Booktalk

I have just been reading about Booktalk on the excellent, Write Away blog. It is not something I had heard about before, but is included in the DWSF National Strategies training and is worth exploring.

Booktalk encourages us to encourage children to talk about the books they have read. The intention is to improve their understanding and appreciation of what they have read, and develop their own writing as a result. Exploring this topic means dealing with a fair amount of jargon but there are some simple ideas underpinning the scheme; simply asking questions about what a young person has read, for example:

• Tell me what you thought/felt about...
• Which parts of the book stay in your mind most vividly?
  
• Have you read any other books like this?

Using such methods will help a child think about what they have read, engage with it, develop ideas and hopefully appreciation and enthusiasm. I recommend the Attachments and Resources on the National Strategies page on Booktalk, the page itself is a little impenetrable.