of the serious meaning making that is the principal activity of the children during storybook read-alouds. However, another way of seeing them is as sophisticated expressive acts of literary pleasure, in which the children treat the literary text as a playground. Instead of taking the text seriously, the children respond in a playful manner, a pretext for carnivalesque exuberance." (p. 479)

5. "Turning to the classroom, what might encourage (or discourage) these kinds of responses from children? There seem to be at least four variables: the cultural context, individual reader characteristics, the characteristics of the text, and teacher (or classroom) characteristics. (p, 479) 

6. "Teachers have a lot to say about what counts as response in their classroom interpretive communities (Fish, 1980) and whether children are allowed or encouraged to speak during read-alouds."  7. "There are several reasons why encouraging and valuing children's talking back and taking over responses are important in classrooms. First, as mentioned earlier, they represent ways children make the story //their own//. Making stories our own may be a powerful way - or perhaps the only way - for stories to affect our lives and to transform us....Second, we might consider how to extend and expand our theory of the literary understanding of yourng children to include these types of response. They may act as powerful entrees (for at least some children) to a more complete, more textured, and richer understanding of stories and how they work...Finally, it is important to emphasize and rehabilitate the idea of literary pleasure and playfulness." (p. 482) || 4. Teachers must let students know when this type of engagement response is appropriate and when it is not.

7. I have noticed that drama activities related to stories have the same impact on students. Allowing students to become engaged stories this way causes them to view stories as pleasurable. ||

Tags: read-aloud, concept piece, elementary school, reasons for reading aloud , reading aloud effectively