"Why teach talk? Especially when there is so much competition for those precious instructional minutes? Surely other needs, goals, standards are more deserving of your time and talent. A quick study of your class roster reveals kids who need more...more support with phonics, more work on fractions, more practice with main idea. Aren't those things more foundational and more important than talk? Maybe. But talk transcends. Readers talk. Writers talk. Mathematicians, scientists and researchers talk. It's important to teach talk"--