Dialogic Conversations: An Imaginative Approach

After reading the article, "Dialogic Eventful Teaching Through Dialogic Conversations and Dramatic Inquiry" by Brian Edmiston, The Ohio State University and Richard Beach, University of Minnesota,  I decided to choose one idea to try to implement with my students from the collection of thoughts I compiled together while reading.  The article stated that dialogic imagination (imagining and trying to understand the actions and thoughts of literary characters) is key to being able to have a dialogic conversation.  While reading a Māori myth, "A Battle of the Mountain," I had the students become one of the warriors from the story and create a conversation about the events that were occurring.  I reminded them to talk about how those specific events were making their character feel and respond.  They instantly become animated and the depth of the inferences they were independently making about the circumstances of the story dramatically increased.

This is definitely something that I will continue to do in the future with all of my reading groups, especially since inferencing is a difficult concept for the majority of the students we work across grade levels.

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