A description and explanation of teacher-talk during kindergarten sharing time

Teacher-talk during kindergarten Sharing Time was described and explained through a qualitative study of 3 kindergarten teachers. Transcripts of 12 teacher interviews and six Sharing Time observations formed the basis of the study. Results showed that there appears to be a mismatch between teachers\u27 stated goals and actual practice. Teacher-talk dominated much of Sharing Time and occurred in a short discourse style. Categories of teacher-talk were developed through constant comparative analysis. Two broad categories of questions and comments were further divided. Questions fell into four categories: information-seeking, clarification, management, and off-topic. Information-seeking questions were further classified as low-level literal, high-level literal, low-level inferential, and high-level inferential. Comments were classified into five categories: clarification, evaluation, management, off-topic, and other. A mean percentage and range of utterances were obtained for each category. Teachers cited maturity level of students, time management, and quality of the sharing object as primary causal factors for their patterns of talk