“Put an explanation point to make it louder”: Uncovering emergent writing revelations through talk

Tolentino, E.P. (2013). “Put an explanation point to make it louder”: Uncovering emergent writing revelations through talk. Language Arts, 91(1), 10-22.


Children will let us know when they are ready to learn if we take the time to watch and listen. In this report of a one-year observation study of prekindergarten classroom, examples were provided of how watching and listening to children as they work together on reading and writing tasks can provide important insights into where a child is on the path to literacy.

The researchers looked at what children talked about while working together, the roles and relationships that emerged, and the nature of the work that got accomplished during work times. The children were observed several times a week for an entire school year. Fourteen four- and five-year-olds were observed, and 7200 minutes of video clips were gathered, so this was a view that could be seen as narrow, but also deep.

The researchers show evidence of several kinds of scaffolding. Both teacher and peer scaffolding were important in literacy learning. Several vignettes of peer talk illustrated how these young learners helped each other make discoveries about how print works and how writing should be done. Although the children and their talk is spotlighted here, the role of the teacher in setting up an environment where peer talk can be facilitated is clearly demonstrated. To facilitate peer work and peer talk, there needs to be plenty of time. Although other things are also important, like plenty of engaging materials, activities that open up possibilities rather than creating limits, and a teacher who has the dispositions to set up a risk-free, open-ended environment, we still always come back to time, and time always comes back to what we prioritize and value in a classroom. If we think peer scaffolding is important, we will make the time to create the conditions to make it happen.

The research reported here is limited by its small scope. Though the observations seemed to be intense and detailed, Tolentino looked at one group of children in one classroom with one teacher. I might also add that the school setting here was not what I would call typical. The author describes the site as “an independent school located in a multiethnic and multi-economic residential area in an urban setting” (p. 13). We are given almost no information about the 18 children who were observed, though the teacher is specifically identified; the author states that this was done in order to recognize that teacher for her work. That recognition may have necessitated being extra careful that the children’s privacy was protected. In my view, it would have been better to provide more details about the children and sacrifice recognizing the teacher by name, well-intentioned as that seems to have been.

Not knowing particulars about these children limits my ability to decide whether this research can be generalized to populations I am working with, which is always a decision the reader must make when reading research based on a small, localized sample. Though I found much to think about in this article, not knowing more about the children limited its usefulness for me.