”Litterære samtaler i barnehagen”.

The purpose of this article is to examine how children’s conversations can become resources when the children are to create meaning in the texts read aloud for them at their daycare facility. More specifically, through selected examples of conversations about literary texts between children themselves as well as between children and adults, the study examines how children use conversations about the texts to make connections between the children's literature and the children’s own experience universe and thereby create meaning in a text. The concept 'text' covers pictures as well as verbal texts in picture books.

On the basis of the three conversations, the author finds that the children in the three conversation examples learn to decode and interpret the picture books they look in and listen to through involvement of their own experiences, feelings and associations etc. At the same time, the children also learn how to talk about a text, and they learn how to take part in conversations. Through such text practice, the children are supported to develop their language, and, when they meet adults who challenge them to think further, they are given the opportunity to learn how to formulate explanations as well as develop definitions.

Data material consists of three different sound recordings of texts read aloud and the related conversations between a child carer and two to five children. The sound recordings are between 20 and 45 minutes, they were collected from three different daycare centres on the basis of reading aloud three different literary texts for children. The author made a conscious choice not to be present during the reading sessions in order to avoid an unusual reading situation for the relevant children and thereby changing the children’s and the adult’s usual behaviour. The children were presented with the child carer, the reading and the books they are used to at the daycare centres.

Solstad, T. (2011). ”Litterære samtaler i barnehagen”. I: Gjems, L. og Løkken, G. (red.): Barns læring om språk og gjennom språk. Samtaler i barnehagen. Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 92-118.