It has been a long time since I posted here. After many months of dealing with my health issues- mostly from the Lyme Disease- I am back at posting on this blog. I have missed it, but I just couldn't keep up with this and my class.
Anyway, here I am.
I wanted to start with some info on the Text Talks I have been doing in my class.
Since I teach in an
area where most of the children struggle with Language skills and vocabulary in
school, I have been on a quest to find Text Talk lessons that are easy to use
(because I don’t have a lot of extra time to create my own Text Talk lessons)
and grade appropriate.
Apparently,
teachers from Utah created Text Talks for 101 books and posted them all online
FOR FREE. Utah Text Talk Lessons
The resource on Teachers Pay Teachers has all the same books listed,
but she created posters to print with the book cover and Vocabulary words for
each book. There are also word cards and 2 reproducible pages for each book.
I already had many of
the books in the Utah Text Talk set, so I started with those in my classroom. I
have been doing the Text Talks for 10 weeks now and have really noticed a
difference in my students’ spoken language skills. I do have to remind them of
the words weekly and sometimes encourage them to let me catch them using a word
from our Vocabulary Wall. It hasn’t really transferred to their writing unless
I specifically tell them to use words from the wall, but maybe it will before
the school year is over.
Over the Summer, I
hope to find, or create, Text talks to go with books that have some of the
specific vocabulary words my students need to know throughout the year. Of
course, the vocabulary in the Text Talks I have been using really help expand
the children’s vocabulary. But, I also want to find books with specific words
that help to cover subject-specific vocabulary they need to know.
