The Missouri Reader Vol. 36, Issue 1 | Page 38

Along with reading interviews, reading interest
inventories can be given to students to fill out at
the beginning of the year. Reading conferences
take time, whereas reading interest inventories
can be given to an entire class at once and
gathered immediately for analyzing.

Book Talk Purposes
Without a purpose for a book talk, what does
the teacher do and how do they do it? For a
teacher to implement weekly nonfiction book
talks, it is imperative to establish a purpose. An
important rule to follow when establishing a
purpose, selecting books, promoting books, or
teaching a mini lesson is to mix-it-up, be flexible,
and make it work for the students‘ and teacher‘s
needs. Using a book talk lesson plan template
provides a framework for the teacher to build
meaningful book talks. Before the teacher can
gather books, they need to study their curriculum
and establish their purpose (focus) for the book
talk. There are four main book talk purposes:
encouraging a love for reading, content focused,
literacy focused, and research inquiry skills.
There is no guarantee that students have
developed a love for reading by the time they
enter fourth grade. After spending adequate,
ongoing, time getting to know students, teachers
should be able to start matching the right books
to the right students. Encouraging a love for
reading does not require the teacher to imbed
various fourth grade level expectations into every
book talk. When the purpose is reading for
enjoyment, the teacher uses book talks as a time
to model their favorite books and why they are
their favorites. The teacher can discuss what
prompted their selections: recommendations
from friends, a current bestseller, or hooked by
the book commercial. As time passes, students
will assume the role of facilitator in the book

talks. Allowing excited readers to promote
books, is an effective way to encourage a love for
reading in more hesitant readers. The beginning
of the year is a good time to do encouraging a love
for reading book talks because the teacher will
want to set a positive reading tone for the rest of
the school year.
After the teacher has begun to encourage a
love for reading, content focused book talks will
be ready to implement. An elementary teacher is
the expert in all content areas which include:
math, social studies, and science. In order to
teach all grade level expectations by the end of
the year, the teacher must study the curriculum
and have a pacing guide designed before the
school year gets started. The teacher can embed
content skills/concepts into book talks to be
more efficient with instructional time. The
teacher needs to know which content area to
promote and identify specific skills within the
content area to be covered.
If fourth graders are learning about the Civil
War in social studies, the teacher could check out
biographies of famous generals for the North and
South. The teacher can also check out books
about The Underground Railroad, Harriet
Tubman, and slavery. The content,
informational, books will change depending on
the grade level expectations being taught. The
teacher could also make a KWL chart (Know,
Wonder, and Learn) with students to see what
they want to learn about the Civil War and then
gather books focused on student interest.
Creating a KWL chart helps readers ―build and
organize background and seek out and reflect on
key elements in a reading selection‖ (Gunning,
2004, p. 296). Following the same ideas above,
the teacher can select books for science and math
content being learned as well.
It is impossible to predict the exact
combination of students a teacher will have each
© The Missouri Reader, 36 (1) p.38