Dialogic Inquiry around Information Texts: The Role of Intertextuality in Constructing Scientific Understandings in Urban Primary Classrooms

Abstract

This article develops a typology of intertextuality identified in collaborative read-alouds of science information books during an integrated science-literacy unit on States of Matter in two urban primary classrooms. It provides classroom discourse examples to illustrate the forms and functions of the instances of intertextuality, and the ways in which teachers and children jointly constructed scientific understandings and linguistic registers. Issues such as the importance of dialogic speech genres and the hybridity of such classroom discourse, allowing for the voices of children who come from diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds are examined as they are related to intertextuality.